An Autumn Reading Shelf

First impressions

This autumn’s sample shelf has three spaces rather than three deadlines: one for a book already underway, one for returning to a familiar voice, and one left empty for an unexpected recommendation. The empty space is part of the plan.

Notes from the process

I keep a short list on a card tucked into the current book. It records the title, the date I began, and a sentence about why I chose it. There is no target number of pages. The list is a memory of a season, not a measure of success.

The next page

At the end of the year I will move the cards into the notebook and mark which books I finished, paused, or want to revisit. Pausing deserves its own category; sometimes a book and its reader simply meet at the wrong time.