2019 was a great year. I realize that I am saying that in the midst of Corona2020, when the world fell apart.
It was also the year that I adopted the phrase that is the title of this post. #ScrollLessReadMore
Back in 2018, I noticed how much time I was spending in my phone and not really getting any enjoyment from it. I know that I don’t look in my phone for anything but entertainment, but it really didn’t even do that for me. I was doing the zombie scroll and the time would just drift away from me. At some point, I asked myself, “If I was reading a book all the times I was scrolling through my phone, how many books would I be reading?” This led to me doing some strange things, like sitting in the ICU when I had a spare 5 minutes and reading, reading all day on my days off, and reading a book while walking. Hey, we do it all the time with our phones, right?
The outcome was that I only missed my reading goal of last year by like 3 books (I read 22 books total)! Also, because I love reading, It was a great thing for my mental health as well.
Here are a couple of things you should know about me as a reader.
- I am a purist, meaning that I haven’t gotten onto the kindle wagon just yet and my idea of a dream home is something like Beast’s Library (who needs a bedroom when you have a library, right?) I have a lot of physical copies of books and I love the feeling of a book when I have finished it.
- I love several genres of books including fiction, young adult, Christian, romance, and fantasy.
- I may be a little more liberal with my reading than some people are comfortable with. I’ll try and give a warning to people about which books may make your grandmother blush. My warning is that a lot of the books I read have difficult themes and may not be appropriate for some people. I also read a wide range of books, so just keep this in mind if you consider reading some of the things I read.
Reading during residency is a tough topic just because people make it seem as if all your free time should be spent studying. Personally, that just makes me miserable and it’s a bad practice for wellness as well. There is a time to study and there is also time to read books (even if that time is taken from social media.) One of my favorite times to read was actually right before I went to sleep at night. Somehow reading brought my mind away from the hospital and my patients and allowed me to relax before sleeping.
So, with all of that out of the way, I thought I would start with a list of some of my favorite books from last year.
Lise’s Faves from 2019
The Water Dancer – Ta-Nehisi Coates
Queenie – Candice Carty-Williams
Circe – Madeline Miller
Empire of Storms – Sarah J. Maas
Normal People – Sally Rooney
Choose one, Lise! I only have time for one!
Easy money: The Water Dancer.
Several others should be on this list, but for the sake of redundancy, I’ll leave them off for now 🙂
Stay on the lookout for posts about my current books!
Love you guys,
Lise