A Simple Way to Organize a Reading Practice
In 2024, I embarked on a merciless campaign to scrub my digital landscape of debris and detritus. Irrelevant Substack subscriptions, Instagram accounts I no longer engaged with, apps I once downloaded that I thought would streamline my life, unread poetry journal subscriptions, Duolingo reminders, job listings, and prompts from various organizations I once aspired to join: digital clutter, all of it. Worst of all was the chokehold it had on my ability to meaningfully process anything — my focus was completely fractured and nothing I consumed received any appreciable amount of attention or thought.
Physical organization is something my brain naturally takes delight in, so it irked me that my digital space resisted any kind of orderliness.
In an effort to pare down the amount of information I consumed daily, I started thinking about the non-negotiables in my life: those things which give me pleasure, intellectual stimulation, and opportunities to better know myself and the world. Reading is an unquestioned value of mine, yet the way I engaged with texts betrayed my feeble commitment.
My brain splinters when faced too many moving parts or information, and my swelling to-be-read list became something to avoid. Looking at the list of books in my notes app stunned me with decision paralysis, and, mentally groping for an avenue of flight, my thumb habitually swiveled to Instagram.
To temper the deluge, I decided to try and get serious about my reading, treating it like a practice that requires organization and intention. I came up with a system that isn’t necessarily revolutionary, but the results are surprisingly effective.
For 2025, I assigned a thematic focus to each month based on my general interests. Instead of selecting books at random, I dedicated each month to a specific topic, thereby narrowing my options.
As a member of So Textual, my fiction is already chosen for me, a beautiful perk to a book club that I don’t take for granted. If I finish the book early, then I usually pick up another short-ish novel (January's additional read was Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan; this month, it's To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf).
With my fiction selection outsourced, I curated a list of nonfiction themes: food, writing, poetry/spiritual nourishment (broadly interpreted), and politics/social issues. Since there is much to explore for each one of these topics, I rinse and repeat throughout the year.
If I land one one book that intrigues me, then my research stops there. I don’t let too many options accumulate at once because I know things will filter in slowly through social media and the general zeitgeist, providing me with enough material by the next time that theme rolls around. Essentially, I don’t think or scour too hard and select the first one or two books I encounter that seem interesting.
My calendar looks like this:
January: Politics and social issues
February: Food
March: Poetry/spiritual fulfillment
April: Writing/editing
May: Politics and social issues
June: Food
July: Poetry/spiritual fulfillment
August: Writing/editing
September: Politics/social issues
October: Food
November: Poetry/spiritual fulfillment
December: Writing/editing
More than anything, this feels like a gift to myself, both in acknowledging my what my brain requires to thrive, and as a way to pursue my curiosities more devotedly.
For February’s theme of food, I chose The Land Where Lemons Grow, by Helena Atlee, a beautiful and impressively researched tribute to Italy’s citrus cultivation. In it, Atlee frequently references Italian citrus’ role in the perfume industry, which has inspired me to explore the history of perfumery, and the phenomenology of scent. Scent has always been enchantingly world-building and transportive to me (perfumery DS & Durga describe perfume as “armchair travel”). The language scent inspires is extraordinarily sensorial and I’m excited to expand my study of the senses beyond taste to include scent and olfaction.
