When picking up my next book, it’s always hard for me to resist reaching for another juicy novel. Even though I often buy nonfiction books that I want to read, I usually give in to the urge to read more fiction. And even though I concentrate on fiction, I read mostly traditional novels. I’d like to reacquaint myself with other forms of fiction as well.

In an effort to be a more well-rounded reader—and to cull my TBR shelves—in 2017, I’m laying out a plan to get myself to broaden my reading by choosing books in four categories. I’m also assigning each category a month when I’ll dedicate my reading to it. Here are the categories and the books in the category that I already own.

(1) Memoirs (January)

• H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
• Heart Earth by Ivan Doig
• Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
• The Journal Keeper by Phyllis Theroux

(2) Short Stories (March)

• Dear Life by Alice Munro
• Tenth of December by George Saunders
• Thirteen Ways of Looking: A Novella and Three Stories by Colum McCann
• The Stories of Jane Gardam by Jane Gardam
• The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

(3) General Nonfiction (July)

• Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
• Wired to Connect by Amy Banks with Leigh Ann Hirschman
• Redirect: Changing the Stories We Live By by Timothy D. Wilson
• On Friendship by Alexander Nehamas
• The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

(4) Essays (October)

• In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing ed. by Olivia Dresher
• Rocket and Lightship: Essays on Literature and Ideas by Adam Kirsch
• The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison

I’m not promising to read all the books in each category during that month, but I’m going to try to choose most of the month’s reading from the list.

This will be a real experiment for me, as I’ve never set up a year-long reading plan before.

How About You?

How do you choose the next book to read? Do you have some kind of plan, either formal or informal, or do you go with whatever book seems to be calling to you?

© 2017 by Mary Daniels Brown