Friday Mood Recs: Recommendations for Your Reading Resolutions
Some favorite books to help you start your reading year strong
Hey, readers!
One thing I love about the start of the new year is setting new intentions and considering how I want my reading life to feel now that I’m starting with a clean slate. This year, I want to focus on reading backlist, furthering some of my author projects, and reading some books on my shelf that came highly recommended from trusted sources. I also want to do a lot of rereading. this year will mark my 10th year sharing my reading life publicly and I think it will be fun to revisit some books that I loved or ones that I appreciated to see how I feel about them now.
In 2023 I read a lot more new releases than I typically do and I had a lot of fun with that. It was a great reading year and I loved many of those books. But I wound up ending the year thinking as much about the books I didn’t read than the ones I did. Reading so many new releases put me in the frame of mind that I ought to have an opinion to offer on allll of the big books, and I didn’t enjoy that feeling. While I love my job of finding books to share with you, I want to focus more on picking up what I’m personally drawn to and bringing those books to this space. That will, of course, still include many new releases, but I’m going to try to stay “above the fray” and get back in tune with what I love and why I read.
Whatever you love and whatever reason you read, my goal here is to help you find books that stimulate, challenge, and invigorate your reading world. Today, I’m sharing some of my favorite books that will help you accomplish your reading resolutions. Whether you want to read more classics, investigate genre, read more deeply, or tackle a tome, this newsletter is filled with recommendations to help you start your goals off on the right foot.
As a reminder, tomorrow is the last day to take advantage of 25% off an annual subscription to the FictionMatters Newsletter. Upgrading will get you Friday Mood Recs for the entire year along with monthly Ranked Reading Recaps, In Summation posts, past and future Paperback Summer Reading Guides, and past and future Fall Fiction Compendiums. It’s a great new year gift for your reading life!