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Happy Monday 🌞

If you’ve been around here for a while, you know I’m a big reader. It has not happened again, but one year I read 127 books. These days, I aim to read around 50 books every year. The number doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’m consistently reading both to relax and for self-improvement, and I’ve found that 50 is a comfortable enough number that I can reach if I make sure to constantly have new book recommendations for myself.

And that’s the trick to reading more — you have to be excited about the books you’re going to read and have a list going of the next books you want to read. So, here are some of my favorite reads from this year, a few I’m still finishing, and some I’m already planning on reading next year. I hope a few of them make it onto your reading list and I’d love it if you replied with a few of your top reads so I can check those out, too.

Top books of 2023

​Life Admin: How I Learned to Do Less, Do Better, and Live More by Elizabeth Emens

I still think about this book regularly, and I’m sure I’ll reread it in the future. Life Admin helped me think more critically about how I treat admin, how I create the space to complete admin, what counts as admin or work, and invisible admin. If this sounds interesting to you, it’s probably a good one for you to read. Habbi and I also discussed this book and what we took from it in-depth in MWW45.

​Do Nothing by Celeste Headlee

I read this book as a part of a book club and had the chance to virtually hang out with the author after we’d read it. The timing of reading this book was excellent for me. This is a book about how to combat overworking that questions long-held assumptions about how we best work as humans and encourages you to live a more full life. One of my favorite quotes from this book was, “Most of us become obsessed with means goals and completely lose sight of the more important end goal that should motivate all our efforts: living a good life.”

​Digital Zettlekasten by David Kadavee

If you do any writing, pick up this book. This is a very quick read (79 pages) about how to set up the Zettlekasten method digitally. Zettlekasten, which was a new term for me, is a way of organizing your thoughts and ideas into concrete notes that you can easily turn into longer pieces of writing. The practice was used in a letterbox by a 16th-century German sociologist to write 70 books and hundreds of articles. There is lots more to come from me next year on how I’ve set up my Zettlekasten, as it has been in the works for a while now.

​How to Calm Your Mind: Finding Presence and Productivity in Anxious Times by Chris Bailey

This was a pretty busy year for me for many reasons — I talked in MWW47 about how my summer was filled with hiring, and more recently I shared that my husband and I are expecting our second baby early next year. All that to say, a book about calm was appealing to me and I enjoy a lot of this author’s other writing. Overall, I left with a lot of different tools for achieving a more calm state of mind, so it was well worth the read. The trick now will be continuing to incorporate some of these new practices and build them into habits.

​Waiting To Be Heard: A Memoir by Amanda Knox

I didn’t grow up in the U.S. (though, as of very recently, I have American citizenship), so I entirely missed the news cycle about Amanda Knox when it was happening. I came across Amanda Knox on social media and immediately bought the book and couldn’t put it down — this was a captivating memoir about strength and self-discovery in an extremely difficult situation and I’ve recommended it to a lot of friends.

​Woman on Fire by Lisa Barr

This book sat on my digital shelf for a year before I read it, but when I finally picked it up, I couldn’t put it down. Woman on Fire is a thrilling novel that includes art, travel, and investigative journalism. It’s an easy and delightful read if any of those topics are up your alley.

And finally, two fantasy series, because I can’t mention them all:

​Rook and Rose by M.A. Carrick

This year, the third and final book in this series came out, so I reread the first two books before enjoying the third. This is unlike other fantasy novels I’ve read before, perhaps because it was written by two authors instead of just one. Either way, I absolutely love the depth of the characters and the detail in this whole series.

​The Emperyan by Rebecca Yarros

This series took the world by storm when the second book came out just last month. I’ve seen it mentioned everywhere, and for good reason. This is akin to Throne of Glass for me in terms of series that are well-written with captivating stories and characters. Be warned, the series isn’t over, but two incredible books are out that I would recommend to any fantasy reader.

Books I’m aiming to finish by the end of the year

Given this year was so busy in a few ways, I spent a lot of time rereading books for comfort and put down some I didn’t have the mental capacity for. Still, I’m keen to finish them by the end of this year, and I’m not far off, so I wanted to include them here as well.

​The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work by Simone Stolzoff

This book hit me with a lot of truth in just the first few chapters. The author did a fantastic job of interviewing some incredibly interesting people and sharing their stories in a truly compelling way. I’m about a third of the way finished and looking forward to the rest of the examples and critiques about how we view work.

​How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

Similar to Digital Zettlekasten, this is another short (178-page) book on how to use note-taking to turn it into longer pieces of writing. This is a very practical book, and I’m almost finished and already applying the principles to my own Zettlekasten.

​The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz (again)

I’ve read this book before, and it was very profound at the time. I picked it up again last month and plan to finish it by the end of the year to keep the messages from this book top of mind as I go into 2024.

On my 2024 reading list

There are a few books I already have my eye on for 2024 that I wanted to share early. If you’ve read any of these and either recommend or don’t recommend them, please reply and let me know!

• ​Principles: On Life And Work by Ray Dalio
• ​The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel by Kati Marton
• ​Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte
• ​The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

I hope you have a lovely week ahead. As always, feel free to reply if this sparks any thoughts or questions.

See you next week,

Hailley

• If you’re using Threads — Meta’s newish social network and Twitter competitor — please find me there (@hailleymari) so we can connect. I’ve been meeting some great folks on Threads!
• I have a few other book lists if you’re looking for more: check out my 2019 book list and my 2020 book list.
• Recently, our newest Content Writer at Buffer, Kirsti Lang, wrote a piece about succeeding at Buffer with advice from several leaders at the company. It’s a pretty fun look inside what we look for at Buffer with advice from our executive team, managers, and a few long-tenured teammates.

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