Pilita clark biography books

For a certain subset of the population, there is nothing so relaxing as a New Year resolution. These are the non-resolvers, people who happily sit and watch as others grind their way through cakeless, wineless weeks of January self-abnegation.

Normally I am with these spectators but this year, I have been struck by an urge to self-improve in one particular area.

In 2022, I would like to read more books.

The realisation dawned last week when I came across a phenomenon that seems dazzling in a pandemic year of distraction: Lists compiled by people who managed to get through at least one book a week last year.

“I have learnt loads,” wrote Sunday Times data journalist, Tom Calver, of the year-long odyssey he took while meeting a New Year resolution to read 52 books in 2021.

Some made him cry.

Others left him sleepless.

Being a numbers person, he ranked them all in order of enjoyment, starting with Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanitie