on reading better

My resolution for 2026 is to read less.

I've spent the past three years reading at least 75 books a year. It's a neat conversational shortcut when I explain to people why I deleted my Instagram and what I've been doing with my time instead. For what it's worth, there has been a direct correlation between me not using Instagram and reading more books. I replaced countless hours of idle time I would have spent doomscrolling reading whatever book du jour I have on hand and I'm probably overall better off for it. But now three years on, simply reading a lot is getting old. 

What am I trying to prove anyway? I can read 100 books a year. Even if you think my triple-digit reading year was a pandemic and/or grad school fluke (7 of the books I read cover to cover that year were for one Michaelmas term class alone), I read 91 books in a year where I was working a job that does not require me to read books. I know some people are able to hit some impressive book counts by going deep in one or two genres, but that's never been me. I want you to know that I read this much even though I read inefficiently by eschewing genre fluency: while the majority of books I read can be categorized as contemporary fiction, I try to read some sci-fi, fantasy, historical fiction, mystery, and romance in any given year, and at least 20% of my reading is nonfiction, essays, and memoirs. I read foreign books in translation and do my best to pick at least a few books from older decades or even centuries, and I am proud—arrogant, even—about the fact that I push myself to read with more diversity and at a greater volume and faster pace than the vast majority of people would desire to do. 

So it should probably come as no surprise that I have not been reading happily.

I have liked a majority of the books I finish, and I've gotten better over the years at not falling for the sunk cost fallacy and quitting books I actively dislike. But every time I finish a book I didn't really like but forced myself through anyway so I can count it toward my annual book goal, I start questioning why I'm doing this to myself. Am I really out here completing books just to feel a sense of achievement? In my attempt to escape the panopticon of performing for one social media platform, I have somehow managed to turn yet another hobby into a source of self-consciousness; this is why we (or rather I) can't have nice things.

The incident that really set me off a couple weeks ago on this crisis over my reading habits was actually more about books I liked but didn't love: there have been so many books over the years that were just fine but have left no impression on me whatsoever after the fact, to the point where my Kindle loan syncs or I check my Goodreads and it hits me that I have already read that book two years ago. Not every book is worth remembering, but I think I've gone too far in the opposite direction where I'm not really processing the books I really loved in ways that they deserved, and I want to do a better job of sitting with the books I read more at the cost of reading fewer books overall. 

I want to read with more intention this year, so here's what that means to me:

1. Read books I've been putting off

I am mostly thinking of Middlemarch, a book I have owned for six years now and barely made a dent in because I am always prioritizing library loans and because the size and scope of it intimidates me. Other books in this category tend to be classics I haven't gotten around to yet for one reason or another: Jane Austen (Emma, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey), Crime and Punishment, The Remains of the Day, Madame Bovary, maybe even 《红楼梦》—I read the last one in college in translation, so the original Chinese would be new to me and also a real challenge. 

2. Read books that interest me

This seems like it should be a no-brainer criteria, but I need to be more judicious in selecting books in the first place based on what I actually like or am intrigued by, rather than what other people think. I give too many books a shot because I read relatively quickly but this actually hurts me in the long run: I'm more likely to enter a reading slump after reading a book I don't like, while the ones I do motivate me to want to chase the same high of finding more books that do it for me. I want to be relentlessly discerning in what I'm spending my time on, even—especially—if it means I read slower and abandon even more books.

3. Reread books

I rarely reread books, so the ones I do deign to reread are ones that were important to me the first time around. Rereading old favorites feels like I'm revisiting past versions of myself. One of my favorite reads of 2025 was also my favorite read of 2014—I loved The Secret History as much as I did the first time, and it was such a different experience having read it over a decade later on the other side of university and studying classics. I've been thinking about my classics education more lately, maybe because I'm also rereading The Odyssey with Berkeley's Arts & Humanities department book club. I first read The Odyssey in freshman year of high school half my life ago, and the story itself is older than anything else I've ever read. I'm interested in discovering new ways of interacting with the same texts to better understand how my favorite books have changed for me even when the words remain the same.

4. Build discipline in reflecting on what I read

I was pretty consistent about taking notes on what I read in 2022 but abandoned this effort in 2023 around the time my reading pace really started picking up.  I check out nearly all of the books I read from the library as ebooks, so not having easy access to the books I've read makes it that much harder to revisit books in the first place. I wish I kept it up these past few years because it helps me process my thoughts on what I'm reading so I can react properly to what I'm reading and have something to look back on someday in the future.

5. Read less, and do something new

It's great that I converted some phone screen time into reading. Maybe it's time to convert reading time into doing other things now too.

So here's to reading less than 75 books this year. 

xoxo, vivian

la vie en ambre

Here are some photos from my week in Paris at the start of this month. It was fun to revisit the city on what was functionally a solo trip; George was there for work so I didn't see him for most of the week, but I took the time off to wander on my own. Early November was a surprisingly beautiful time of year to be there: the fall foliage was at its prime, and there were no crowds or lines at almost all of the places I wanted to go. 

Some quick highlights from my week:

• French food for lunch and Asian food for dinner: I wasn't meant to eat butter three meals a day. This felt like the right balance for me to enjoy French food (and often at better prices at lunchtime) on a daily basis, plus I found solo dining at Asian restaurants to be less daunting for dinner. Thanks to Mary for the Asian recs: Abri Soba; Mam from Hanoi; Sanukiya
• Photo tour with Tory, who captured all of the snaps of me, including on my SLR, throughout picturesque spots across the city in one day. I wish I had a Tory in every city I traveled to!
• Coffee roasting experience at a studio inside the Passage de Panoramas: I've been trying to prioritize doing more "making" activities this year instead of just constantly consuming, but didn't want to do a baking class and end up with too many sweets or baked goods than I could reasonably eat before they went bad. Learning how to roast my own coffee beans was a nice way to make something that I could savor at home later, and the setting made it fun to learn more about the history and architecture of Paris
• Sketching, reading, writing in cafes and parks around town; The Likeness by Tana French was my constant companion for the week, and I savored every minute of that book
• While the other museums I went to were new to me (Jeu de Paume, Musée Carnavalet), I loved revisiting the Musée d'Orsay with a guided tour. Orsay is among my top five favorite museums I've ever been to, full stop, and everything about it—the old train station building, the views of Paris from gallery floors, and of course the collection itself of my favorite period of art history—made it worth going back to
• I'll never tire of the thrill of catching up with old friends in new places 

We also stopped by London for a few days before coming back, and I found that I don't miss it the way I used to when I first left. Maybe it was the misery of getting sick again at the end of the trip or maybe it was something more intangible: the opportunity cost, that life I could have had if I toughed it out and stayed four years ago, doesn't seem so sweet anymore—either way, I found myself glad to be coming home and grateful to live in New York, despite everything. 

xoxo, vivian

do you think I have forgotten

Some photos from our wedding in Bordeaux. Endlessly grateful.

xoxo, vivian

recalling things we never did

Last week, George and I went to the Angelika to go see Before Sunset, a movie I had never rewatched despite having seen Before Sunrise at least half a dozen times since I first watched the full trilogy when I was still in high school. It's funny how the media we encounter for the first time at certain points in our lives become such a formative part of how we see the world. That same weekend, someone at a party asked me what my favorite books are, and I found myself rattling off titles I read from around the same era as my first Before viewing: late high school, early college, that time before I felt like I was really living my own life so much as planning what I wanted my real life to be like, thinking it hadn't quite started yet because of all the experiences I hadn't had. 

Before love, there was Before Sunrise: this movie was the framework for my conception of romance years before I ever fell in love, and I measured every spark against the conversational chemistry between Celine and Jesse ever since. I realized while watching that even though Before Sunrise was the movie that led to a decade of me chasing the most sparkling conversations I could possibly hold, Before Sunset was the one with the line I always thought about in the moments when those possibly life-changing conversations were unfolding: "When you're young, you believe there will be many people with whom you'll connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times." 

Before Sunrise is a fantasy of serendipity. What if life really was that brilliant, that you could just meet a beautiful stranger on a train and stay up until dawn talking and falling in love? You never want the moment to end, and maybe inside your head it never does. The ending of the original film is naively hopeful: we won't exchange contact info but meet me here again in six months, and let's see then what happens next. 

Nine years pass. 

I have mixed feelings about sequels to works I love, especially when it's not clear that the author or filmmaker intends for a sequel to follow in the first place. There are some sequels I refuse to read or watch because I consider the endings of the original works to be perfect. Even though I watched the Before trilogy in short succession the first time I saw the series and I knew the subsequent films were faithful to the characters and spirit of the romance between the two, I held off on rewatching Sunset and Midnight because I was afraid it would ruin the magic of the first film for me. For most of my twenties, I wasn't ready to witness the ensuing cynicism and stilted politeness of a second encounter nine years after the original fantasy was left unfulfilled. I suppose I also waited nine (ten, eleven, twelve) years to fully appreciate the fantasy of second chances presented in Before Sunset, and that crucial passage of time has made me love this movie now even more than the first. 

Before Sunset opens with a Q&A with Jesse at Shakespeare & Company in Paris, where he answers questions about the book he wrote based on the night he spent with Celine in Vienna. He wrote it for her, really, and in the crowd, near the back, she appears. The sequel spends the next 70 minutes—tracking almost exactly a real-time match to the limited time Jesse has left in Paris before he needs to catch his flight and go back to New York—acknowledging what that night meant for both of them and how it's shaped who they are now, all those years later.

During this rewatch, I was struck by the way Before Sunset captures the feeling of after: what happens after a promise made was broken, and how do you reckon with the fact that you're never the same after your heart breaks the first time? All those subsequent heartbreaks trace the same fault lines from the first break. Celine and Jesse gradually move from conversation about big-picture issues to reckoning with what that night in Vienna night together did to each of them as they wander through Paris. Both of them slowly admit to having replayed that night in their heads over and over again and spending the intervening years searching for that original feeling and wondering if maybe your most cynical self is right: you're only romanticizing that moment because you never had a real chance to find out if this love is real or just some fleeting thing.

And yet Before Sunset says maybe you do get a chance. Maybe the dreams and terrors and second thoughts about all your other life decisions have been leading you to this afternoon, when you only have an hour before the flight to try and say everything you've held onto for the past decade because life is short and what are the chances? More than anything, the conceit of time is what drives the tension of the first two films: it let's you imagine the what-if fantasy of a single day changing you irrevocably. A single day can break your heart and break you open, and isn't life about living moments like that to savor every last second in the moment, before your time is up?

We are reminded throughout the film that Jesse is on borrowed time and that this golden hour before sunset is suspended from his real life. He has a driver waiting outside and a plane to catch. In the end, does it matter if he and Celine are still madly in love with each other all these years later when he has a wife and kid to go home to? Can love ever be enough to propel you to change your life in all the mundane ways, or is it only beautiful and precious because it's wrapped up in the fantasy of romantic idealism?

These are questions for the final sequel, I think. But it may take me another nine years for that rewatch.

xoxo, vivian

veni vidi vici

Here's a quick photo diary of my long weekend solo trip to Rome in February. This was my second time visiting Rome and my to-see list is still regrettably long, although that's my fault for getting sick on the second day of the trip. I know it looks like I managed to see a lot during my time there regardless, but I have to say that my tendency towards overexertion (particularly when I'm on my own) was probably what exacerbated a head cold into a full-blown fever in the first place. It's taken me months to get around to publishing this post; I came back fundamentally questioning why I wanted to travel so much at all, because at the time it felt like I was doing it for the wrong reasons. It took until my wedding trip a few months later for me to recognize the right ones—a story for another time.

xoxo, vivian