I’m not usually one for New Year’s resolutions. Every New Year’s Eve, it feels like the masses start making tremendous promises about the new habits they’ll form and who they’ll become in the next 365 days, as if declaring the dream out loud will make it more likely to come true. I’ll admit—I look down a bit on the naive optimism of the many resolutions I hear about. It’s not that I dislike goals—far from it. I believe in small changes that add up over time. But I’ve never been a fan of the new-year-new-me tagline or the belief that you can go from zero days at the gym to five days a week at the drop of a ball.

Still, this year I do have a resolution, and it’s a simple one: I’d like to read more books.

My relationship with personal reading has been a little strained since I graduated from college—maybe even since high school. I’m not saying I don’t read at all—I actually read a book cover to cover just two days ago—but reading isn’t woven into my routine the way I want it to be. Whenever I decide to read, it feels like something I have to plan for: I’ll sit here for forty-five minutes and read, and then I’ll fold the laundry. It doesn’t naturally fill the open spaces of my life the way it did when I was a kid.

I remember lying on the carpet of my childhood room for hours reading Harry Potter or The Red Rock Mysteries or whatever I could find from my local library that week. I always had a book to pull out in the car or in the few minutes before family dinner.

Maybe spending the last four years with syllabi telling me exactly what to read and when shifted my experience of leisure reading. Maybe the daily drone of social media or news headlines fill in the gaps a book used to. Or maybe my list of books to read is piled so high I don’t even know where to begin. 

Whatever the reason, my resolution this year is to let novel-reading become part of the daily liturgy again.

Madeline Witvliet

Madeline Witvliet (’25) graduated from Calvin with a degree in English. She can be found in coffee shops in Eastown, exploring Michigan’s state parks, or singing with Calvin’s Alumni Choir. Madeline enjoys spending time outdoors, crafting, and cooking Mediterranean-inspired meals.