Since the new year, I’ve noticed a restlessness in my reading life, a fragmentation. Our holiday guests have packed up and gone. Our decorations are asking if their 2019 performance will ever be over. It’s cold and foggy, and our chickens have initiated an egg-laying strike. And every book I’ve picked up, I’ve just as quickly abandoned. The cure, I decided, is to give myself a comfortable, distraction-free reading place, uninterrupted reading time, and some fresh new books. So off I took myself to our neighborhood bookstore.

Here’s my gear for the cure: my notebook and pencil for thoughts while reading, a cashmere throw (because why not?), and two Best of books of short stories. My plan for the year is to read some short-story collections, a few volumes of nonfiction, literary fiction, biography, and poetry, and a prizewinner and a bestseller. It’s my good fortune that much of the reading I look forward to is written by friends and mentors. The year promises to be abundantly rich and, I hope, a quick cure for this reader’s restlessness. How about you? What do you do when you can’t seem to settle in and let yourself get swept into a story?

Let me know what you think.

—cwh