This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. Last year, I read something like 40 books, not counting all of the titles I picked up and abandoned out of disinterest, the ones I half-skimmed for work, or the advance copies I read 20 pages of. Depending on your point of view, that number may seem impressive or underwhelming. It’s much higher than the average number of books read yearly by American adults, according to Gallup, but it feels lower than I’d like, and might be lower than you’d expect from a professional journalist on the literary beat. But I also maintain that this figure doesn’t offer any real insight into my 2023 reading habits—and that in 2024, we should all consider dropping the “books read” metric entirely. First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic’s Books section: What does 40 books even mean? I could have read three long classics and three dozen middle-grade chapter books. Should that number include …