2018 reading goals

Hello, biblios!

made by Stefani at Caught Read Handed

I'm not making any big New Year's resolutions, beyond just "try not to completely lose it" and "maybe clean more often?!" and such.

But I do have a few bookish goals/resolutions that I'm excited to start delving into, and I've got a shiny new spreadsheet to keep track of aaaaaaaaall the data. Because I am a nerd.


First, of course, is the basic Goodreads Challenge, where you set the number of books you want to read that year. I've tended to set my goal at a modest amount; the last two years, I put it at 50 and ended up reading 96 in 2016 and 102 in 2017. So, this year I'm going to trust my motivation and track record a little more, and have set my 2018 goal to 75 books.

I'm not going to do any other specific reading challenges. There are a lot out there and some sound really fun, but in the past I've noticed that trying to accomplish various challenges has stressed me out a little and made me feel like I couldn't just pick up and read what I wanted, but rather had to choose books that would fulfill part of the challenge.

One broad challenge I have for myself is to read more books by authors of color. In 2017, out of the 102 books I read, only 40 were by POC authors. Now, that's not a dismal number at all, but I had hoped the final count would be at least half the books I read, and I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention during the year.

So in 2018, I'm going to be even more deliberate about it. I'm not going to set down a specific number; rather, my goal is that those amounts will be flipped, that I will read more books by POC than by white authors. Whether that's one more or ten more doesn't really matter.

My other challenge is to get a handle on my TBR books. I don't mean my long as fuck ultimate TBR list (which I use the Amazon wishlist feature for, and in case you ever feel the urge to buy me a book, well hey hey, go right ahead) but rather my TBR bookcase in my apartment.

Near the end of 2017, I had 94 books on that bookcase, which is ... a lot. First, I went through and pulled some out that I just didn't care about reading anymore — a few were books I had heard a number of negative reviews of after I bought them, a few were books I'd gotten through subscription boxes that never really appealed much to me to begin with, and some were just ones I'd bought but read the synopsis again and was like "Why the fuck did I even buy this."

That culling got it down to 80. But the other issue was that I had not been keeping track of when I added books to the shelves, and I know some of them have been there for over a year. So I first went through and noted the dates for any books I got from subscription boxes (I currently subscribe to Owlcrate and Book of the Month Club, and have done a few others in the past). Then I went through my Amazon and BN.com order histories and noted down those dates, as well.

The remaining books were all therefore purchased in brick-and-mortar stores. A few I had just bought so I knew that date, but that left me with 39 books for which I had no acquired date. So my goal for this year is to read all 39 of those books, as well as to keep up on the ones for which I do have dates, and read those before their one-year mark comes up. So, for example, any books I acquired in February 2017, I need to read before the end of February 2018.

And this year, when I buy new books and add them to my TBR spreadsheet, I will include the month I got them, so that going forward, I will always know how long a book has languished on my TBR shelves.

The "new year" is of course arbitrary in the big, cosmic picture, but the symbolism of a new calendar page is still pretty potent for us mere mortals in a lot of ways. And for booknerds, a new reading tracker and a fresh spreadsheet makes it a notable day, for sure.

So go get reading! Do you have any bookish goals for 2018? Want to read more broadly, or just more in general? Do tell!