2018 Challenges and Goals

Today I want to talk about my reading journey for 2018. There are a few challenges I’ve signed up for in the past, but failed at, because even though I do the reading I don’t always get around to writing the review. And when I write the review, I don’t always remember to report back to the challenge and link my review. One example is the Historical Fiction challenge hosted at Passages To The Past. I’ve signed up for this one a few times through the years, and because historical fiction is my favorite genre, I always get the reading done. But I almost NEVER remember to go back and link my reviews!

This year I am doing things differently. I’m only doing challenges for ME.

Here are the challenges and some goals I’ve set for myself.

As always, I will participate in the Goodreads Reading Challenge. I’ve set a goal to read at least 50 books this year. That’s about one per week, and even though I have less free time this year, I think it is doable.

The only other challenge I’m signing up for is Doing Dewey’s Nonfiction Reading Challenge. This is a very flexible challenge that lets you do it your way. I am going with a simple ‘read x number of nonfiction books’ challenge. I would like to say I will read at least one nonfiction book a month, but I’m not sure that is doable. Last year I read only 7 nonfiction books, and that was an increase over what I read, so this year I am committing to 10 books; not many, but still an increase over what I did last year. I am also committing to participating in at least one of Katie’s quarterly group reads, though I hope to participate in all of them!

Those are the only challenges I plan to officially participate in, however, I recently discovered Tanya’s Reading Challenges Tracker. She has the prompts for several of the challenges listed. Even though I will not officially sign up for any of these challenges, I do plan to track my reading, just to see how I do, so that next year I can make an informed decision when it is time to sign up.!

 

I also plan to take a look at the Rock Your Reading Tracker soon to be released by Sarah at Sarah’s Bookshelves to see if that might help my reading and blogging.

In addition to challenges, I also have a few reading goals in mind.

1. I want to read every monthly selection for my book club — 12 books. 
2. I want to ‘read my own shelf’. I’ll do a post about this later, but the main idea is that by the end of 2018, I want to have read at least 10 books that are currently on my shelf.
3. I want to improve my review to read ratio. This past year I reviewed about 72% of the books I read. I’d like to get that closer to 90%.
4. I want to continue to cull books from my shelves. My bookshelves are overflowing and I have at least a dozen boxes of books in my basement. I need to find new homes for a lot of them. More on that in another post.

That’s it for now. I can always sign up for another challenge or adjust my goals as the year progresses. What reading challenges and goals have you set for yourself this year?