2020: Bookish Goals

Posted on by Karissa

At the beginning of 2019 I set myself the goal of reading 100 books. It felt like an ambitious and perhaps foolhardy goal but I was able to accomplish and even surpass it. (104 was my final number.) I’m pretty proud of that. More than that though I appreciate that this goal made me think a little harder about how I spend my time. It helped me to make time for reading. Not something, mind you, I’d ever really struggled with but that ambitious goal did push me to read even more than I would have otherwise.

So what goals do I set myself for 2020? Knowing I can read over 100 books in a calendar year, do I set an even higher goal? Instead, I’m going to aim for another 100 but be a little more deliberate about what kinds of books I’m reading.

  1. Read 100 books.
  2. Read at least 20 books translated from a language other than English.
  3. Read at least 25 books that have been on my TBR for a year or more. (My TBR list as it exists now dates back to 2013.)
  4. Read all the authors who will be coming to the local Writers Festival in August 2020. (Planning ahead on this one so I can read the authors as they’re announced instead of frantically cramming them all into June and July!)
  5. Review 75 books on this here blog. My hope is also that I can be more regular/organized in my posting.
  6. Begin and end my day with a quiet time. I started doing this in the final quarter of 2019 and it made a big difference in my life. (Hi, I’m an introvert!) I set an alarm for 6 am and one for 9 pm. The girls’ alarm is set for 7 am so this, ideally, gives me an hour before they wake up. I drink my coffee, read my Bible, read whatever devotional I’m currently working through and maybe do some fiction reading. At 9 pm I wash my face and get into bed. I do my evening devotion/Bible reading and journal about my day before reading a bit more. Whether or not I get time to read during each day can vary a lot but this guarantees me at least an hour of read each day and it makes me feel much better in my day-to-day life.

State of the TBR:

My on-going list currently stands at 198. At the beginning of 2019 it was 245. That decrease is due to lots of reading this year but also some winnowing by removing books from it that I realized I was never, ever going to read and had lost interest in reading. 45 of the titles on the TBR are apparently ones I already own which is, frankly, rather alarming and a bit of a jump up from the 27 I mentioned a year ago. (In my defence, I buy most of my books secondhand and usually from library book sales and thrift stores. I’m mostly mentioning this here so when my husband reads this post he isn’t overly alarmed at my book buying habits. Some women buy shoes, I buy used books.)

What are your 2020 reading goals? When in your day do you read? Are you the type of reader who usually has multiple books on the go or are you a one-at-a-time style of reader?

Published by Karissa

16 thoughts on “2020: Bookish Goals”

  1. I like that you have morning and evening routines, Karissa. I have an evening one: my husband packs my lunch while I read to him. However, the morning one is harder. I tried getting up earlier to read in the morning, but that didn’t work. I know that Anne @ I’ve Read That, who is also a young mother, gets up early to read in the morning and found it effective.

    1. That sounds like a lovely routine! I knew you read to your husband but I didn’t realize it was while he made your lunch – you sound like a good team! I’ve come to understand how important routine is for me and that I’m a better mom when I take that time for myself. It’s definitely easier now that my kids have more regular sleep patterns!

    2. I’ve found that if we change the routine, I go to bed with a really bad feeling. I wish that weren’t the case, as you can’t always stick to what you want.

    3. I can understand that. I have an easier time falling asleep when I read before bed, as opposed to watching TV or scrolling the internet

  3. Good luck with your goals, these sound excellent! I’ll be especially interested to see which translations you pick up, that’s something I didn’t specify in my goals for the year but would love to increase.

  4. Good luck with your goals! I already read multiple books at once. I find that it helps me to read more. If I’m reading a book that I’m not in the mood for, I can just switch to a different book for an hour instead of spending that hour watching tv or scrolling through twitter. And I usually read before bed!

  5. 100 books seems pretty impressive to me considering you have a young family and work to juggle. I usually only read around 125 and my only responsibilities are to feed cats and clean litter trays! I tend to read on and off during the day, sometimes binge reading and sometimes not reading at all. I do read multiple books at the same time, but always from different genres. Good luck with your reading this year – hope you find 100 great books!

    1. Sometimes I worry that it’s more indicative of the things I DON’T do! But I also think I do have very easy-going kids, plus our house is small and pretty easy to manage. I always read multiple books too; I realized this year that three is my magic number. Four at a time is overwhelming but three keeps me going.

  6. So I never really of this before, but my TBR isn’t actually a TBR (that I want to read) at all, its simply the books i’ve received for review from publishers. Every once in a while I will go to the library to get a book I really want, but this happens once a year, basically. And some of the books sent by publishers i’ve chosen from their catalogues, or lists of their suggestions, so it’s not exactly books I’d hate or anything but…still. I feel like I’m failing a bit as a bookworm as I type this ahahah

    1. That’s so interesting…I love hearing how other booklovers organize their books and decide what to read. Would you then say that most of your reading is new releases? How often do you read older titles? When I worked in a used bookstore I never went to the library but in the past couple of years I’ve started using it a lot again (and the inter-library loan system). I’m there every week with my kids anyway and I suddenly realized I could use that time to my own advantage!

    2. I read older titles pitifully low, like maybe once a year? Everything else are recent releases (like the past two years) that publishers have sent. Sigh…

    3. I’ve definitely noticed an increase in my reading of new titles in the past few years, especially with more ARCs. But then I worry that really good older books are being missed! There are too many books to read!

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