Eight Book Minimum: Goals for 2020!

[spindizzy]

Real talk: by the end of the year, I did not think I would meet any of my 2019 reading goals. But weirdly, it turns out that even the goals I didn't reach still taught me useful things, which I think is how this "setting goals" thing is supposed to work?

Anyway, as is tradition: looking back on my goals of 2019!

Goals for 2019

1. Read 200 stories, of which 100 must be prose I was convinced that I'd failed this goal by miles, to the point where I actually dropped my Goodreads challenge goal to 180. ... And then it turned out that I'd just completely forgotten that short fiction existed, despite me specifically wording this goal so that I could count it. So I did complete my overall reading goal with 202 stories, although I only just cracked the half-way mark of my prose goal by reading 51, most of which (33) ended up being short fiction. So not bad numerically, but it did leave me feeling a bit rushed and dispirited by the end, which isn't what I wanted.


2. Read 12 non-fiction books — I did manage to hit my goal, ending up with 13/12 non-fiction books! Most of them were self-help or memoirs, and most were graphic non-fiction, but it turns out that's what works for me. Now I have an excuse to hit people up for graphic and/or short non-fiction recs, which is the BEST outcome here.


3. #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks: Read 100 books that I owned before 2019 — I came close to hitting this one, with 74 books! I'm pretty happy with that, and I'm even more happy with realising that what I actually wanted from this goal was permission to get rid of some of the books in my house. For that it was a spectacular success.


4. #UnofficialQueerAFBookClub: Read 75 queer narratives — When I set this goal, my question was how do I keep reading so few queer books?! Turns out, that question was based on a flawed assumption: that all of the non-queer-AF books I read must be some flavour of m/f. Turns out, I read more queer fiction (including queer m/f) than I did (allo/cis/het) m/f, and more where there was no mention of romantic/sexual attraction at all. So not only did I hit my goal numerically, I managed to answer my own questions about my reading stats!

So I spent most of 2019 coming to the realisation that I am not good at setting realistic goals. I know, I know, you're all shocked by this revelation, but I've finally accepted the truth! Which means that for 2020, I have dialed my goals down about as far as I can go and still feel challenged.

Goals for 2020

1. Read 80 books, 20 of which are prose, 12 of which are non-fiction — I figured something out last year that surprised me: reading prose is a bastard for me. I knew that I had trouble settling in for anything that I couldn't finish in one sitting, but I just assumed that the "People with ADHD have trouble reading" thing didn't apply to me until I reckoned up how much prose I read compared to anything else. Reconsidering parts of your identity: super fun! What this means in practice is that I'm setting the bar low for my overall reading goal, because I feel like eighty is a reasonable number of reviews to write. My prose goal reflects that I only read 18 novella/novel length prose books in 2019. It turns out that if something's difficult for you, you don't have to double-down and make your goals harder! Whaaaaaaaaaaaat.


2. Get my Netgalley ratio to 50% — Real talk: Netgalley is dangerous for me, because I go on it and suddenly forget that time is finite and I have a day job that requires me to NOT be reading ARCs on my phone. Add in the turnaround time between my reading a book and actually reviewing it, and my stats are... They're bad, okay. They're pretty bad. But clairerousseau and I have committed to rebalancing our ratios to 50% in 2020! As of time of writing, I'm at 44/185, so to get to 50% I would have to review 50 books and not request any more. That sounds like a doable goal! It might take me the whole year, but 50 reviews is an amount I can handle!


3. #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks: Read 40 books that I owned before January 2020 — Giving myself the sweet sweet gift of donating/gifting/selling books that I no longer wanted in 2019 was a beautiful gift, and I'm ready to do that again! And it should tie-in nicely with my other goals, considering most of what I have at the top of my to-read pile is prose ARCs...


4. #UnofficialQueerAFBookClub: Read 20 queer narratives — I know that I've figured out what was bugging me about this goal the last few years, but I want to keep tracking it and see if I can be more consistent and intentional about it now that I know what I'm doing.

So that's what I'll be up to this year! How about you? Have you set any reading goals? Have you joined the goal-free anarchy some of the Lady Business editors are embracing? Did your goals bring up any revelations about your reading habits? ... Definitely comment if you had that last one, I would love to not be alone in this!

Comments

[forestofglory]

Susan you did great at your goals! Please take a moment to be proud of yourself!

I'm trying goal anarchy for now, which mostly means reading a ton fic instead an not a that much pro-publised stuff. Though I do have some things I hope to get to before Hugo nominations close.

[spindizzy]

Thank you! ♥ I did so much better than I expected to!

Oooh, living dangerously! I've been enjoying your rec lists, so I hope you keep finding cool stuff!

[forestofglory]

I'm glad you liked my rec list. I definitely want to fail with you some more about MDZS stuff sometime!

[themadpoker]

I'm borrowing that NetGalley goal! I rarely request anymore because I feel bad about how horrible my ratio is. 🙈 Otherwise I think I'll try to complete 50bookspoc -- I managed 32 last year and I think I can improve that if I try! I also want to try to read at least 20 books that are already on my Goodreads tbr shelf.