Eight Book Minimum: This goal review did not go how I expected

[spindizzy]

Okay, it's that time of year when I remember that I set myself some reading goals and suddenly start running numbers! As ever, I'll be going my total numbers, which you can check on GoodReads, so if you're going "Wait, hang on, these numbers don't match your Eight Book Minimum post!" that's what happened.

1. Read 80 books, 20 of which are prose, 12 of which are non-fiction — I did a lot better on this goal than I thought I would, in that I've read 91 books this year! Reading goal: SMASHED. I credit all of this to getting into multi-volume manga, because it turns out that binging on two series is a great way to put your numbers up, who knew? And because of those binges, I assumed that my prose goals would be forever beyond my reach, but no! I've read 19 prose books out of my intended 20, which means that I am on track! Hurraaaaaaaaaaaay! Non-fiction I'm not doing as well on, with only 4 out my 91 books being non-fiction. Still on the whole, I'm genuinely surprised and quite pleased with how I'm doing on my reading goal!


2. Get my Netgalley ratio to 50% — Let's... Let's just not talk about this one. You know how I said that getting my ratio to 50% would be doable as long as I didn't request anymore books?
   
   ... Yeah. So about that.
   
   My ratio has actually dropped since the start of the year, from 24% to 19%. Because it turns out that I've got penalties to my will save and am bad at remembering the stack of books I already have when faced with new books. This isn't new information, and yet somehow I'm surprised.


3. #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks: Read 40 books that I owned before January 2020 — This was another goal that I thought I'd failed, but no: I actually finished reading 40 books that I acquired before 2020! This is another one that owes its success to manga and I'm not even disappointed, because I was sure that I was gonna give up on reading older stuff when lockdown meant that I couldn't donate them anymore! Mwahahahaha!


4. #UnofficialQueerAFBookClub: Read 20 queer narratives — ... I read 27. What. How. What?! I'm very happy with this turn of events, but how?!

I'm going to be honest with you: I wasn't expecting any of these to be finished, and somehow I've managed to hit most of them! This never happens! I don't know what to do now! Should I set new goals? Should I just relax and enjoy the anarchy? Do I go by how my reading life has been during lockdown, and assume that taking one month to read one (1) volume of manga is the best I can hope for, so I don't need to worry about the rest of the year? I started writing this post with the assumption that I'd need to halve most of my target numbers because I'd set them too high, and now all of the jokes I'd planned don't work!

Okay, okay, it's fine. I can do this. I am generally more motivated to read when I have goals, so I guess it's time to crack out some stretch goals!

1. Read 80 100 books, 20 of which are prose, and 12 8 of which are non-fiction — I'm doing the full range of raise, keep, and drop here. I'm giving myself a stretch goal to read 9 more books by the end of the year, I'm sticking with the prose goal because I'm so close to the end, and I'm cutting my non-fiction goal by a third because I don't trust myself to actually brain at any point between now and 2021.


2. Get my Netgalley ratio to 50% — Okay, the goal for this year has gone from improving my stats to getting them to a consistent point, anything above that is gravy. orz


3. #UnofficialQueerAFBookClub: Read 20 30 queer narratives — I don't think having a third of the books I plan to read be queer is unreasonable! I'm pretty sure that I can do this!

So that's where I'm at with reading during the apocalypse! How is everyone else doing? Respect to everyone who is trying to keep up with their reading goals, and to everyone who's just declared 2020 the year of goal anarchy, you're all doing good work.