Features | I met my Goodreads goal - what's next?

Features | I met my Goodreads goal - what's next?

• Tuesday, 1 August 2017

This year, I decided to try a Goodreads challenge for the first time. I’d seen plenty about them on Twitter but always thought that I wouldn’t have time to balance a reading challenge and a degree. 2017, however, would be different, I promised myself.

I set myself the challenge of reading 26 books this year. Since I was in the midst of the final year of my degree, that sounded fair. I would need to average a book every two weeks, which seemed doable, even with deadlines and exams to wrangle. It would still be a challenge, but one I could hopefully meet.

It seems that I severely underestimated myself.

As of July 2017, I have read 48 books this year, according to my Goodreads account. That’s almost twice what I thought I would struggle to achieve in a year. Some of them are novellas or poetry or things I had to read for class but it still counts. I more than achieved my reading challenge for the year in just after six months.

So what next?

Of course I could just extend that goal. I could see if I could hit 60 or 70 books. Maybe even 100. But I think I’m just curious to see how many I would naturally read in a year, rather than pushing myself to hit a number just because. Clearly, my guesses about how much I read are wildly off.

Instead, I’ve set myself a few mini goals to focus on in the months ahead. I’m not sure if I’ll hit them all but I’m looking forward to having something to guide my reading with:

1. Stop buying books. Seriously, I need to ease up on this for a little while. For the sake of both my bookshelves AND my bank balance, I’m going to try to rein in my book buying for a couple of months.
2. Read books I already have. Linked to the first goal, I need to start reading some of the books I already own. I’ve just moved house and all my books are finally in one place again, which means that I can see just how many are sitting unread right now. I’m almost ashamed, if I wasn’t quite so excited to read them!
3. Re-read the Harry Potter series. It’s time.
4. Finish reading the Lord of the Rings series. I’ve only read book one, but I’m keen to finish this series as soon as I can.
5. Focus on non-fiction. I could barely manage to read non-fiction during my degree which means that there are quite a few sitting pretty on my shelves waiting for me to dive in.