Discussion: Reading Goals

Hey all, Dani here.

In the early stages of the year, it is probably a good time to look over reading goals and try to find ways to get to older reads, or to try books outside of the standard comfort zone. So I guess now is a pretty good time for me to take a good look at my bookshelves and see what books I need to aim to read in 2020.

Okay, let’s just go ahead and get started.

First up I looked at my tall hardcover books, and I found a couple newer releases and then a few older releases, all books that I’ve been wanting to read, but just haven’t gotten around to, so I’d like to give them a try. A couple of them seem to be a little genre-bending, which is pretty cool, and then a couple are sub-genres within fantasy that I don’t pick up frequently, so I’d like to expand my fantasy horizons a bit.

I’ve actually already picked a couple of these to be on my potential TBR for February. If I’m lucky then I’ll read everything I hope to, but I also know that sometimes that doesn’t happen. These are all books I picked up because I really wanted to read them, and then I just abandoned them to sit on my shelves, and I feel bad about that. Honestly I think it can get a little intimidating if you want to read a book but keep putting it off. It’s sort of like a guilt trip pretty much every time I look over at my books-which is a lot of the time considering that my shelves are in my bedroom.

Next up is my shorter hardcovers section of my personal library, and wow, there were quite a few books within those shelves that I want to read. Contemporary, Historical, Short Story Collections, and a couple Fantasy reads are in this section. The contemporaries are filled with hot-button relevant issues within the modern world. The historical…well, I’ve been meaning to pick up a Ruta Sepetys novel for a while, and this was the first one I added to my collection, so it seems like a good enough place to start. And I’ve been wanting to read more Cinda Williams Chima for a while, so I figured since I’ve already tried her Seven Realms novels, it’s about time to try this other beloved series by her.

So, there’s a lot of books here that I’m excited to read, but I’ve just been putting them aside for other books time and time again. I really need to get better at that. My book attentions are sometimes fleeting, and I get distracted by other shiny books all the time. It’s a problem. Actually I think it’s a problem a lot of us in the online book community have to deal with. We put off books that we sometimes want to read because we feel like we need to read some of the newer and upcoming releases so we can keep up with the times and stay relevant.

I’d like to work at being better at balancing newer releases with older ones on my TBRs. That’s definitely something I can work on doing better in 2020.

Then there’s my paperback shelves. Wow, I have a few different historical options in this collection of books. Plus a sci-fi novel that I’ve been wanting to pick up for a few years now, as well as a couple nice big fantasy reads, because hey, why not go for the the somewhat intimidating 700-1000 page tomes?

Obviously I’ve been wanting to try and read more historical novels because the idea of them fascinates me, but I tend to default to wanting actual magic in stories. And the reason why I want to read more books in the Outlander series is because I’m not letting myself watch each season of the show until I’ve completed the respective book. So, right now I’m trying to finish reading the second book in the series, so I’ve only been allowed to watch the first season, despite really enjoying it, and owning all of it on DVD. Every time I see trailers for the upcoming season it makes me feel bad that I haven’t been able to get myself to keep going with the series; hopefully I can make some progress this year.

I definitely have some ambitious hopes for my reading this year, but I think that laying out my goals and intentions like this might just help me stick to those goals. And if I’m successful then it definitely expands my reading horizons a bit. Not that there’s anything wrong with reading primarily fantasy reads, but sometimes it’s nice to try some other genres as well.

Do you have any reading goals for 2020? Any books that have sat neglected on your shelves for too long that you’d like to pick up this year? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll be back soon with more bookish content.