As hard as it is to believe, 2020 is nearly two-thirds over. I have both been wanting to check in with my reading and blogging goals and putting off doing so, mostly because I didn't want to think about how the pandemic has rained on my reading parade. As it turns out, though, on the whole, being home much of the spring and summer has actually been a good thing for my reading life. So today I'll bring you up to date on how my reading goals for the year are progressing, and I'll do a separate post next week to check in on my challenges.
My first goal for the year was to read 365 books for the Goodreads challenge. I meant for this to be a low number so that I might consider taking it a little bit easy, but then we went on lockdown and I read like a maniac to keep myself from constantly checking the news and fretting over when, if ever, my new babies would see the outside world. So, while I should only be around the 220 mark right now, my current total is 237. I'm not going to increase the goal, but it is extremely likely that I will surpass it. (I'm seriously considering setting myself a goal in 2021 that I am not allowed to exceed. I do sometimes think less reading is more.)
My next goal was to post something on Goodreads for every book read. I started out strong with this, then abandoned it during the twins' newborn phase and now I'm trying to play catch-up. I do actually want my Goodreads to be fairly complete for this year, so I'm going to keep at it.
Goal number three was to take one day off from reading per week. I mostly did this in the very early part of the year, but once we were ordered to stay at home, I gave it up. I'm reading something every day and until life starts to look normal again (if it ever does), I'm not going to worry about it.
The next goal, read one book per format at a time, went out the window pretty much right away. I'm just too much of a mood reader to be able to adhere to this kind of restriction. My thinking was that this goal would remind me to actually use the Kindle Fire I bought on Black Friday last year, but with the libraries closed, e-books have figured into my reading life even more heavily than normal and that hasn't been a problem.
Blog more is the goal that makes me laugh the hardest. I keep making this resolution every year, and every year I blog less. I don't think I actually want to blog more; I just want to blog differently. Having a specific set of prompts or an ongoing project would probably help this be more of a success.
I also planned to read 6 vintage middle grade novels from our shelves and I have done so already. I read: Francie on the Run by Hilda van Stockum, Up from Jericho Tel by E.L. Konigsburg, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor, Detectives in Togas by Henry Winterfeld, The Dream Time by Henry Treece, and Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat.
My last goal was to read 6 adult books that are at least 20 years old. (Not counting classics.) This has been the most fun to complete of all my goals and I might very well end up reading an additional six. The ones I've completed up to now are: The Inn at Lake Devine by Elinor Lipman, The Bird in the Tree by Elizabeth Goudge, A Share in Death by Deborah Crombie, Colony by Anne Rivers Siddons, Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver, and Outer Banks by Anne Rivers Siddons.
The other two things on my list were more like rules than goals, and I think the policies of having no monthly TBRs and participating in no open-ended read-a-thons have been good ones. I did make a TBR for a couple of challenges, and in neither case did I finish everything in the stack, so that solidifies the decision not to post them monthly. I have done a few read-a-thons with specific goals and that has been productive.
All in all, in terms of the amount of reading I've been doing, this year hasn't been a waste at all. My reading challenges, on the other hand, may be another story. Check back next week to see how those are going.
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