the ask@AAR: What’s your reading goal(s) for 2022?
Happy New Year!
Given that I’ve never been able to keep a New Year’s resolution going for a whole year, I’ve given them up. Instead, I’ve become goal oriented. It’s a lot easier.
In 2022, my biggest goal is to care less about politics–believe me, in my case that’s a good thing–and to do more to create community in my neighborhood. My reading goal is to read every novel each AAR staff member picks as her best book of 2021. I always love this list. (And this one too–it’s all the books we chose as Best of 2021 picks!)
The books on last year’s list, which you can find here, didn’t all work for me, but I enjoyed checking them out. I’m excited to see what each of us chooses this year.
How about you? What are your reading goals for 2022?
I really enjoyed reading through everyone’s reading goals, and you have inspired me to make some of them my own. From Anne Marble, I got the idea of tracking my reading. I just entered my first completion on Goodreads— Miss Benson’s Beetle. Read it for book club, it’s women’s fiction, and I hated the ending. But it’s entered! I created a 2021 shelf and put it on there. But it sounds like people create multiple shelves, and I don’t understand how that works.
DiscoDollyDeb shared her goal of going through her Kindle and deleting the old stuff, and I’m going to steal that one, too. My library gives me these loan ended notices which I have to manually delete— so annoying. And the books I checked out and never read and my DNF’s continue to show as well. I need to get rid of all that stuff. Do people log their DNF’s on Goodreads? Do you make a DNF shelf?
Anyway, thanks for the organizational ideas and inspiration. Keep them coming!
HI! Welcome to Goodreads! Over the years I have added shelves as I realized I would like to track certain things, like tropes, character types, genres, historical time period, etc. I also track where I sourced the book -kindle, KU, hoopla (which for me means audiobooks from the library), library, Chirp audio, own, etc. There’s an “add shelf”button on the left hand side of your My Books page,or you can add shelves on the fly from the drop down menu under each book (where you choose Want to Read, Read, etc.). Any given book I read might have 8 to 10 shelves listed. My memory isn’t super,so when someone asks for good “road trip” romance recommendations,for example, my shelves come in very handy.
I do track my DNF’s, but I don’t grade them. I usually write something in the review section so I remember my reasons.
Thank you, Carrie. That’s very helpful. I will give those things a try.
And just FYI, on the left hand side of the My Books page is the bookshelf. At the very top it has an “edit” button. If you click on that you can edit how you want your shelves displayed. There is a handy guide to what all the choices mean on the right of that page. One choice is to make a shelf “exclusive” which means a book can only be on one of the exclusive shelves at a time. You start with three Exclusive shelves: Want To Read, Read, and Currently Reading. I also designate my DNF shelf as exclusive, because I don’t want those books in with my “read” books. You can also add new shelves from this page.
My lifelong addiction has been reading: reading, always reading. My mother used to say I popped out of the womb with a book in my hand. Her fault, really, as she was probably reading while giving birth! I am hopeless at controlling my acquisition of books. When I discovered Amazon in 1999, then it was clear that my addiction would have no cure. I buy what appeals as I read book reviews here and all over the place and the TBR pile now could provide a path to the Moon. So, my aim in 2022 is to clear up that TBR pile by controlling my urges to buy everything that interests me. Get a grip on myself and stop clicking here and there and loading up the kindle which, if it were bookshelves would require at least two rooms of floor to ceiling shelves. I am lucky that I do have a room in the house for my “can’t bear to let them go” books but a couple of years ago I did get rid of over half of them. It grieved me but I need to summon up that particular strength to do it again, metaphorically, and deal with what’s on hand.
I too have thousands of books on my Kindle and yet… today I bought another because it is on sale. I hold out hope that some day I’ll read them all!
I’ve probably shared this quote before, but it’s one of my favorites. It’s attributed to Schopenhauer, but I’m not sure if he actually said it: “We buy books in the hopes we will live long enough to read them.” Yes indeed.
I comfort myself that when I die my children won’t have to clear out thousands of physical books from my house. We’ve been decreasing our book collection and bookshelves over the past 10 years. Having Kindles means books rarely come in to replace the ones we’ve donated. Progress.
My wonderful mom-in-law just passed last week and she was a voracious reader as well as a writer. She lived in her large house for almost 60 years and I guarantee you she never got rid of one book. It will be bittersweet to go through her books and to figure out how to rehome them, but it’ll also be a huge undertaking and rather daunting.
My condolences, Carrie. Yes, it will be bittersweet and sometimes overwhelming and endless but it’s also a way to really understand someone through their books because an old sofa or food mixer tells you nothing about what was in a person’s psyche, heart or soul but their books do. So when you begin the process you may find surprises and lots of lovely memories.
My goal is to manage my time better so I can fit in more reading. My problem is that once I start reading something good I have a really hard time stopping, no matter what important tasks I’m neglecting (housework, eating, sleeping, etc). So when I take a few moments to rest during the day I end up reading news online instead of a book because I don’t want to risk reading the day away. And then at night when all the domestic chores and tedious life admin are done with, I don’t have enough time left to start reading because it’s too close to bedtime. So I start browsing online instead and end up going to bed way too late anyway, thereby wasting time I could have spent reading! Ironically some of that time is usually spent reading review sites like this and exploring Amazon and finding books I wonder if I’ll ever get time to read! Things have to improve this year; I’ve amassed a huge collection of books I’m really looking forward to and I just want to read them, dammit!
I have this exact same problem. On work days I have been trying to read half a book one night and the other half the next night but it’s challenging as once I start, I don’t want to stop until the end. I wind up getting to 50-60% one night, staying up too late, then read 10 more minutes at breakfast. I might get another 10 minutes at lunch then there is work and chores so I finish the book at some point after dinner. But I guess it is better than just delaying the books until the weekend!
For decades, my practice was to not start a new-to-me read if I wouldn’t have time to finish it by bedtime. I did this because I found out long ago that if I broke off reading to go to bed I would usually take a long time to get to sleep because my mind was too busy thinking about the story. This has eased up somewhat in recent years, but I still try not to start new reads that look too long for the hours available, which leaves more longer books in the tbr queue.
My “number of books to read” goal will probably stay the same even though I surpassed it this year. I keep thinking I will have less time for reading/listening as our world eases back into some kind of new normal. (Will that happen? And will it actually affect my life if it does? I haven’t a clue.)
As for my other goals, I really want to step outside my comfort zone a little. My reading has been made up mostly of low angst stories and I’ve needed that. But now I feel a little bored. What I would love is to find more books with an emotional punch without being super angsty or full of horrible families. I also want to look at more non-romance books, or books with romantic elements but have a different central focus. I felt like Madison Square Murders by C.S.Poe fits this, and would love more books with that kind of balance. I also enjoyed the Stariel series by A.J. Lancaster, which had a romantic thread, but was focused on the fantasy plot which was really well done.
I still own a fair number of hardback/paperback books I haven’t read and my goal is to get at least twelve of those (one a month) out of my life. I had initially planned on thirty but with reviewing, etc. figured I better make the number something doable.
My reading challenge on goodreads is to do the same as this year – 125 books.
You could always join me and Lynn for the TBR Challenge to do one a month! ;)
Most of them aren’t romances but older mysteries. But that does sound fun!
I used to do this years ago,and I may try to jump in this year. I lookedat the categories this year, and while I find a lot of them rather nebulous, I figure that’s all the better for finding books on my overstuffed Kindle.
I think the categories have deliberately been made more vague to allow for a bit more scope – and there is absolutely no need to follow them religiously. I do try to find a book to suit and I think I’ve only failed in that once in the five (or six?) years I’ve been doing it, nut some are definitely easier to fit than others. If you do join in, please do come and share your thoughts on your book each month on our post.
Is your reading challenge for all new books?
No, it’s the opposite. It’s supposed to be books you already own but haven’t read yet. I make a point of choosing books that are from the previous year at the newest, so for 2021 all the books I chose were published in 2020 or before. And some of the prompts encourage you to read much older books – there’s been an “old school” prompt in the past, for example. It’s pretty flexible, so if, one month, you can’t find a book that fits a prompt, you can just choose anything from your TBR.
I meant Maggie’s personal challenge! The 125 books.
Oh sorry – I was reading on my phone and the threads aren’t clearly separated!
The 125 can be anything – I even include re-reads :-) (one or two that I am rereading after years of not having read them). But for the 12 they will be new to me but things I bought awhile ago. I finished my first this morning – Daisy Jones & the Six. I have had it for a couple of years. Now I can donate it and have it off my shelf. Some of them have been on those shelves (or in boxes under my bed) for a long, long time.
I really enjoyed that book!
In 2022, I would like to keep better track of my reading.
P.S. February just replied with, “Hah hah hah hah hah.”
My New Year’s resolution about five years ago was to list what I read on goodreads, not necessarily review it but just give a star rating and date read. I’m so glad I did that. Have been ale to keep it up and it has been great for keeping track of what I read, want to read etc.
I rely on that big time. I also make lists of my bests from each year so I can look back and see what I loved.
Goodreads isn’t perfect but I’ve been using it for 20 years to keep track of what I’ve read. Over the years I’ve added more shelves to more finely tune the information. I’ve always had a Read-YEAR (re:Read-2021) and once I pull up that shelf I can sort the books by my rating, so I can easily find my favorites from each year.One thing I wish is that I’d put in a “part of series” shelf.I’m adding it this year, but it would be a great help in keeping track of where I am in series.
I do the Read-Year, too. Just started my 2022 shelf.
And if you are looking for a similar online tool for this that is NOT owned by Amazon check out LibraryThing.
Eh, I don’t have a problem with Amazon thnigs personally – Goodreads has its issues (no half stars etc.) but it works fine or what I want it for.
Same, plus the fact that even the thought of moving what is now 21 years of reading data to a different site makes me breakout in hives!
In 2022, I would like to go through the backlog of unread books on my Kindle and make a decision to either read or delete each one. While I almost always read every book for which I’ve paid full price, over the years I’ve downloaded a multitude of free and 99-cent books that I’ve just never gotten around to reading. I feel as if those books, all lined up on a virtual shelf at “0% Read,” are reproaching me: “Why did you download us if you never intended to read us?”
/Yes, I anthropomorphize my books. It’s a sad condition.
One evening while listening to an audiobook (for the second time, so I didn’t need to concentrate on it), I went into our kindle contents and started at the oldest books. I deleted quite a few and added almost of the rest to at least one category. I only got about a 5th of the way through our contents. It’s a joint account with my husband (who is a voracious reader) and we’ve had it for well over a decade, so there are thousands of books. What was interesting was seeing how my own reading interests have changed over the past 15 years.
Yes indeed. I’m assuming a lot of those freebie CEO/Billionaire/BDSM romances I downloaded back when I was reading a lot of that ilk will definitely be for the “Delete” pile. On the other hand, I might encounter a few hidden gems in my stroll through my ebook past.
Tidying up my Kindle – along with tidying up my emails/photos/documents on the computer are things I always mean to do but never get around to because there just isn’t enough time!
I always tell myself not to request so many ARCs and read some of the books I already own. Um. Yeah, that never works! But it’s for AAR’s benefit, so I don’t feel too bad about it :)