2019 Reading Goals

A new year has officially begun, and with a new year comes a new set of challenges to shape my reading in 2019!  Creating goals to accompany my reading from year to year is a balancing act.  If I don’t set enough, I never push myself to try new things and expand my reading horizons, but if I set too many, I get worn down by how little choice I have in the books I want to try.  After careful consideration, however, I think I have a group of goals that I am excited about!

Read at least 24 books.

I recently wrote about my feelings towards the Goodreads challenge, so I’m not going to talk too long about this goal.  Basically, I’m setting how many books I wish to read in 2019 to the bare minimum amount that I would expect myself to read in a given year.  Setting an arbitrary number of books to read isn’t something that motivates me.  Keeping the number low so it isn’t in my way allows me to focus on enjoying what I read!

Read twelve adult books

I tend to gravitate towards the young adult genre when I choose books, but I really want to branch out beyond this.  There is so much fantastic adult literature out there that I would love to experience, so I’m going to make it a point to read, on average, at least one adult title every month.

Read at least six big books

Last year, I only read one book over 500 pages because, if I’m being honest, large books scare me.  The time commitment necessary to read longer titles has always stressed me out.  I can’t fundamentally change my view of tomes overnight, so I am going to start off by just working on one hefty read every other month.  If I can manage this, then I can work on reading more every year until I conquer my big book fears!

Participate in one readathon each month

When I was originally coming up with goals, I was considering doing a large year-long challenge like Read Harder, but I ultimately decided that I would rather participate in readathons each month and fully commit to doing the host’s challenges.  Both methods allow me to expand my reading tastes and try new things, but I like the idea of having control over picking and choosing which specific readathons I want to try based on how much the challenges appeal to me.

Dive into some long-term projects

This goal is purposefully being left vague because I have a few follow-up posts to write with more details.  Basically, I have some ideas for really fun reading projects that I want to work on that come in two forms.  The first project I announce will be a part of my reading plans for the next three to six months, depending on how quickly I accomplish what I set out to do.  The second project is a book “bucket list” of sorts, where I share a list of lifetime reading goals that I wish to accomplish, and start picking out books to chip away at these over a period of years.  Expect more details about my first smaller project soon!

That’s it for my 2019 goals!  I’m trying to keep things fairly simple and flexible so I can still have relative freedom to read the things I want to read.  I’ll be checking in on my monthly wrap-ups to see how I’m doing from month-to-month.

What are your 2019 reading goals?  Let me know in the comments below!