I was kind of dreading writing this post because I feel like I have not done very well on my reading resolutions. But then I started looking back at past years and it seems like nearly every year I have failed to meet at least some of my resolutions. So I guess we are par for the course! And the important thing is to be checking in and thinking critically about what (if anything) we want to achieve with our reading and how we want to get there. And if the answer to that is that we just want to read for fun, that's a-okay with me!
So, let's look at last year's resolutions.
I set a GoodReads goal of reading 100 books and increased that to 250 books when I started tracking picture books this summer. I'm clocking in at over 300 books tracked on GoodReads this year, so I managed that one.
I didn't attempt Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge last year, but I did intend to make some book lists for it that I never got around to. I had a long blog hiatus while I was trying to figure out the scope of this space. I do love figuring out children's and teen options for the categories, so maybe that could be something I'll try this year?
I set a goal that at least 40% of the books I read would be by authors of color. As of this writing, I have logged 319 books and 97 of those were by authors of color, which is 30%. Adding picture books to the mix threw me off my game a bit this year!
I set a goal to nominate at least 15 books by authors of color for LibraryReads. Although this is something that remains important to me, I did not manage to submit that many nominations for LibraryReads. In fact, I hardly nominated any books at all for LibraryReads this year!
I wanted to focus on romance this year and I didn't set a numeric goal, but I read 13 adult romance novels this year. I really enjoyed my foray into the romance genre and discovered a particular love for contemporary rom-coms.
Let's look ahead to 2020!
Reading diversely and inclusively is very important to me, so again I want at least 40% of the books I read to be by own-voices diverse authors. This includes authors of color, LGBTQ authors, and authors with disabilities. I know I need to be better about picking up own-voices picture books, so I can definitely work on that this year. And I need to be better about tracking it and being intentional, particularly with picture books.
Since I am doing some work for NoveList, it's become really handy to document the picture books I read on GoodReads, so I'm going to continue tracking those and aim for 500 books read and tracked this year.
I loved focusing on romance this year! I had thought about different genres that I could attempt this year to round out my reading, but to tell the truth I'm hopeful that I'll be getting another collection development staff member in my department this year and planning to delegate adult selecting if/when that happens. Since I'll be concentrating on youth materials, I'm just going to say that I'll continue my romance project for another year.
I have loved participating in the Early Word Galley Chat and the Middle Grade/YA Early Word Galley Chat each month and it's the most fun when I have some recommendations to contribute. So I'd like to try to have at least two pre-pub titles read each month to share at the chats. I know I'm better at this with youth books than with adult, so I'm giving myself flexibility by saying two each month rather than one for each chat. :)
And I think that's really it. I'm looking forward to another great year of reading!
And how about you? What are your goals to read better this year?