I realize this post is really late, since normally people would do these goal check-in posts during June or July, and we’re almost done with August. Better late than never, right?
Some of you may know that I’ve been going through a lot in my personal life these past few weeks. Because of all that, I’ve kind of lost sight of what my intentions were at the beginning of the year, and I can feel myself falling into a slump. So I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to reevaluate how things are going and find that focus again. I don’t know how interesting this post will be for you all, but it’s something I really need right now, so hopefully you can bear with me.
Anyway, I’m just going to be going back through the reading goals I laid out in this post from back in January and talking about how they’ve been going/what changes I’ve made to them since the beginning of the year. Warning: This post is very long and rambling.
Read at least 50 books
This is still my goal for the year, and thanks to all the intense readathon-ing I’ve been doing this summer, I’m almost on track. When I got back from Europe at the beginning of the summer, Goodreads said I was 9 books behind, and now I’ve read 29 books so far this year and I’m only 2 books behind. So yay, progress.
Though honestly, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to catch up because school starts next week and when that happens, my workload and schedule is going to become a lot more intense than it is now. Still, I’m proud of the progress I’ve made this summer.
Read more books by non-American authors
When I made this goal, I thought it was a good one—and it would be, if it wasn’t for the fact that I worded it so poorly. After I wrote that post, I adjusted the goal to be “Read at least 5 books by non-American authors,” but honestly, even that wording is bad. The intention of this goal was that I wanted to read more diversely, but it’s too unspecific. Just because I’m reading books by someone who’s not American doesn’t necessarily mean I’m reading any more diversely than I normally would.
This is especially true considering that one of my other goals for the year was to finish the Harry Potter series, which was written by a straight white woman from the UK. At the time I made this goal, I still needed to read the last 5 books in this series, so technically, I could use the last 5 Harry Potter books to count for this challenge, and that would defeat the whole point of this goal.
So I guess I’m changing my goal to “read at least 5 books by diverse authors, preferably from outside the United States.” And by changing that goal, my total progress goes from having 3 completed books for the challenge to only one (because I read Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan earlier this year). We’ll see how this goes, with only four months left in this year.
Finish the Harry Potter series
I would say this goal is going fine. Like I said earlier, at the beginning of the year, I had 5 books left to read in this series, and since then, I have completed two more and started on the third (I’m on Order of the Phoenix. Not very far into it at all). I should be able to finish the last three before the year’s over. At least, I hope.
Blog once per week
My problem here is not that I haven’t been keeping up with this goal. As far as I know, I’ve put up at least one blog post every week since the beginning of the year. The issue is that I keep trying to make myself do more than that, and it doesn’t work out because I have so many other things going on in my life.
Book blogging is a hobby for me. I don’t get paid for it, and while I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to the idea, I have no real intention of getting paid for it anytime in the near future. When I started this blog, I just wanted to use it as a place to talk about my love of books with others, because I don’t have very many people to talk about this kind of thing in my real life. I want to get back to that base again.
And so, I’m going back to this goal. Recently, I’ve been trying to push myself and put out 2 or sometimes three posts per week, but that’s making this whole thing stressful and not fun. All I want to do is put up at least one post per week, and if I have time and I feel like it, I might do more. I love this blog, I love the bookish community, and I think this is the best way for me to keep from burning out and giving up on this thing entirely.
Put out a book review at least once every two months
I think it’s safe to say that I have failed at this challenge. I’ve only put up 3 book reviews this whole year, though one of them was last month, so at least I have that going for me. I don’t know what it is about me and book reviews, but I don’t like writing them, even for books I love. I don’t really like reading them, either, to be honest. I did a whole blog post about my struggles with doing dedicated book reviews over here, if you want to go check that out.
I still want to try to do book reviews more often, so even though I’ve already failed this challenge for this year, I do think I’m going to try to follow it for the rest of the year. So hopefully you’ll see a book review from me next month and then in November.
Read 4 Books from my Book Scratch-Off Poster
Funny story about this one. At the end of 2018, I bought this scratch-off poster that’s supposedly the 100 books everyone needs to read in their lifetime, and I thought working my way through it would be a fun way to make myself read outside my comfort zone (since a lot of the books on the poster were classics, which I don’t read very often, unless it’s for class).
It was a great idea in theory. The only problem is that I went on my study abroad trip for 4 months, and when I came back at the end of May, I couldn’t find the scratch-off poster.
I still haven’t found it, and I definitely don’t remember all of the books that were listed on it (though I do remember that Harry Potter was there, so I should at least get that done). Until I find it, or I cave and buy a new one, I won’t be able to complete this challenge.
Participate in at least 5 readathons and post about them on my blog
I’ve passed this challenge. I wouldn’t say I aced it because although I have participated in 5 readathons so far this year, and I did write at least one post about each of them for my blog, I didn’t do great at them. In fact, out of the 5 readathons I participated in, I only completed all the challenges for one of them (well, technically two, but since that one’s only challenge was to exclusively read books with “you” in the title, I’m not counting it). And during one of the readathons, I literally only read one book for the whole readathon. For that one, I never even bothered writing a wrap-up post.
(By the way, if you’re interested in seeing all the readathon-related posts I’ve ever made, I have a special page on my website just for that here.)
That’s all I had talked about in that post, and while I of course had set myself different goals for other parts of my life, this is a book blog, not a lifestyle blog, so I won’t bore you with the details on all that stuff.
Overall, though, I would say that while I’ve made a lot of progress on some of my goals, I’m a bit (or a lot, in some cases) behind on most of them. So hopefully I’ll be able to get back on track and finish strong during these last four months.
Anyway, thank you for reading this post! What were some of your reading goals this year? How are you doing on them?
I’ll see you all next time!
-Ariel