Reading Goals!

[CBRetriever]

wow, my 90+ books add up to a whopping 39,317 pages

[Jordan]

I've been trying to read more diversely and have been keeping a spreadsheet to help me track it. Looks like of the 99 books I've read so far this year:
34% male authors and 65% female authors.
41% of my books had PoC authors or artists.
49% of my books have had PoC main characters.
10% have had queer authors.
25% have had queer main characters.
12% have been own voices

I've also been trying to read more of my already owned books, which I've been failing at:
15% were books I own
82% were library books

In terms of formats:
43% were print
35% were digital
21% were audio

47% were prose
38% were comics
14% were poetry

36% were published this year

[Silvana]

CBRetriever wrote: "wow, my 90+ books add up to a whopping 39,317 pages"

You're...insane....ly fast at reading.

[CBRetriever]

Silvana wrote: "CBRetriever wrote: "wow, my 90+ books add up to a whopping 39,317 pages"

You're...insane....ly fast at reading."

unfortunately true. it was difficult to find enough to read when confined to a small library and no bookstores when I was young. I'm a self taught speed reader which is good if the book is slow and boring, but impractical when trying to find something to read. Also probably why I re-read a lot

[Trike]

Silvana wrote: "I am doing some diversity challenges and currently in 12/16 categories. Still looking for a book for the 'Ginger main character' category. "

There’s always Red Sonja. The Ring of Ikribu and etc. If you want to stretch “ginger” to include talking animals, there are probably plenty, such as Fantastic Mr. Fox. There must be a red-haired talking animal in the Redwall series.

[Ariana]

Ok! I finally have my tallies. So far in 2018 I've read:

57 works
- 24 novels
- 7 graphic novels
- 1 short story collection
- 17 novellas
- 8 short stories/novelettes

37 written by women, 19 by men, 1 by a non-binary individual. 9 by POC, definitely looking to expand that in the second half of the year.

I have never really read short fiction before, and started reading a few titles from the Hugo & Nebula award nominees and was swept away. I love the novella series as a format... Not so long (and potentially ponderous) as a novel series, so more instant gratification, but recurring so you get to spend more time with characters/settings you get attached to. In particular, I loved
- MURDERBOT, Martha Wells
- Binti series, Nnedi Okorafor
- Penric & Desdemona, Lois McMaster Bujold
- Wayward Children series, Seanan McGuire

After All Systems Red and Artificial Condition, my favorite thing I have read this year was the Locke & Key series, starting with Locke & Key, Vol. 1: Welcome to Lovecraft. SOOOOO excellent, and I wouldn't have discovered it without this group.

I've enjoyed novels this year too, but none that have really jumped out at me as I-have-tell-everyone-about-this-book (I may be a Murderbot evangelist. Is that wrong??). Really looking forward to Revenant Gun, which I'm saving for vacation (and haven't decided yet about re-reading the first two or not), and also Record of a Spaceborn Few in the next few months, hopefully they'll represent the 'novel' category well.

[Trike]

Now you lot have me curious about my book breakdown. Let’s see...

Total = 59
...by women writers = 13
...by men writers = 46

Real Books = 18

Fiction = 17
...by women = 9
...by men = 7
...by both = 1 (short stories)
...SF = 9
...Fantasy = 8

Non-Fiction = 1 (w)

Graphic Novels = 38

...by women = 2
...by men = 36
...SF = 12
...Fantasy = 25
...Fiction = 2

Art books = 1 (m)

Screenplays = 1 (m)

Humor = 1 (w)

[Silvana]

Trike wrote: "Silvana wrote: "I am doing some diversity challenges and currently in 12/16 categories. Still looking for a book for the 'Ginger main character' category. "

There’s always Red Sonja. [book:The Rin..."

Ginger animal, I like that idea....

[Aleksandra]

Ariana wrote: "I have never really read short fiction before, and started reading a few titles from the Hugo & Nebula award nominees and was swept away..."

Me too! I've started reading short stories the same way and it's fascinating how they can be good :)

[Soo]

Becky wrote: "Soo wrote: "I am currently on my ERT18 (Epic Road Trip 2018 - Cross Country in USA) and not posting much anywhere because I'm usually busy either driving, hiking (somewhere I probably shouldn't in ..."

I have Audible and I use it as my paid lending library. I think they have me on a special list because all of my audiobooks and credit returns usually take a 1-6 hours. Bwahaha

I have several audibooks that are free, bought a handful on the sales and I'm keeping a few that I really enjoyed. The rest I return because there aren't that many audiobooks I want to re-listen to. I'd rather read the print. That is still my fav format.

I got into testing out the audio speeds on Overdrive. Only discovered a few weeks ago that I was pushing the wrong function to speed up audio in Audible app. Doh! My brain kept saying the speed back and forward buttons should speed up/down the reading speed. Nope! Now that I know, I'm managed to finish Rook by speeding the narration up to 1.6-8x. The narrator is rather bad. lol I can tolerate her better at higher speeds.

[Tomas]

I gave myself the same goal as last year: 25 books. Finished 18th now so quite ahead and I think realistically I might get to 40-ish.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Soo that's funny that they're slowing you down! Really neat breakdowns, Trike and Ariana!! And nice, Tomas! I love being ahead of the game :)

[Pixiegirl105]

I think I might have given myself too much to get to this year. 300 books is my goal and I'm only at 70 books/23,678 pages. To be honest, i'm going to pad my goal with a few really small books. Lol!!!! I figure I'll make it to at least 200...

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Pixiegirl105 wrote: "I think I might have given myself too much to get to this year. 300 books is my goal and I'm only at 70 books/23,678 pages. To be honest, i'm going to pad my goal with a few really small books. Lol..."

Wow, even if I read small books, I think half that would be a stretch for me! Like, one of those stretches in physical therapy that feels like you're going to tear all your muscles again.

But you're doing good work, you can do it!!!

[Pixiegirl105]

Allison wrote: "Pixiegirl105 wrote: "I think I might have given myself too much to get to this year. 300 books is my goal and I'm only at 70 books/23,678 pages. To be honest, i'm going to pad my goal with a few re..."

Thanks!! I've been hitting around 125 a year and I used to read about 500. Critical reading for college REALLY messed up my speed reading. So I'm working on getting that back up again. This would also be easier if I didn't only give myself the caveat of new books only. (Outside of Dr. Seuss as they have an awesome contest going on at their site for adults. I read those out loud to make them count in my mind to my cat and dog.)

[Trike]

Pixiegirl105 wrote: "I think I might have given myself too much to get to this year. 300 books is my goal and I'm only at 70 books/23,678 pages. To be honest, i'm going to pad my goal with a few really small books. Lol..."

You are a robot and I demand my five pounds.

[Pixiegirl105]

Lol...I'm a robot? Awesome! I've asked people about whether I was or not but they keep lying and saying I'm human. and oooo what's the 5 pounds for? I'm guessing British pounds and not just a random 5 pounds of rocks. ;)

[Trike]

Pixiegirl105 wrote: "Lol...I'm a robot? Awesome! I've asked people about whether I was or not but they keep lying and saying I'm human. and oooo what's the 5 pounds for? I'm guessing British pounds and not just a rando..."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobby...

[Pixiegirl105]

Trike wrote: "Pixiegirl105 wrote: "Lol...I'm a robot? Awesome! I've asked people about whether I was or not but they keep lying and saying I'm human. and oooo what's the 5 pounds for? I'm guessing British pounds..."

Lol!!! Love that! But I don't have your 5 pounds. ;)

[Anna]

This was originally called "2018 Reading Goals" but I took the year out of the title so I could babble a little bit. Also we're a few days away from mid-year, so it's a good time to take a look at any goals you might have and see if something needs to be done to reach them, or if you want to tweak those goals.

I posted here in January:

"I don't really have goals for how I want this to look at the end of 2021, but I'd ideally like to keep US authors to under 50%, and translated books to at least 10%."

Right now my spreadsheet says I'm at:

50% US+UK authors
50% other

Some of my author stats may not be 100% correct, because sometimes I put in the country the author was born in, and sometimes their heritage, and I haven't gone through authors I've added in past years to make it consistent. For example Nnedi Okorafor is Nigerian in my spreadsheet, despite having been born in the US. These stats are for me, not for any official purpose :)

82% English
5% Finnish
13% other original language

So, since I wanted to read less than 50% US authors and I'm now at 35% US authors, and translated is above 10%, I'm super happy! ^_^ I haven't been trying very hard to get to these numbers, so as long as I don't forget that I have this goal, I should be able to keep it up if I make sure to prioritize it.

How is everyone else doing with goals this year?

[Gary]

At the beginning of the year, I planned to read 26 books. I’m at 17 books now, which puts me 5 books ahead of schedule. I added four books to my original plan, and I project to read 30 books for 2021 now.
By category, the 17 books are 7 SF, 4 Fantasy, 3 History, 1 Classic, 1 Mystery, and 1 Writing.

[Nicky]

Apart from the GR reading challenge, I don't have any goals. My mood changes too fast and my preferences shift over time, so fixating on any goals would just bring me disappointment and failure (and I have enough of that in my studies, lol). I did pick up my reading pace recently; I was in a reading slump in the beginning of this year, but I manage to read at least one book per 2 weeks, which is my general aim pace-wise.

Sometimes I see people read 50 or 70 books a year, that's not even possible for me, I read too slowly for that. x)

Some numbers:

My average rating for this year is 2.4 so far. Oops. I may be a harsh critic.
My average book length is 210 pages.
I have read 10 books so far, 7 of which were in May and June.
The book I read that was rated highest on GR was Clockwork Boys, which I rated with a baffling 1*.

My goal for the rest of this year is to find enjoyable books. I've read too many books I couldn't enjoy so far.

[Beth]

I kept my goals modest this year, for a couple of reasons.

First of all, when it comes to any sort of reading bingo, or challenge where I have to fill in a list of books, etc., it's thrilling to plan them, but much like New Year's resolutions, I lose steam a few weeks into the year and feel guilty and demoralized. So none of those this year.

Second, 2020 was a crap year for reading. I read about 60% as many books in 2020 as I did in 2019, and I'm not a fast reader to begin with.

So the main "goal" this year was to have fun with reading and not overburden my conscience with ambitious-and-unlikely projects.

*

GR annual goal: 20. Completed!

SFFBC "Read all a small fraction of the books": 3 out of 7.

Personal goal: finish 7 manga series: Completed!

As far as author demographics... well, I wasn't paying much attention to that, and it shows. That's certainly something I can be less lackadaisical about, and still have fun reading!

White men, or male authors of translated light novels): 10
White women: 5
Men of color: 1
Women of color: 4
LGBT+: 2

[Sarah]

I’m in the same boat as many of you. Read about half of what I read in years past in 2020 and 2021 isn’t shaping up to be much better.

My only real goal is to finally finish one darn PopSugar reading challenge. I’m currently about halfway through (27/50). I can feel myself starting to derail a bit but hope to get back on track once vacation is over.

I’ve read more women than men, 62%! Which is cool (and possibly a first for me), but I need to do better at seeking our BIPOC authors in the second half of 2021.

[CBRetriever]

I'm actually reading more as we had several periods where we had to self-isolate due to surgeries/procedures and Mr CBR didn't feel comfortable venturing out into the world