Submitted by AutoModerator t3_zwf415 in books
Happy New Year everyone!
2023 is nearly here and that means New Year's resolutions. Are you creating a reading-related resolutions for 2022? Do you want to read a certain number of books this year? Or are you counting pages instead? Perhaps you're finally going to tackle the works of James Joyce? Whatever your reading plans are for 2023 we want to hear about them here!
Thank you and enjoy!
I started reading in October last year and I had read 6 books before New Years so I figured 20 books in 2022 seemed like a reasonable goal. It is now Dec 30 and I’m 40 pages away from finishing my first book of the year :/
That's ok. Sometimes life gets in the way; sometimes we set a goal too high and demotivate ourselves. But you've read a book this year. You can use that as a minimum goal for next year: to read more than 1 book. Anything more than 2 will be a bonus. Celebrate yourself for what you've done, don't beat yourself up for what you didn't. It will not encourage you.
That's my goal as well. This year I've only read 5 books. Hoping that I find and read some great books in 2023.
My only definite resolution for 2023 is to get through some of the unread book-hoard piled on my desk at home >_>
And the publishers don't help goals like this. They just keep on publishing MORE stuff. So rude.
The audacity …
This is pretty much mine, as well. The piles are getting out of hand. My goal is that I won't buy any new books until I have read the ones on my bookshelves. I will make exceptions for books I get through the library, from Kindle Unlimited, or through my free monthly Audible credit.
Mine isn’t very exciting but as a non reader. I genuinely don’t think I have finished a book since high school 20 years ago. I am aiming for 1 book a month. Just sci-fi books as that’s my interest. Wish me luck.
I highly recommend r/printsf for inspiration and help picking good ones.
I was the same way after high school. It wasn't until I was graduated from college with a full time job that I finally tried getting back into it.
It was slow going at first. I did short stories (HP Lovecraft mostly), but still barely read more than a few pages a night.
It wasn't until I picked up The Martian on a whim in 2021 that I just fell back in love with reading. I did 6 books that same year, up from 0 the previous 10 years. I'm 2022 I squeezed in 17.
My only resolution is just to keep reading and keep enjoying it. One a month is a great place to start, especially reading a little each night before bed. I hope you find that one book or series that just unlocks the passion in you again!
I think it's a fantastic goal. Good luck!
What are some of your favorites that you remember reading?
Highly recommend anything by Neal Stephenson, especially Anathem, which deserves to become a classic.
I’m still kind of figuring out what I want my challenge to be for the new year.
But one thing I absolutely have to get done: it’s time to get all the books out of the bookcase and sort, reorganize, and downsize the collection. My collection has outgrown the bookcase…again!
Goodreads app makes this process maybe slightly more laborsome but so much more fun!
Oh yeah, I have all the books catalogued in Goodreads! There’s no way I could remember every book I have, or keep track of what I want to read, otherwise.
My reading resolution is simple, I'm allowed to only buy half of what I read.. lol
If I want to buy a book, I have to read two.
2022 I bought 30 more books than I read and I already had a decent back log. I don't mind having a pile of unread books, but, I also don't want it to grow to the point where it is daunting. Every few years I go ahead and have a year where I can only buy 1 for every 2 I read. Usually they end up being big reading years. The last time I did this, I read the equivalent of 300 regular fiction books.
I don't think I'll read quite that much this time, but, I'd like to reduce how many unread books sit on my shelves waiting for me.
THIS is a GREAT idea -- I am going to try it too. I have allowed myself to buy way, way too many books and I need to read many more of the ones I already have. THANKS for the idea.
Thanks for this. I've been buying books as well and the they're overwhelming me and putting me in a reading slump.
Pshh, just use a library for the other half, easy /j
I do use the library a lot. But, I'm in a rural area and there is so much that just isn't available.
The equivalent of 300 regular fiction books? What were you reading that year?
Quite a bit of juvenile fiction and poetry books as well as short story collections. A lot of those are lighter on page count than a regular adult fiction book.
It was around 654 total books, but, probably around 300 regular books.
What an achievement!
Thank you.
I doubt I'll ever read quite that many books in one year again. Partly because the remaining unread books are chonkers.. lol
Oh well, it was neat to do once. I do hope I hit around 100 this year so I can buy 50 books. But, we'll see.
I have an ongoing reading challenge with a friend. To add to this, I'm also planning on reading at least one book a month on a topic of a historical event that happened during that month. For example, in January I plan to read about the Palomares incident that occurred on 17 January 1966. As with 2022, I've picked two books as an absolute must, these are Halldór Laxness' Independent People and Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
That is such an interesting twist on a reading challenge.
It's a flexible one too. I've picked a bunch of historical facts, ranging from famous births/deaths, book publications, political and scientific events that give me a good range to accommodate my fluctuating interests. So far, I've got months until July more or less covered.
If you're looking for July inspiration, how about finding something about the fall of the Bastille (July 14) which lead to the start of the French Revolution?
Ha, I've not considered that. I have an ongoing fascination with Thomas Paine, so the fall of Bastille/French Revolution seems like a natural progression, thank you.
My main goal is to read down the books I already own. There are over 200 physical books in my house, and at least another 100 on Kindle I need to get to.
My goal is always a number of books. I have been pretty consistent with 80 the past few years. I hit 86 this year without pushing myself, so that will be the goal again next year.
Some notable books I intend to tackle this year:
Anna Karenina
As I Lay Dying
The Underground Railroad
The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Stoner
Olive Kitteridge
In the Dream House
Tomorrow and Tomorow and Tomorrow (on hold at the library right now)
I love Olive Kitteridge.
I hope I do too
I made my 2023 list recently. Instead of picking a number of books, I budgeted a page count based on how many pages I felt comfortable reading per day (while assuming I’d miss a week per month thereabouts). So I picked 7,500 pages over a revised yearly date count of 280 days. Comes just shy of 27 pages a day. I can pick any number of books as long as I don’t exceed 7,500 pages.
This is what I landed on.
Nice variety. Some of those are really good too. I like the idea of a certain number of pages per day vs. a certain number of books. But if you miss a day, then will you read 54 pages the next day?
I built in 7 days a month to miss for if/when other things get in the way and I can’t read that day. That’s why I averaged my daily page count over 280 days instead of 365. I’m still going to try to read every day regardless.
I read In the Dream House for a class last year, and I LOVED it! Very creative and was a nice break from all the science journals I was reading for my thesis at the time. Would recommend sooner rather than later. It's a quick read!
My goals are to:
read at least 10 minutes a day
continue to focus on borrowing books from my local library rather than purchasing books
don’t worrying about DNFing books I’m not feeling ATM
Working on DNFing is such a good one. Slogging my way through books I’m not enjoying really slows me down and it’s almost always not worth it. For the books that are worth it, I just need to trust that I’ll pick them back up when the time is right!
My loose reading goal for next year is once again 35 books as it has been for the last two years. It's not as challenging that would require me to cheat by picking shorter books or easier reads and large enough to encourage me to concentrate on reading rather than scrolling social media in my free time. My other goal is to read Byron's works and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein". And lastly, read more women/nb authors as my reading list skews heavily male if I don't pay attention.
If you read fantasy or science fiction, Elizabeth Moon is an underrated very competent author. Especially her fantasy. She has historical scholarship and military chops.
I prefer to call it goals, not resolutions. I also give myself permission to change my goals when they no longer feel like a good fit for me. I review my goals monthly and quarterly.
I set the goal of reading 100 books for the year, but I expect to read more. I don't find this goal particularly helpful, I just set it because I have used GoodReads and this is the best way to see all the books I've read in any year. I've switched to StoryGraph, so this is less of a problem since it sorts easily by year and month read.
I have 2 main reading goals this year to read international authors and to tackle my owned and unread books.
1- I started a long-term project to read fiction and nonfiction books by authors from 195 countries. My goal this year is to read 52 books that count toward that project.
2- I have 14 books that moved with me 3 years ago that I haven't read, some of which I've started. This year I plan to start each of them and either finish them or decide they aren't for me and release them.
Another goal around reading is to find and try a few book clubs that meet in person. I've found 3 book clubs that are hosted by my local library and 1 on MeetUp. I plan to join each of them at least once this year and hope to find a few that I want to join every month.
Meeting a page or book count makes it seem like work, also could lead to rushing or not meeting targets which could stress some people out. It just seems like a bad system to me, unless you are reading non fiction for a specific purpose.
I'm just setting aside time to read. Going to try to go to bed an hour earlier and read until I'm sleepy.
GREAT goal! For most people. The problem for me is ... I love reading so much that I don't get sleepy and then stay up way, way, way too late...
Very similar for me. A simple time commitment every day with the possibility of reading more if I am inspired.
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Yeah definitely if it's something you cant put down then just keep going.
I am trying to finish a book every month. Not like an average of 1 per month, but actually finishing it every calendar month to try to be a little more consistent about reading.
My secondary goal is to read 50 books next year, which is kind of the high end of a reading pace I think I'll enjoy. 1 a week will be doable if I can keep consistent, even for larger books.
I know some people thing goals are stressful, but I don't think it's going to be stressful at all. For one thing, I easily read 26 books and counting this year without trying, and for another, if I don't meet it, there's no consequence. I can just say, oh well, I'll get it next year!
this year I read 20 books, next year i'm aiming for 30
One goal of mine is to use the library more often this year. Also I want to read some books from countries that I've never read books from before. I've got some planned from Cuba, Iran, Sri Lanka, and Syria.
My goal is to read Ficciónes in Spanish this year. Mostly this is an “improving my Spanish” goal rather than a “reading” goal but I figure it still counts.
Read 4 books this year. 2 non fiction and 2 fiction. I am more inclined towards non fiction. Planning to read at least one book a month in 2023 starting with "The Sapiens"(It's been on my wishlist since so many months). Do drop any suggestions for non-fiction which i should think of adding into my wishlist for 2023.
Here is my book group's NF choice for Jan 2023 -- I have already read it and enjoyed it a lot. All that you didn't know you wanted to know about fungi -- from the first life on earth through today and tomorrow (someone else suggested it, so I don't know where she copied this "blurb" from...)
​
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake
In Entangled Life, the brilliant young biologist Merlin Sheldrake shows us the world from a fungal point of view, providing an exhilarating change of perspective. Sheldrake’s vivid exploration takes us from yeast to psychedelics, to the fungi that range for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet, to those that link plants together in complex networks known as the
“Wood Wide Web,” to those that infiltrate and manipulate insect bodies with devastating precision.
Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life’s processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms—and our relationships with
them—are changing our understanding of how life works.
This year I want to read more "random" picks, by which I mean I want to find more books by browsing through used book stores or actually going to the library and perusing the shelves, rather than picking out what I want to read in advance and getting it from Libby/buying it new.
I've started to feel like my reading list is curated by Goodreads and has become kind of bland and predictable. I'm sure I will still read some of the "hyped" books, but I'd love to surprise myself more this year and find some hidden gems.
My goal for next year is the same as my goal for this year - read only books I already own. I did not succeed this year, but we've since inherited my grandfather-in-law's classics collection (with a focus on Henry James), which should be enough to keep me going in between all the contemporary genre lit on our shelves.
Read 100 books or more. Same as last year.
365 books, one a day, including 50 nonfiction. I find the nonfiction very valuable as I did that this year for the first time and learned so much about a wide variety of topics.
Damn, are you retired?
I wish I was!
My reading resolution is probably just the same as last year: read 100 books over the course of the year.
Reached 130 in 2022.
I always try to branch out more in the genres of books I read. I think I did a good job of that this year. This year might be the year to tackle some of the more challenging books I've had my eyes on for sometime. I think it may be the year I finally read House of Leaves and Infinite Jest.
My 2022 reads skewed heavily American, with some British and Russian authors thrown in (and I'm Canadian ffs), so I'm aiming for more geographic diversity in 2023. Interested in Rouge Street: Three Novellas by Shuang Xuetao and Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth by Wole Soyinka, for a start.
get back to the goal of at least one Pulitzer/year. This year I’m thinking either The Sympathizer or Middlesex.
one book a month.
be more willing to DNF a book.
and finally- don’t obsessively track book progress in GoodReads, I found it makes it much less enjoyable.
I was trying to read 12 books this year, and I managed 14 (trying to finish the 15th before Saturday). Will probably keep the same challenge for the next year.
I don't like to be too "precise" with this sort of challenge, because I think it could hinder me, instead of motivate, that's why I don't do page count challenges.
Still, since I'm doing it for myself, I also don't cheat by reading small books just for the volume, I just read what I feel like... in fact, this year I read 4 Dune books (1st to 4th) and 3 Dark Tower books (4th to 6th, currently trying to finish the 7th), so the page count is fairly decent.
I want to try to cross out more prompts for the Popsugar challenge. And at least 52. I almost hit 100 this year.
More classical books and bipoc and lqbtqia authors.
Read my physical tbr.
I am completing book 75 right now to finish out my 2022 goal.
For 2023 I want to read some longer books, so I am going with a 25000 page goal. That will be 2500 more pages than 2022, but half the amount of books
To read all of Frederik Bachman’s books. I’ve read 3 so far
I’ll be doing two challenges that I do every year: the Around the Year challenge on Goodreads and the BINGO challenge on r/Fantasy. The ATY challenge is 52 books and the BINGO is 25, but I let them overlap, usually completely.
My numerical goal is 52, I guess, since I want to complete all the challenge prompts. This isn’t really a challenge, though, I consistently read that many, but I don’t feel the need to have a “stretch” goal here.
I’ve made myself a list of 10 books I want to prioritize and 6 or 7 authors who I read this past year and would like to read more from.
I’d like to prioritize a few things: reading a good number of nonfiction (6-10), reading books in translation, reading fantasy, continuing with authors I’ve read before, reading several books by the same author, and reading books set in countries I haven’t read about yet.
Oooo interesting! I've never heard of either of those challenges. I am going to check them out.
Do you have any nonfiction in mind?
Before I tried them, I was a bit skeptical of reading challenges, because why wouldn't I just read whatever I want? But I've found that I have a lot of fun with them and I really enjoy being part of the community on Goodreads and Reddit.
I have a couple of plans for nonfiction! I'm mostly a fiction reader, but I've found that a few nonfiction books end up being my favorite reads every year, so it's worth it to me to prioritize it a bit. I'm most interested in memoirs (In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado was my favorite book this year) and science nonfiction, especially about climate change, ecology, or biology (one of my other favorites of this year was Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert). This year I might try Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee, and The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey, but I'm open to seeing what comes my way!
Oh wow, very cool! I haven't heard of any of those, but how could you not want to read The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating??
60 books! I set that goal this year but with a wedding and all the wedding hoopla, I only got to 40ish and gave myself grace. This year I have no excuse and I will read 60!
Just like last year, my goal is to read ~1000 pages/month instead of reading a certain amount of books. I'd also like to get through some of the larger books I own, especially Moby Dick. Also, I'm gonna try and finally setup a little free library outside my home. I've always wanted to do it and I've been putting it off out of sheer laziness.
I outpaced my goal the year, about 50 books when I planned 35.
This year, I think I'll try a few works of classic literature and some nonfiction.
Going for year 4 of 100 books. Want to do 500 books in 5 years so let’s see if we can keep this up! Just finished my 2022 reading goal today (down to the wire this year!)
This past year I had done an alphabet reading challenge which was fun, and had me reading some things I would not have otherwise.
For 2023, I'm doing a literature road trip through all of the States in the USA, trying to respect adjacency to make a somewhat realistic path. I have my first couple of books lined up, and hopefully this will use the 10 books on my TBR that are actually set in actual locations in the U.S.
I'm sticking with a solid 52 book resolution given that it is my last year of graduate school and I don't want to overwhelm myself too much. The emphasis will be on reading books I have already purchased, however. I've made myself a little TBR jar with the titles on wax-sealed papers to make it more fun to choose. (I will probably still buy more books).
I managed to read 212 books this year, and as fun as that was, I think I'd prefer to dial that back in 2023. Especially since I really fell off in the previous months and could feel the reading burnout happen. Perhaps just a desire to further expand the genres I'm interested in will be the primary goal here.
Read at least one book I already own and one book from the 1000 books to read before you die/grow up lists each month.
My goal last year was 52 books I'd never read before, I ended up hitting 70 and ~22k pages. And it was kind of exhausting. The last six weeks I have been reading whatever I could quickly because I wanted to pile up the completed number which isn't a good way to pursue the hobby I think. On the other hand, I read The Kite Runner yesterday and Moneyball today and they were probably two of the best books I've read all year.
This coming year I have resolved that I'm not going to browse my shelves for something to read. I'm going to keep a much smaller (around a dozen books) TBR stack on my nightstand and read from there. If I want to put something else in there, I have to read something to make the space.
I'd like to read 40-55 books next year, including completing my circumnavigation of the Aubrey-Maturin novels (14 to go). I want to finish Jim Butcher's Dresden Files (1 book), Colleen McCullough's First Man in Rome series (3 books), William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy (1 book) and Charles Stross' Laundry Files (5 books).
I wanna branch out of just fiction and sci fi to non fiction any suggestions. I have read some but none of them caught my intrest
Some favorites include And the Band Played On by Shilts, the Man Who Mistook his wife for a hat, My Stroke of Insight, the Omnivores Dilemma, Flow by Csikzentmihalyi, Born a Crime, Kitchen Confidential, Endurance by Lansing
I've read all of those except the last one. Good choices. My very favorite is Flow.
If anything, my main goal is to work on the pile of (20-25?) physical books I currently have classified as "depressing but informative." Then I can work on the other pile(s) of largely thrift-store pickups. Maybe ping-pong between them to balance the doomscrolling out. And somewhere after that is the near-infinite ebook pile...
Id like to match what I did this year and read 25 books.
My goal is to read one book a month.
I’d like to read 6-7 books a month. And for every 10 books I read, at least one will be non-fiction. I’ve grown to like non-fiction because I’ve forced this habit in the last two years. I find it too heavy and slow reads sometimes because there is so much content in nonfiction books and I want time to absorb it, but I do like reading nonfiction now.
My goals are to read 24 books in 2023, stop buying more books until I've finished the ones I own, and to utilise my library more for ebooks to help with the previous goal!
I read 33 books this year, hoping I can get to 50 in 2023.
I also want to diversify the books I’ve been reading; they’ve mainly been fantasy.
For 2023, my goal is to read for 5 minutes a day, on most days. I want to build up to 30 minutes a day eventually, but I want to start small so that it's easier to achieve.
Finish 25 books, and finally make it through The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky.
That’s been on my reading list for years, yet I’ve reread Crime and Punishment multiple times lol
It took me forever to finish Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) for the first time, but it’s on my all time favorites now. Some books are worth chewing on.
Well, my 2021 resolution was read 12 and i read 14,
2022 was read 15 and i read 20.
So… 25?
My goal is to read two books a month, one from an author from a different country and the other being a "guilty pleasure" book. I think I'd also like to expand my physical library to finally hit 100 physical copies!
My goal this year was to read 18 books and I just barely made it (finished East of Eden today), so I will keep the same goal for next year. 1.5 books a month is good for me because I tend to read a lot of longer history books that take a while to get through
I’m aiming to read 50 books! Lofty goal, but I’m in a reading frenzy atm after not being in the mood to read for years. I’m finishing books left and right the past month!
May 2023 finally be the year I read War and Peace. Been starting and stopping since 2016 lol
It's a lot of work to set a target number of books or count pages read.
I'm going to try keep up reading as I am currently, reading when I can, for however long that may be and enjoying the journey.
I'm considering setting my goal for 200 books this year. I'm twenty books over my goal this year and that one's inaccurate.
Edit: figured I’d just post my 2023 shelf from Goodreads
25 books. Just under 7,500 pages.
…
Thoughts?
What were your thoughts on Capital by Picketty??
Haven’t read it yet. This list is my goal set for 2023.
Ohhhh, sorry, I thought this was your list for last year.
HMU in 0-1 year and I’ll let you know! ;)
you should try to read more female authors
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I'm doing two straight-up numbers goals, 365 books overall, including 50 nonfiction specifically. I did the nonfiction project this year for the first time and it was great, I learned so much about so many different topics.
I also have a loose goal to go through the "backlog" of a few favourite writers whose work I haven't yet completely burned through - specifically, Mercedes Lackey, K.J. Parker, and Neal Shusterman.
I'm going to aim for 30 books again. I only got to 16 this year, so I am hoping to beat that.
Read all of the Game of Thrones
It might sound weird, but my goal for next year is to read fewer books than this year. The reason being, I don't want to switch to a kindle, but I also don't have room for a great deal more physical books. So while this year I've read nearly 30 books, I'm hoping next year maybe I'll read 20.
I only read 10 books in 2022 but hoped to read alot more. In 2023 my goal is 26 books, 2 weeks per book. If I happen to read more, great. I don't want to set my goal too high and not achieve it.
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I'm a recently reformed reader (was a book worm until my mid 30s then got distracted by basically life and have started reading again). My goal is to read at least one book per month which is realistic with my schedule and other hobbies. While I'm waiting for an order to come in with four books, I'm reading Doctor Who: The Legends of River song which was a gift from a friend and I hadn't gotten around to it yet.
Read more.
Stealing this from a post I saw on r/suggestmeabook, but I want to read at least one book a month by authors from different countries! Looking back at my 2022 books, I counted 16 different author countries of origin so I’m aiming for new countries in 2023. Hoping for my January read to be Jose Saramago’s Blindness.
hellbentmillennial t1_j1v45t4 wrote
I just want to read 12 books this year. One a month. I finished one book in 2022 and DNF'd another 😅