At the beginning of this year I chose five reading goals that I felt were simple enough for me to complete in the span of twelve months. So let’s have a look to see how that’s going!

When I came up with these goals, it had been a long while since I had done much reading. I had spent most of last year in the biggest reading slump of my life. The aim of these goals was to get myself back into reading, without putting too much pressure on myself.

1. Read 20 books

In the past I have challenged myself to read up to 50 books in a year. I have never quite managed it, and I think that having such a large target was incredibly intimidating.

To take away some of that pressure I figured it would be easier to read 20 books in a year, as that’s less than two books a month!

And still I am not on track for reaching it. 😦

So far I have read a total of 8 books this year (with four incomplete books at the moment). Even with my big reading slump last year, I managed to read more than that by half way through the year… Clearly I need to pick up the pace a little.

2. Read 12 buddy read books

At the end of 2022, my brother and I decided we would team up and support each others by reading a book together each month.

So far this has been going fairly well. Most of the books I have read this year have been part of that project. We actually ended up reading two books most months at the start of the year. It was good that we were getting through so many books, but it also felt like a lot of pressure to try to fit in more than one book each month.

The original plan was to read 20 pages a day to create a reading habit in a gentle way, and use that habit to get us excited for reading again.

However, in April we planned to read two rather long books (Leviathan wakes by James SA Corey, and The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson). This meant that, in order to complete them both in the same month, we would have to read 40 pages per day.

Obviously this did not work.

On the other hand, we are still on track to complete this target by the end of the year if I get back into my daily reading habit.

3. Read 5 books as research for my NaNoWriMo story

National Novel Writing Month is a fun way to encourage a writing habit. I have really struggled with this challenge in the past, and figured that if I spent the majoriy of the year planning and researching for my story, then when November comes around, I’ll be in a much better position to actually write more of my story.

So far I have not read a single book which I would consider to influence my story idea. Well, one of the books I’m halfway through is a big influence, but I’ve not yet finished it.

I still have time to complete this task. I’d only need to read one book a month for the rest of the year to achieve this!

4. Read 20 pages every day

As I mentioned before, at the beginning of the year I managed this pretty well. I did occasionally miss a day, but I managed to catch up on it. However, during April this all went to pot, and I gradually lost the habit.

I really weant to build up this habit again for the rest of the year. It’s completely doable. Twenty pages really isn’t that much. I am capable of reading a good amount of pages first thing in the morning, and then I can just read the rest of the day’s pages when I get home from work.

The really sad thing is that I walk to work, so I don’t even have a commute where I could do most of my reading, which means I have to do it a breakfast time, or do it after dinner. And, quite often, after dinner I’m too tired to pay much attention to what I’m reading.

In any case, I need to review my daily routine, and see where I can fit reading back into my day.

5. Read a Manga

Part of the buddy reading plans for this year did include reading some Manga. My brother loves them, and I’m just getting started with some. I have in the past read Death Note volume 1, and last year I started Pokemon volume 1, but never got very far.

This year I started reading Orange, and I plan on reading Dragon Ball with my brother later this year. So it is still in the works, but I haven’t actually achieved it yet.

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All in all, I haven’t done very well with these challenges, but there is still a lot of time to work on them. I’ve got some planning to do, and I will be keeping you updated on how that all works out.

The main thing I need to do is pick up my daily reading habit. that will enable me to get through more books, which will result in me completing my other goals too.

I’m trying to remain positive. There are still five months. There is plenty of time to achieve great things this year!

Let me know if you made any goals this year. And if so, how are they going? What books do you plan to read by the end of this year?

Until next time,
Love, Bobbi. Xx.

Tl;dr: I’m not on track for any of my goals, but there’s still plenty of time to make up for it.