Earl Grey Books

This year I’ve decided to seriously dial back on goals.

In the past, I’ve made maybe around six to eight goals every year but this year, we’re just going for four. I’ve talked recently about the fact that my partner and I are moving interstate to a city where we know no one, but I’m also returning to studying on campus for the first time since 2017 rather than just being online. It’s going to be a big year and so setting all these reading goals isn’t my top priority. But as I said, I still have four so let’s get into them.

Read 140 books

This is the lowest my reading goal has been in a really long time. I’m aware that 140 is not a low number but for context in the last four years, my goal has been between 180 and 245 so this year is significantly lower in comparison. I’m actually looking forward to not having to stress about reading 18 books a month.

Under 250 On My TBR

Okay firstly when I say ‘TBR’ here, I mean everything I own physically that I haven’t read yet. Last year I did a really good job of getting this number down and part of that is because I just set my goal are having equal or less books at the end of the year as I did at the start. This year I’m changing this very slightly and aiming for under 250. I’m sitting around the 258 mark so I do need to push a little at the start but it’s not unachievable.

Read 60 Sequels

Last year the goal that gave me the most amount of trouble was my series goal. I’d originally set it at 50 and I didn’t even make it halfway. You might wonder why I’ve upped my goal this year, but it’s simple—in 2023 I only counted one book per series and this year, any sequel I read, whether I read a book in the series earlier in the year or not, will count. So if I read books 2, 3 and 4 in a single series, all of them will count towards the goal. I think that should make things easier on myself.

Read 30 Pre-2023 Books

I have a little spreadsheet where I track which years I bought my TBR books because I like not having things stick around too long. Right now, I have about 130 books from 2020-2022 and I want to bring that down to under 100. About five or six of them are already on my list for January or February so I’m hoping this’ll be easy enough too.

And that’s it. As per usual, I’ll be reassessing my goals every quarter and adapting things as I need to, maybe even adding some more goals as the year goes on. But for now, I hope you’re all enjoying 2024 so far!