An Update on Books and Reading Goals

21 Jul 2022 1 Comment

by Clare in Books Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I just realized that we are halfway through 2022, so I thought this might be a good time to stop and look back at how the year has been going.

First – reading goals! I had set an unrealistic goal to read 89 books this year, when I normally struggle to get through 50 in that time frame. As of today, I have finished 23 books, which puts me at 23% of that original goal, but not far off the mark for reaching 50 this year.

Here is a graphic of what I’ve read so far in 2022:

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My plan to read one book from Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series every month has gone astray, along with reading one Dune book every month. I have made it through half (3 of 6) of the Dune books by the original author, and only 3 of 14 of The Wheel of Time.

As always seems to happen, I have picked up books I didn’t originally have on my 2022 list, and then branched off into new series and authors. I think that for 2023 I will have to focus on finishing some series that I’ve started.

What am I reading now? Look – pretty covers! I am listening to the next book in The Witcher series – The Time of Contempt. On Kindle, I’m reading Lover Unbound, a book in The Black Dagger Brotherhood series which is sort of a guilty pleasure (sexy vampires, yeah), and In a Garden Burning Gold which I received courtesy of NetGalley for review.

After I finish those, next up are these options:

All of these are continuations in a series, except for The Water Dancer. I think I have a series problem!

Which should I read first? Let me know in the comments above. What other books and series have you read this year and enjoyed? Help me add to my ridiculous to-be-read list!

Find my book reviews here.

Reading Goals for 2022

05 Jan 2022 Leave a comment

by Clare in Books Tags: , , , , , , ,

Looking ahead every year, it’s nice to set goals, right? I feel like I always want to be reading more, but it’s so hard to keep that to-be-read list under control.

For 2022, I have decided to let all self-control go in creating my books-to-be-read list. First I took all those books I had intended to read for 2021 but failed to get to and rolled them over to 2022. Then I added more books! I have a few series that I’m trying to finish so the list keeps growing. That leaves me with 89 books for 2022.

Can I actually read 89 books in a year? I don’t think I ever have. But why not try?

Here is the current list for 2022:

And here are the books I’m starting out the year with (already included in the list above):

How do you plan out your reading? What books are you most excited for in 2022? Let me know in the comments!

Books Read in 2021

04 Jan 2022 1 Comment

by Clare in Books Tags: , , , , , , ,

I had set myself a goal to read 50 books for 2021. And while I didn’t quite make that, ending up with 43 books read, I feel like I still accomplished a lot of my reading goals. As this graphic format always seems popular, here are the books I read in 2021:

Have you read any of these? What did you think?

For my favorites for the year, click over to this other post of mine.

Next up, I’ll take a look at what I’m planning to read for 2022.

Reading Goals 2020

08 Jan 2020 Leave a comment

by Clare in Books Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

As I look back at 2019 and ahead to 2020, I decided to think through my reading goals. What did I accomplish in 2019? How will I plan my reading in 2020? Here are my conclusions.

2019 Reading Achievements

Goals for 2020 Reading

I plan to read even more for 2020. I love this graphic that you can make over on Goodreads from one of your shelves. This is just part of my 2020 to-be-read shelf. I know that I won’t get to all of these, but having this list all in one place helps to keep me organized and on track.

Just a few of the books I’d love to read in 2020.

Here are my specific 2020 goals:

  • Read 50 books. For this, I count all types of books and formats.
  • Continue to finish, catch up with, and keep up with series I have already started. Upcoming reads include: Otherland by Tad Williams, The Song of the Shattered Sands by Bradley Beaulieu, The Witcher books by Andrzej Sapkowski, Monstress by Marjorie M. Liu and Sana Takeda, The Gentleman Bastards by Scott Lynch, The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, The Seven Kennings by Kevin Hearne, The Throne of Amenkor by Joshua Palmatier, The Demon Cycle by Peter V. Brett, The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn, Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, and The Founders by Robert Jackson Bennett.
  • Wow, that’s a lot of series!
  • I would still like to aim for at least 2 classics and 2 non-fiction books. For classics, I’d love to read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
  • I would like to read more graphic novels, but I have some of that covered in the series I need to read (above).
  • I need to catch up on my book reviews. I didn’t do very well with these in the second half of 2019.

Well, that’s it for now! What books do *you* plan to read in 2020? Are there other classics you think I should read? Do you have any favorite non-fiction books to recommend? Let’s chat in the comments (click by the date at the top of the post), and remember to follow my Amazon affiliate links to help support this blog.

How I Organize My Books to Read

25 Jan 2019 Leave a comment

by Clare in Books Tags: , , , , , , ,

We are well into 2019 and as the end of January approaches, hopefully you have started turning resolutions into habits. I’ve been blogging here consistently for the past few months, but I haven’t quite finished reading a book to review for this week, so I wanted to write a bit about how I pick which books to read for the year ahead.

Last year I realized that I am easily distracted by a new author, new release, or new series. I often enjoy the first book in a series, but then never go back to finish the rest.

One example of a shiny new series that I plan to read this year.

In an attempt to get to some of those books that I keep telling myself I want to read, I built a Google doc To-Be-Read (TBR) list. At the same time, I decided to alternate between a physical book and an e-book, with an audiobook going at the same time (a long-standing habit).

At first this was straight-forward, but then 2019 began and I decided join the Goodreads Reading Challenge where each member picks a number goal for books read for the year. I had failed at 50 books in the past. How many books did I truly think I could read?

I thought this through and settled on 36 for the year – one book every two weeks and an additional audiobook every month. That gives me three books a month x 12 months = 36 books! Simple, right?

Next I decided to lay out which books those would be. I used Goodreads and created a new shelf for the purpose. From there, it was easy to place my chosen books on the shelf. I couldn’t help myself and a few new series snuck in there. But for the most part, this plan would have me finishing several series this year, as well as keeping up on some of my favorite authors’ new releases.

I discovered that Goodreads also gives me the option to view my shelf by showing just the book covers. This made a nice graphic and let me see my goals all in one place.

My initial TBR shelf for 2019, using Goodreads.

After a few days, I realized that my list lacked any classics and was light on non-fiction, both genres that I do try to read. It was also heavily slanted toward fantasy, but I do enjoy science fiction also – anything from space opera to hard SF. I have added to this list since its creation and it’s at 45 books now.

Some of the books I’ve chosen will be quick reads, but I expect those to be balanced out by longer ones (notably GRRM’s Fire and Blood and Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon).

I already own several of these books, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stick to my alternating physical book and e-book regimen. Only two of the authors on this list (and three of the books) are ones where I typically read the audiobook versions for their books. I may have to adjust my picks because I’m not going to get the audiobook version for any of these if I already own it in another format.

By doing book reviews, I’ll sometimes get specific requests to review a book, and my list also takes that into account. I may also pick up books unexpectedly that will need to be added.

Who knows? Maybe I will hit 50 books for the year! What are your reading goals? Do you use Goodreads? Let me know in the comments section.

See my book reviews here.

New Year, New Things – YAY!

02 Feb 2014 Leave a comment

by Clare in Reviews, Writing Tags: , ,

Well, it’s a new year and I’m only a month behind in pointing that out. I’ve been quite busy for the last six or eight months, and I’m sorry to say that my blog here has suffered from that inattention. It’s partly due to a new job and the demands on my time that came with that, and partly from adjusting to the way my sleep patterns have changed with the new job. I’ve worked nights for several years, but the hours are a bit different and I’m having to regiment my sleep better. Add some stress to that, along with holidays and some other things, and my writing has suffered all around.

I’d like to think that I’m back on track now, but we’ll see how it goes.

I’m back to reading more regularly, participating in my online critique group, and I have two stories that I’m actively working on. One is an older story that I never finished. It needed to be reworked and it still needs an ending. The other story… I think it wants to be a novel, but that’s the last thing I need. I have so many unfinished novels in my files that if I managed to finish them all, I would never have time to write anything else.

On the reviewing front, I’ve had a change there as well. The site that I used to write reviews for has changed its focus and will no longer be featuring book reviews. I still like reviewing (and hey, I get some free books), so I’m in the process of setting up some alternatives in that area. I might even post an occasional review here, rather than link to them elsewhere.

In other endeavors, I’m helping out with a new online magazine – Fantasy Scroll Mag. The first issue is in the works and the magazine is open to submissions, paying 1c/word.

And sometime soon, I should have a new story appearing in print. YAY! It was accepted a year ago, so this isn’t really new news, but I’ll be happy to see it finally published. I’ll post more details when it happens though.

That’s it for today! Back to writing…

Goals – Do You Set Them?

07 Jan 2013 1 Comment

by Clare in Writing Tags: , ,

It’s a new year, and also a time at which many of us think about goals and accomplishments. This may be retrospective – thinking about your activities over the past year. Or if you look forward, then it’s more about making new goals for the future. It can also be both.

DSC_0724

 

For myself, I had several different goals that I had set for 2012. I’m not sure that I met any of them. BUT – I worked at these goals. For one example, I decided that I would participate in a 2012 reading challenge over at Goodreads. I set a goal of 50 books. I think I read 28. I blame George R.R. Martin and his long, long books for slowing me down on this one. But you know what? I still read a lot of books. More than I probably did for 2011. I’m trying it again in 2013 and I have a better idea of what it will take to read all 5o.

One of the larger goals that I had set was to write the first draft of a historical fantasy novel. I did manage to start much of the research, outline characters and some of the plot, and write a few chapters. I took a break from it, but instead of halting all my writing, I went back to short stories. I wrote at least eight of those through the year. So while I finished other tasks that weren’t my original goals, I still feel like I’m making progress on my writing.

I also try to constantly fling rejected stories back out to other potential markets. I had done pretty well with this in 2011, but mid-2012 I slacked off. My rejected stories would linger in my files for weeks before I would research the markets and send them off again. I regained my focus around August, and now I have two stories that have been accepted for publication and will be out in 2013.

So, as a writer, do you set goals for the upcoming year, next month, daily? Do you go back and assess how you did? What are your plans for 2013?

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