Maybe You Need Reading Ideas and Goals, Not Another Challenge or Resolution

Goals and ideas come from a perspective somewhat different than challenges and resolutions do

Hi readers,

We’ve completed the first week of the new year so far; how did it go for you? It was a shorter work week for me because of the holiday. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the shorter work week sometimes seems far longer than a normal 5-day work week. I’m sure there’s some logical reason for that, but I’ll leave it to the experts to define what that might be while I talk books and reading.

At the start of the new year, many people define their word for the coming year, their resolutions, and what they want to accomplish during the year. Readers often want tasks to check off to determine their reading for the coming year. I’m not going to discuss challenges for 2023; I did that for 2022. I’m sure that 2023 challenges are available for all the challenges listed in the newsletter linked above if you are interested.

For me, reading challenges are tasks with boxes to check off to get to the end of the year and say that I’ve completed some arbitrary list of books I read that may or may not have enhanced my reading life. Resolutions seem to be behavior changes and, in my experience, have almost always failed. I have ideas to help you take your reading year from box-checking to dreaming, planning, and realizing a great reading year. I think readers need reading ideas and goals, not challenges or resolutions, and below are many to spark the creativity in each of us to design our best reading year yet.

• Be a series completist - finish a series you have already started or find a new series to read; reading enjoyment is reading an author that you already know and love.

• Travel reading - are you going on a vacation/trip in 2023? Read some fiction and nonfiction to know more about your destination and then explore, keeping in mind the books you read.

• Expand your reading horizons - be adventurous, read a new to you genre; research, read “best of” lists in this genre to find the books that you might enjoy.

• Overflowing TBR problem? - read two books from your TBR for every one you read that you’ve bought or borrowed from the library.

• Read a doorstopper - do 500+ page books keep you from reading them? Find a doorstopper book you’ve wanted to read but haven’t yet, and create a multi-month reading plan to read it in small chunks at a time.

• Be an author completist - have you read an author you’ve enjoyed? Read the author’s backlist. When you’ve finished with that, read authors that write in that author’s genre.

• Book/reading journal - readers who journal about what they read say that doing this helps them to understand more about their reading tastes, what books make a lasting impact, and how to choose more satisfying reads overall. Give it a try for a year to see if it impacts your reading life.

• Book flight reading - Anne Bogel from Modern Mrs. Darcy gets all the credit for introducing me to book flight reading. I’ll let her tell you about it as she explains it best in these four posts (1, 2, 3, 4), providing examples of great pairings that will bring hours and hours of reading pleasure.

• Book club - participating in a book club brings readers together and is an excellent way to meet others that share your love of reading. Book clubs can be found in your local library, bookstore, church groups, and many other places. Step out of your comfort zone, and don’t look back.

• Book award books - there are many book awards; find one that interests you and read some of the contenders from a particular year or the winning books from several years.

• Diverse reading - read books about different cultures, books written by authors of color, books about people with different abilities, and books about political and religious differences. We can’t expect to know about things we haven’t experienced when we stay in our little world and never venture beyond to explore.

• Cookbook reading - cookbooks used to be just recipes, and you’d pull them out when you wanted to try making something new. Many cookbooks now are memoir-ish type books mixed with family stories, fun anecdotes, and delicious recipes. Find a friend to join you and cook and read your way through a cookbook.

• Plan your reads - go through your TBR and identify a # of books that you’ve wanted to read and haven’t yet, and schedule them so you can read them throughout the year. Planning doesn’t work for everyone, but structure is welcome for some readers.

• Cozy reading nook - create an inviting, comfy reading spot in your home, grab your favorite beverage, and tune out your real world for a few minutes. It doesn’t have to be elaborate; it just needs to be a place that makes you feel at peace for a few minutes while you read.

• Abandoning books - learn to abandon a book when it no longer provides you pleasure. I know this is difficult for some, but life is too short to read books you aren’t enjoying. The imaginary book police will not come to arrest you.

• Reader retreat - the possibilities are limited only to your imagination. A reader retreat can be a solo endeavor, something you do with some reader friends, it can be for a few hours or a few days, or it can be close to home or at a literary destination. Imagine what an “ideal” reading retreat would be for you and then make it happen.

• CAWPILE - readers who want to get more from their reading or like to write reviews about books they’ve read have discovered CAWPILE. This review rating system allows readers to rate and reflect on the book they’ve read by analyzing seven attributes: characters, atmosphere/setting, writing style, plot, intrigue, logic/relationships, and enjoyment. It’s relatively new, and I haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet, but if a five-star rating system leaves you wanting a better way, here is the link to a Bookriot article that explains CAWPILE in more detail.

  ---

If you haven’t seen it before, click the link to Modern Mrs. Darcy’s “Reading Life Challenge” and give it a test drive. While the title of this newsletter says that you don’t need another challenge, I think of Anne’s creation as more of a goal-setting process. You are not ticking off boxes when books are completed; you are learning more about your reading likes and dislikes, what your reading life is missing and needing more of, and then setting your reading intentions for the year based on a few worksheets to help you put this all together. You can sign up at the link above to use this now to start your 2023 reading year off right.

---

I’m curious, are you satisfied with your reading life, or do you wish it was different? If you want it to be different, do you have any ideas on what you might be missing or what you’d like to change? I’d like to hear more about what you think about your reading life and what you might want to change. I’d also like to hear what you do to create a reading life that nurtures you and provides hours of reading enjoyment.

I mentioned last week that I wasn’t pleased with my reading life last year, so I will take my advice and make some changes. I’m not sure what all that will be, but I have decided to be an author completist (I have a couple of authors identified and may complete both of them), and I’m going back through the four posts from Anne about book flights to identify a couple of flights that I’d like to read. I’ll post occasional updates throughout the year about my progress.

For now and until next week, happy reading!