My end-of-the-year lists will probably be up next week since I want to make sure I’ve read all the books I’m going to for the year before I post them. That very last book read in the year could end up being a favorite – after all, that happened to me last year when I read The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge, which I got for Christmas! So I’m taking a brief break from the review I’m writing now to write one of the first posts about looking ahead to 2011 – reading goals for the year.
Actually, I’m trying not to have many goals for next year. I’ve tried to do some the last few years and I’m too much of a mood reader to really stick with them. After glancing at my goals for last year, I didn’t do very well at all. It ended up being a tough year for reading since it was busier than normal (mostly due to moving twice in one year – that took up a lot of my weekend time for quite a few weekends).
2010 Goals: A Sad State of Affairs
1. The first goal will most likely be met: reading 50 books. It’s not a huge number, but considering I try to review everything I’ve read it seems that somewhere between 50 and 60 books is all I can do. I’m reading book #50 of the year right now so I’ll probably end up reading 50 books (that’s debatable, though, since this one seems like it will take a while to read), but other than that, my goals have not been met even though I tried to keep them somewhat easy to meet. Actually, I’m surprised it’s possible I’ll make this one since I had quite a few months where I only read 3 books.
2. Reading more science fiction didn’t go well at all, and I actually read less of it this year than the last. I think this is largely because I started getting a great number of review copies that I was very interested in reading this year and most of those are fantasy. So I probably actually read fewer books already on my shelves than in previous years (not that I’m going to complain about free books that I want to read!).
3. Making more progress in series I’ve started didn’t go badly, but most of that progress was with books that just came out this year in series I had started instead of books I already had around from series I started. The point was really to read more books already on my shelf from series I had started. I did read 3 more books in the Miles Vorkosigan series, though, so I’ve now read the first 10 books and only have 4 left including the one that just came out a few months ago.
4. I picked 5 specific books from my bookshelf to read. Of those, I have only read 1. I just wasn’t in the mood for the others any time I was thinking about reading them. That would be why I am not going to set a goal of reading specific books ever again other than maybe 1 or 2 picked out by a friend. One of my friends and I picked out 3 books for each other to read this year and I read 2 of the 3. I read a little bit of the third, but I was sick at the time and it was over 700 pages long and it just wasn’t drawing me in so it’s a DNF (I’ll do a post including DNF books later).
2011 Goals: Keeping it Simple
Due to this sad state of affairs, I’m keeping 2011 goals pretty simple. I’m just going to face up to the fact that I have Book ADD and will constantly be distracted by the next shiny book that needs to be read right now. So here are my goals for 2011:
1. Read 50 books. It’s a fairly attainable goal and it keeps me trying to make sure I get in 4 – 5 books a month.
2. Read some of the books for the Women of Science Fiction Book Club and the Women of Fantasy Book Club. I already have some of these books and really want to read a lot of them.
That’s it. I still want to read more science fiction, but if it’s a crazy year and those aren’t the books that are calling my name, I’m not going to worry about it.
Do you make reading goals for a new year? Or did you ever start to and then give up on them for being too restrictive?
