Friday, July 1, 2022

Reading challenge mid-year checkup

Last year at this time, I did a mid-year check-in on the status of my Goodreads Reading Challenge and other reading goals -- and since the year is once again halfway over (WTF?!)  I thought it was timely to do it again.  :)  

In my 2021 Reading Year in Review post last December, I wrote: 

  • Since I reached [my 2021 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of] 36 books fairly easily this year (by July), I've decided to stretch a bit and increase my Goodreads Reading Challenge goal to 45 books ( = 3.75 books per month on average) for 2022. I've read more than 45 books in two of the past three years (2019 & 2021, and almost 45 in the third year -- 43 in 2020), so I think that's a reasonable/realistic goal to set. 

Here we are at the midpoint of 2022 -- which would suggest I should have read 22-24 books by now to keep up the pace of 3-4 books per month towards 45 by the end of the year. Well, I got to 22 books in late April (with a group re-read of L.M. Montgomery's "The Story Girl," reviewed here), and crossed the 50% threshold in May.  I am currently at 29 books finished = 64% of my goal. I read 5 books in January, 6 in February, 5 in March, 6 in April, 3 in May and 4 in June.  At this time last year (end of June), I had reached 34 books. So I'm a little behind versus where I was last year, in terms of number of books read, but still on pace to reach or exceed my goal of 45 books before the end of the year.

I do expect to fall a bit further off pace later this summer/early fall. My eye surgery is set for July 25th, and my sister (who had a similar surgery last year) has warned me I will have to lay off the screens (and presumably that includes e-readers and paper books) for at least a week while I recover. Three weeks after that, I'm having gallbladder removal surgery on Aug. 15th... presumably that won't have any impact on my vision, but it might affect my powers of concentration/focus, at least initially. So I'm trying to cram in the books my various book groups will be covering over the next while before then...!  

I didn't set any other "official" reading goals or challenges for 2022.  Back in January 2020, I wrote a post (responding to a post of Mel's) about tackling my TBR (to be read) pile by making a "TBR priority list."  I wrote: 

Some of the books I've been meaning to get to for quite a while now include "Us Against You" and "Anxious People" by Fredrik Backman (after reading & loving "Beartown" for my library book club), "The Huntress" by Kate Quinn (after reading & enjoying "The Alice Network" for my library book club -- and she has a new book coming out soon too... gahhhhh...), "My Dark Vanessa" by Kate Elizabeth Russell (which I keep putting off, even though several people I know have read it & rated it highly, because it sounds... dark... and I need to be in the right frame of mind to tackle something like that), and "Maisie Dobbs" by Jacqueline Winspear, which By the Brooke recommended to me a long time ago.  ;)
I read "Anxious People" in 2021 for my "Clever Name" book club (review here) -- but so far, that's the only one I can cross off that particular list (which has, in the meantime, grown longer, lol). 

Did you set any reading goals for 2022?  How are you doing with them? 

2 comments:

  1. Wow. 36 books already! That's impressive.

    I was doing really well towards my Goodreads goal, but June was very slow. Still, I set a goal of 25 books this year, based on last year's total of 23, and 30 the year before. It was a conservative, but I thought realistic aim, and I see my annual average over the last 11 years is just over 31 books. At the end of June, I was at 22 books, so I might have to reset the target, just to keep me reading. I don't think I'll reach your target of 45 though! But what I am loving is how much I have enjoyed reading this year. And that's what it is all about, right?

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    1. Just 31 books to date (I've finished two more since i wrote this post!). 36 was last year's goal, 45 for this year.

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