Reading challenge mid-year checkup

For the last three years around this time (see the links at the bottom of this post), I've done a mid-year check-in on the status of my Goodreads Reading Challenge and other reading goals -- and since the year is now halfway over (ummm.... WTF?!)  I thought it was timely to do it again.  :)  

In my 2023 Reading Year in Review post last December, I wrote: 

• ...I reached my Goodreads Reading Challenge Goal of 45 books by Dec. 7th, and ended the year with 48 books read -- but I didn't equal my 2021/best-recorded total of 59 books (when my goal was 36).  For 2024, I've decided to maintain my goal of 45 books ( = 3.75 books per month on average)(and hope to do better...!) -- which seems realistic for me right now. 
• I've read more than 45 books in four of the past five years (2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023), and almost 45 -- 43 -- in 2020 -- so that seems very do-able.  But I'm hoping I'll be able to improve on 2023's total, too!  
• While I'm grateful for my book groups and the boost they give to my reading totals, and while I intend to keep up with them in 2024, I'm hoping to be able to read more of my own choices this coming year too.  :)   

So.  Here we are at the midpoint of 2024 -- which suggests 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. 

I'm not there yet...  :(   I am currently at 20 books finished = 44% of my 2024 goal (2 books behind schedule to meet my goal). I read 4 books in January, 2 in February, 3 in March, 5 in April, 3 in May and 3 in June.

At this time last year (end of June 2023), I had reached 25 books (56% of my goal). In 2022, I'd reached 64% of my goal, and I was at 94% in 2021 (! -- albeit my goal then was just 36 books).  

So I'm 5 books behind versus where I was last year, in terms of number of books read  :(  -- and I'm a little behind pace to reach or exceed my goal of 45 books before the end of the year.  

Whether I'll reach my goal by year end (let alone improve on previous years' totals) remains to be seen...! (although I'm still hopeful at this point...!)  Last year, my BIL's health issues kept us fairly busy;  the year before that, I had eye surgery which slowed my reading pace down a bit, for a while. Theoretically, I don't have any such major distractions this year.  

However -- I'm still doing a lot of book club reads & re-reads. I enjoy them because, overall, they (mostly) keep me reading and move me toward my reading goals. Some of the books we read have long been on my to-read list (thus moving them up in the pile...!). Others are books I might not have picked up on my own -- including some really good ones. 

My online book clubs/groups include one for D.E. Stevenson's books on Groups.io and the L.M. Montgomery Readathon on Facebook. Last year, I took on the role of co-hosting the monthly book club on the Childless Collective (formerly Gateway Women & Lighthouse Women) private online community. I would have been reading the books there anyway -- but now I'm trying to make time to hunt down & read/screen books that might be a good fit for the group too.  The Notes From Three Pines Substack newsletter readalong, covering the Three Pines/Inspector Gamache novels by Louise Penny, petered out last year after just a few months (and while I really would like to get back to these books on my own, the last one I read was #5, "The Brutal Telling," in August 2023 -- review here).  

I also joined not just one but TWO other "slow readalongs" hosted by Simon at the Substack newsletter "Footnotes and Tangents" -- one that's tackling Leo Tolstoy's epic "War and Peace" (!), one chapter per day for an entire year (!), the other reading Hilary Mantel's "Cromwell Trilogy" -- "Wolf Hall" (finished;  reviewed here), "Bring Up the Bodies" (our current book, almost done) and  "The Mirror and the Light."  These are some pretty thick books -- so while I may not make or exceed my goal in terms of books read this year, I expect that my total page count, at least, should be pretty robust....!  

While I HAVE managed to fit in some books of my own choosing, they've continued to take a back seat to all these book clubs and readalongs -- perhaps (I'll admit) a little more often than I'd like. And I haven't been able to explore as many potential reads for the CC book club as I'd like either.  But I missed the CC book club when the hosts stepped down and it subsequently went on hiatus, and sometimes if you want something done, you have to be willing to do it yourself...!  

In 2023, I ventured into the world of ARCs (advance reader copies) on NetGalley by reading and reviewing Ashley Audrain's "The Whispers" (reviewed here). It was a good read and an interesting experience -- but I have enough book-related deadlines/obligations in my reading life at the moment as it is -- and many NetGalley books come with an expiry/"archive by" date -- so I haven't requested any others this year (so far, anyway).  Maybe I'll try it again in the future...!  

Needless to say, there are still a lot of books on my "priority TBR list" (which has expanded considerably since I posted about it..!) that I haven't read yet! (And I realize that, realistically, I am never going to be able to read all the books I would like.)(But it's still fun trying, right?)  

2023 Reading challenge mid-year checkup

2022 Reading challenge mid-year checkup

2021 Reading challenge mid-year checkup

Did you set any reading goals for 2024?  How are you doing with them?