Do you set goals like reading a certain number of books in a year? Participate in reading challenges?
I don’t set goals around reading a certain number of books. Those have always seemed arbitrary and not helpful for my reading. I have done reading challenges in the past, though—the yearly Book Riot Read Harder Challenge, the yearly reading challenge from PopSugar, book bingo. I like those types of challenges for helping me to break out of my comfort zone and try new authors and genres! I’ve also made my own challenges. What are some of your favorite reading challenges?
I had gotten out of the habit of reading for pleasure after college because I felt incredibly burned out on it. That had started to bother me because I used to read as one of my main hobbies, so last year I set the goal of reading 1 book. I did that, and read a couple others.
This year I set a goal of 5 books and was able to do that by March, but then I ended up with about 9 in flight books and wasn’t making much progress with them. I felt like I had them hanging over my head and it was stressing me out, so I’m now working on the goal of finishing them by the end of the month.
Its been really nice to realize that I still do love reading and that I still can finish a book even with all the stuff going on in life, its just a matter of sitting down and reading. I credit a silly goal with helping me remember that.
I finished my English degree decades ago. I remember it took me about 2 years to read a novel after I graduated. I still read a lot, but like magazine articles. I just couldn’t commit to a novel. It was a weird time for me because I had always been at some spot in a book since I was a kid. After a couple of years break, I got back into the groove and have been reading consistently since.