Welcome to my 2020 mid-year check in! In this post, I check my progress on my reading goals, challenge participation, and blogging goals. I also review my ratings of every book I’ve read so far in 2020.
Reading Goals
- 62/102 books read – I originally set this goal at 100 books. I increased it after reading a number of very short (under 150 pages/each) works of non-fiction.
- 1/7 books about/by J.R.R. Tolkien (not including re-reads) – This is actually better than the same time last year so I guess that’s something 😬
- 3/10 works by Indigenous people (incl. five works by marginalized genders and three authors I’ve never read before) – All of these books are by authors I’d never read before. Two of them are by women. I have two more titles I plan to read this month so I should get back on track soon.
- 22/52 middle grade fiction novels – A little behind, but not too bad.
- 6/10 rereads – Good job, me.
- 3/8 graphic novels – I prefer to read physical graphic novels, so this has essentially been on pause.
- Collectively, I am at 34/88 books read for specific goals. If I remove the middle grade goal, I’m at 13/36… hm, that ratio doesn’t look much better. 😛
Reading Challenges
2020 sees me participating in three year-long challenges hosted by other book bloggers.
- 10/10 to 25 books with queer rep – Not counting rereads or side characters (i.e. only counting books with queer protagonists that I haven’t read before). Right on track!
- 1/5 books with 500+ pages – Not counting rereads or middle grade titles for this one. I have created an ‘honourable mentions’ list, though, of books over 450+ pages. That’s a big book for me 😜 I have five books on that list.
- 1/1 to 5 Discworld books – Challenge complete! 😝 I used this challenge as motivation to finally try a Discworld novel (The Wee Free Men).
- 25/60 books on my TBR that I don’t own – I thought I would be a shoo in to climb Stormness Head, because I rely heavily on the library and rarely purchase a book before reading. However! That’s 25 out of 62 books read this year. This challenge has helped me realize I actually read a lot of books that aren’t on my TBR. This stems from three things:
- Browsing at the library
- Becoming interested in a topic that wasn’t on my TBR
- Snagging new books before they can even make it to my TBR
Blogging Goals AKA What is Going on in My Life
Pfft, my goal of posting three times/week? That’s been tossed and turned and tumbled all over thanks to the pandemic. I won’t bother to share stats on how I’ve been posting so far this year. Some months were up, some months were down. Over the past two months, I’ve considered lowering my posting goal to 10/month. I only hit three posts/week in May (and that’s thanks to Wyrd & Wonder). 10 per month seems like a realistic goal, that I could maintain even while working full time.
…Well, it hurts me not to share at least one stat so: If I had followed three posts/week (excluding February), I would have posted 66 times. I have posted 43 times. It’s easy to say “I wish I had posted more in March” but we all know how March was.
Life Update
That being said, my ‘life’ plans are in shambles and have evolved over the past few weeks, so it’s hard to set any real goals for blogging. At one point I thought for sure I would be back at work in June. (The health and safety context where I live in Canada is completely different than in the States.) But currently, it looks like I’ll continue to be laid off for at least six months when I would have been working full time otherwise. 🙃
Once that became clear to me (near the beginning of June), I decided to make some plans. I’m not quite ready to share what those plans are, but they span from mid-July to at least mid-September. So, I’ll be taking a break in August. I have no idea what my life will look in the fall, so I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. 🤷
Ratings Recap
Since 2015, I’ve taken a look at my Goodreads ratings of the books I read in the first half of the year, which I compare to the previous year. This gives me a sense of whether I’ve gotten better at selecting high quality books for myself to enjoy.
- I’ve read 15 ★★★★★ books.
- Compared to last year: +5
- I’ve read 30 ★★★★ books.
- Compared to last year: +10
- I’ve read 14 ★★★ books.
- Compared to last year: No change (that’s two years in a row I’ve read 14 three star books!)
- I’ve read 0 ★★ books.
- Compared to last year: -1
- I’ve read 0 ★ books.
- Compared to last year: No change
- I’ve read 2 books which I did not rate.
- New category. One book I have mixed feelings about. The other I initially rated five stars but removed after information about the author’s behaviour became public.
I know I have become more generous with my four and five star ratings, especially when it comes to middle grade. So it becomes more difficult (or inaccurate) to compare each year to the one before it. Also, the fact that I only do this half way through the year and not at the end makes it kind of a moot point, haha. (Especially this year, when the pandemic meant I was able to read so many more books early in the year!) But anyway…
How is your reading going this year? Are you keeping up with any challenges, goals or resolutions?
Too many numbers, too many plans. I‘d say, go with the flow. Whatever feels good is good for you, and it doesn’t make sense to dance bad numbers.
Pandemic worked completely different for me: I started reading and blogging again (since February) and did. unexpectedly more so. It felt good, so I continued.
Our working situation here is different: we stay in the job but the insurance takes over parts. We‘re not laid off. And I stay fully employed anyways.
Stay healthy and safe!
I like to have numbers and plans so I diversify my reading. But generally I still go with the flow anyway 😛 I have done a lot more reading and blogging than usual since the pandemic started. I won’t be able to sustain it once I start working again, though! Most Canadians are back at work or working from home, with or without government support. Unfortunately, my city’s budget has apparently been hit hard and since that’s what I’m paid from, it means I’ve essentially lost my job (they say it’s temporary, but it’s unlikely I’ll return to full time work this year). But at the very least – I am healthy and safe 🙂 Thanks for stopping by!
My only reading goal that I seem to follow is Goodreads, which is 29/50 books so far. I tend to set the bar around 50 for the first couple of months to feel out what my reading speed is going to look like for the year. I’m not sure how much I’ll increase it to yet so I’m happy to keep chugging away toward 50 books. Your re-reads are pretty impressive! Hopefully is was a bunch of comfort reads too.
Thank-you! Yes, the re-reads were all great books to return to. It’s hard to predict what reading will look like this year, hey? I know I am ahead of my goal now but in a few months, if/when I work again, I will probably slow down.
So sorry to hear about your work, best of luck with your plans! I’m really feeling like I need to set a goal for myself to read more Indigenous authors because although I have a lot on my TBR, I don’t often get around to reading many. That big book challenge would scare me off though, I find more than 300 pages a lot to take on lol
I’m interested to see that you’re starting to give more books 4 and 5 star reviews! I’ll have to do the stats myself, but I think my reviews have followed the opposite trajectory, as I intentionally get a more stringent about which books I give each rating. This is partly just because I’d like to better differentiate books, so I’d like to be using the full 1-5 star scale.