For this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, we’re discussing bookish goals for 2024. I set out to reduce the number of challenges I participate in this year. I haven’t really succeeded, but I do want to be thoughtful about reading what I want to read, regardless of whether it’s good for challenges or seems like a book I “should” read.
My first “challenge” and highest priority is Ozathon 2024, which I’m cohosting with my friend Lory at Entering the Enchanted Castle (#Ozathon24). For this challenge we’ll read each of the 14 Oz books, in order, and I’ll be writing a detailed review every other month. This month I’ll be discussing The Marvelous Land of Oz, a wonderful read that in many ways is more reflective of Baum’s vision for the series than The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Another challenge is the 52 Book Club (#the52bookclub), which I’ve really enjoyed the last two years and I actually completed in 2023. This is a set of 52 book prompts, similar to Read Harder or Pop Sugar, which are easy to fill in at first but get much harder as the year goes by. I like these challenges because for most of the year, I’m reading what I want to, until I get down to the last 5 or 10.
I didn’t do very well in Book’d Out’s Nonfiction Reader Challenge (#ReadNonFicChal) in 2023, but since I do like to push myself to read nonfiction, I’ll continue with this one. There are 12 categories, and this year’s categories look fairly doable for me, except maybe Architecture.
Then, I’m going to track my backlist reading with two challenges, Beat the Backlist at Austine Decker and Backlist Reader at The Bookwyrm’s Hoard (#beatthebacklist and #backlistreader). I’m defining “backlist” as published in 2022 or earlier, on my TBR before January 1, 2024, and I’m going to make a special effort to read books that are sitting physically on my shelves.
Finally, I’m setting myself a goal to re-read old favorites, in addition to the Oz books. I so rarely make time to re-read! I’d love to hear if anyone would be interested in joining me (#reread24).
What I don’t do is set goals for how much I’m going to read, either in pages or number of books. I don’t like the idea of counting the amount I read, though I realize that might be incentivizing for others (I do enjoy looking at stats at the end of the year, but I’m not pushing myself to meet specific numbers).
On the contrary, I tend to get overwhelmed by the number of books I’ve borrowed from the library or that are sitting on my shelves, so I’m trying to take a step back from pre-determined lists and read what appeals to me in the moment. I’m not likely to stop adding books to my TBR list, although I did pick up a good suggestion from Modern Mrs. Darcy about adding a note to every book you put on your TBR list so you remember WHY it’s there (Goodreads and The StoryGraph have notes and tagging features for this).
I’ll continue to read books from other countries but I’m not making that part of a challenge this year. I also expect to participate in 20 Books of Summer and Nonfiction November. I also like to read at least half of the Women’s Prize longlist, which comes out March 5. I always discover some of my favorite books that way.
Those are my goals and plans for the year. I hope you’ll join me in some of them!
