Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Goals, 2025

 

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's topic is Bookish Goals for 2025. You can check out other Top Tuesday blog posts here. 

This is the third year I have come up with a list of goals for reading and blogging in the next year. The goals for 2025 have been informed by my experiences in 2023 and 2024.

My goals for the year:

1. Aim at reading mostly books that I owned before January 1, 2025. My goal is 48 books.  This ties in with my next goal...
2. My husband and I have a joint goal to not buy any print books before the Planned Parenthood book sale in September. That means 9 months of not buying books.  
3. Read more graphic novels. We have a lot of unread graphic novels in the house. In 2024, I read one graphic memoir and one graphic novel. I will aim for 8 or more this year.
4. Read more novels or short stories in the fantasy genre.  Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb is definitely on the list. Also books by Terry Pratchett and Ben Aaronovitch.
5. Read more ebooks. I have two incentives to read more ebooks: I have a lot of ebooks, many of which I forget I own, and I bought a Kindle Scribe last year. I read two novels on my Kindle in 2024 and some short stories from a few collections. I need to do better.
6. Increase my short story reading. I think I have read more short stories each year over the last four years but I haven't tracked my reading. This year I want to keep track of what I read each month. 
7. Write shorter book reviews. This has been a goal for several years but I am not giving up. It might help if I come up with template for a mini review to use as a framework.
8. Read some longer books. Except for the nonfiction book The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, most of the books I read in 2024 were between 250-350 pages. I am intimidated by long books and tend to let them sit on the shelves unread. Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb (650 pages), Fellowship Point by Alice Elliot Dark (600 pages), and The Charm School by Nelson DeMille (750 pages) are some possibilities for 2025.
9. My last goal, but an important one, is to review this list several times a year and make an effort to catch up in some areas that I have been neglecting. In 2024, I don't think I came back to review this list at all. 

Addendum: 

I have some authors I want to read more books by. I obviously won't finish the series mentioned any time soon, but I can use this post as a reminder to keep working on them.

• Ross Macdonald (13 remaining books in the Lew Archer series.)
• Ross Thomas (Mostly standalone books; I have only read 3 of his books.)
• Victor Canning (3 remaining books in the Birdcage series.)
• Anthony Price (12 remaining books in the David Audley series.)
• Reginald Hill (10 remaining books in the Dalziel and Pascal series.)
• Ann Cleeves (I will continue reading books from three of her series: the George and Molly Palmer-Jones birdwatching series; the Vera Stanhope series; and the Shetland series.)
• Catherine Aird (20 books in a 29 book series left.)
• Bill Crider (I have 17 more books in the Sheriff Rhodes series to read, but I want to try his other series too.)
• Robert Barnard (He wrote over 40 crime fiction books and I probably have read half of them.)
• Thomas H. Cook (Cook is a new author to me. He was born in Alabama, and several of his books are set in Alabama. I have not read anything he wrote.)
• Thomas Perry (Author of the Jane Whitefield series and The Butcher's Boy series, he has also written a lot of standalone novels.)
• Donald E. Westlake (He wrote a lot of crime fiction, under his own name and under pseudonyms. I have read six of his books.)

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Goals, 2024

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's topic is Bookish Goals for 2024. 

Last year was the first year I have given a lot of thought to reading and blogging goals over the next year. The goals for this year are similar to last year, and informed by my experiences in 2023.

My goals for the year:

1. Aim at reading mostly books that I owned before January 1st of 2024. I have signed up for Bev Hankin's Mount TBR Challenge 2024 on Goodreads in order to track the number of books I read that fit that criteria. My goal is 48 books.  This ties in with my next goal...
2. My husband and I have a joint goal to not buy any books before the Planned Parenthood book sale in September. That effectively means almost 9 months of not buying books. One exception: We can buy ebooks. 
3. Read more graphic novels. I read a total of 4 graphic novels last year, which was an improvement. I will aim for 8 this year.
4. Read more science fiction and fantasy, novels or short stories. In 2023 I read 3  science fiction novels and 1 fantasy novel. I read a few science fiction short stories from 4 different books. My aim is to improve on that, the more the better.
5. Read more espionage novels. In 2023, I met my goal of at least 10 novels in that genre. I would like to read more than that this year, maybe 15. I will also aim at reading more spy fiction by authors that I haven't read but are on my shelves, virtual or otherwise.
6. Read more ebooks. I buy a lot of ebooks but have a hard time reading them. I read one novel on my Kindle in 2023 and some short stories from a few collections.
7. Read at least one classic a month, preferably from my Classics Club List, since I have been working on my Classics list for over 5 years, and still have a lot left on the list. But any classic reads would be good.
8. Increase my short story reading. Last year I lamented the fact that I start short story anthologies or collections but often take months or years to finish them. However, I have decided that enjoying reading short stories is more important than completed books. Instead I will aim at reading more short stories per month (which will require tracking them in some way, which I am not good at). 
9. Share my thoughts on every book I read. I borrowed this goal from Jana's list from 2023. I try to do this already, even if it is only in my monthly book lists, but sometimes I only provide a summary. I may start putting shorter reviews in Goodreads. This will be a work in progress, and I don't expect to succeed at it overnight. It goes along with my last goal...
10. Write shorter book reviews. This has been a goal for several years but I have had little success. Last year, when I tried to write short reviews, they turned into long reviews. I don't necessarily want to write only brief reviews, but I would like to master that art.

Addendum: 

I have some authors I want to read more books by. This is not something I could do in one year, but I want to use this post as a reminder to read more by these authors:

• Raymond Chandler (4 remaining books in the Philip Marlowe series)
• Ross Macdonald (14 remaining books in the Lew Archer series)
• Ross Thomas (He wrote mostly standalone books; I have only read 3 of his books. I have 10 on my shelves.)
• Victor Canning (4 remaining books in the Birdcage series)
• Anthony Price (13 remaining books in the David Audley series)
• Reginald Hill (10 remaining books in the Dalziel and Pascal series)
• Rex Stout (Reread any books in the Nero Wolfe series that I have not read since I started blogging. Around 24 books.)