firewhiskeyreader

I’ve had a fair amount of discussion with a man who works at my local Indie about why we read because the reason is decidedly not the same for the two of us. For me, I read for my own personal enjoyment and I have to push myself out of my romance comfort bubble occasionally to try other genres or books that will challenge me in some way. For him, reading is a chore where he likes to learn things, which means he likes the end result, but it’s not at all an escape. I think, when I think about my personal reading goals and the things I’ve learned this year and in years past, I need to acknowledge how much effort it can take me to accomplish the goals that do not come easily. So let’s talk about the goals I’ve made and how I’m hoping they’ll be manageable.

Read Diversely

The good news about my goals for 2019 is that, at least at the end of November, 40% of the books that I read were by authors of color. Unfortunately for me, I had set very specific guidelines that I did not always meet, like reading from 24 different Black and Asian authors. I was successful at reading from 24 different Black authors, but I definitely need to step up and read from a greater variety of Asian authors. I also only managed to do the bare minimum in terms of Latinx voices last year and I would like to do better. So I’m keeping my goal of 40% or better in terms of overall author diversity, but I want to make sure that I’m reading books from a wide variety of voices. I’m not going to make a quota though because that doesn’t seem like it would be helpful. I’m just going to do my best to be conscious of what authors I’m reaching for and making sure that I’m hitting up a variety of voices.

In terms of sexual orientation, I think, although I’m not 100% positive that I did manage to read a greater amount of books with characters that identify as LGBTQIA+, so that’s good, but I still know I could do better. I really want to make a concentrated effort to read more sapphic books in 2020 so that’s one goal.

And in terms of disability rep and mental health rep, I’ve got to figure out a better way to track that information because right now I’m terrible at it. I do know that Get a Life, Chloe Brown was not only one of the best books I read all year, it was also the only book I think I’ve ever read with fibromyalgia/chronic pain representation, so that was amazing. Anyway, 2020 goals are definitely to keep reading diversely and to try and read more diversely in terms of sexual orientation and disability rep.

Read More Nonfiction

The thing about nonfiction that drives me up the wall is that I like it. I just refuse to reach for it and motivating myself to read nonfiction instead of a romance is occasionally impossible. I managed to read the same amount of nonfiction this year that I did in 2017, which is twice as much as I read in 2018, so hopefully we’ll actually go up in 2020. To help with that, I’ve already purchased four new nonfiction audiobooks and have several that should be coming off the holds list to me from the library. I figure maybe I can tackle a few early in the year to hopefully help me so I’m not cramming seven in come November.

Read More from My Shelves

Okay, so I admittedly tried to do that this year and didn’t really succeed. But for real, I’m hoping that with my Kiss Con TBR, I may wind up miraculously being successful. I guess we’ll see how it turns out.

Complete (or Catch Up With) Some Series

The amount of series that I’ve started and haven’t completed is just, ridiculous frankly. So here’s hoping I can do better. Cross your fingers for me!

And that’s it! These are hopefully manageable, but we’ll see how it goes, I suppose. Do you have any reading goals for the year?

xx