firewhiskeyreader

I’ll go ahead and give you a spoiler alert that it’s a real good thing I decided to do this check in because I’m not necessarily achieving all of my goals! I set some goals for my reading at the beginning of this year and I try to check in with those periodically. And I’m glad I did because I realized I’m doing a terrible job on so many of them.

But first, let’s check in about a few statistics. I’ve read 150 books total in the first half of the year, which feels absolutely wild to me.

As you can see April and May were my two strongest months quantitatively as I read over 30 books during both months (and exactly 30 in March). June is more typical of my normal reading, where I clocked in at 22 reads. Numbers wise, I’m not upset at all about my reading. And just for fun, I threw together a graph showing my reading broken down by format.

As you can tell, I’m really reading mostly audiobooks this year. Ebooks are still being represented okay, but I’m really reluctant to pick up physical books. One might think that would stop me from buying them, but, uh… That’s not worked out so well thus far.

Let’s go ahead and dive into my first goal, which was to read more diversely in terms of genre. I set specific numerical goals for different genres, specifically I wanted to read 12 fantasy books, 12 nonfictions, 12 historical fictions, and 12 classics (to include re-reads).

So… Considering classics doesn’t even appear on this pie chart, I think you can probably guess how that goal is going. But I have exceeded 12 fantasy reads, so that’s exciting! I’m on target for my nonfiction piece, having read six thus far. But I really need to pick up the pace on my historical fiction reading.

And just for fun, let’s zoom in on that 78% romance statistic and see how those books breakdown:

I’m actually really thrilled to see contemporary is only 50% of my romance reading. And fantasy romance is starting to increase, which I anticipate continuing as I am struggling with the world. The fantasy versus paranormal divide is a struggle for me too, so there’s likely a ton of overlap there. Either way, I expect that piece of the pie to increase by the end of the year.

While we’re on the topic of romance, I set a goal to read 24 Black Love romances by the end of the year. That number was entirely arbitrary and if I’m honest, I expected it to be easy to achieve without thought. I’m at 17 of 24, I think, so that is going well.

Let’s turn now to the statistics I’m a little less pleased about. Since I’ve already touched on the Black Love goal, let’s go to my general expectation of myself to read at least 40% from BIPOC authors…

So, yeah, that’s not going well this year. Considering I also didn’t meet my goal last year, I’m really aggravated with myself. I’m going to have to do some significant course correction in the second half of the year. But there are plenty of books I’m desperate to read from BIPOC authors so that’s not really a problem. I’m also specifically within this space, trying to read 12 books from Indigenous Authors and so far I’ve only read two so I’ve got to work on that as well.

From there, let’s talk about my reading with Queer representation. I have achieved my goal of reading twelve sapphic books, using the women who are attracted to women definition, but not if the goal was to read specifically books about two or more women being in a relationship together. Nevertheless, I’m pleased with achieving that goal. I’m only at 4 or 5 books by trans/non-binary authors or about trans/non-binary characters. Overall, I feel okay about my 18% number, especially since that’s up 6% since last year.

And then, my final goal was to develop a writing habit and, um, well, that’s not really worked out so far. But I’d still like for it to. We’ll see.

How is your reading going? Do you set reading goals? If so, are you achieving them?

xx