Reading Goal Check In #1

Welcome back! We’re now 1/4 through the year, which is really shocking to me. Time goes so fast! Probably doesn’t help that lockdown has made every day the same so looking back it feels like I’ve not really done anything. As we’re a quarter of the way through the year, I thought I’d do a quick check-in with my reading goals to see how far I’ve come so far.

To recap, my goals were:

My Total Reading Goal

70 books in total, and read some of the intimidating/chunky books I have on my TBR pile!

Diverse Author & Story Goals

Read books by LGBT authors and authors of colour more often, and also books including LGBT characters and/or characters of colour more often. I know there are a lot of issues with the Own Voices label so I won’t only be focusing on OV, especially for books with LGBT characters where the author may be OV, but in the closet. I didn’t put a specific target on this as I don’t want to read diversely just to fill a quota, but instead make sure I change my reading habits so I am seeking out diverse voices as often as possible.

Genre and Form Goals

This year, I wanted to read more non-fiction (my target is 12 non-fiction books), and also read more poetry, and more genres that I enjoy, but don’t often read, like crime/mystery fiction.

How am I doing so far?

I’m using GoodReads and The StoryGraph to track my reading, and I update them when I remember, but I’ve actually been using Notion a lot more to track my reads, because I can create more progress/percentage bars on there than I can with the reading tracker sites.

My total goal

I’m at 16 out of 70, which is 23%. I guess that means I’m behind by about one book, but that should be easy to catch up on!

Diverse Author & Story Goals

So far this year, I’ve read 3 translated works, 5 books by AoC, and 4 books that include LGBT+ characters. Bearing in mind I’ve only read 16 books this year, I’m fairly pleased with that. I think books with LGBT characters are the ones I find harder to seek out, so please send me any recommendations for adult fiction with LGBT characters (some romance is fine, but I don’t read anything that’s too explicit), or non-fiction by LGBT people!

Genre and Form Goals

I’ve read 3 non-fiction books so far this year, which puts me exactly on track for 12 over the year! I’ve not branched out that much genre-wise yet, though, so that’s something I need to focus on. Please recommend me some good science-fiction and crime/mystery (again, adult/NA please!). I have read a poetry book, but only one, and it disappointed me. I’ve put an LGBT poetry book on my TBR for next month though, so I’m hoping I enjoy that one!

Owned TBR

A related goal I had was to get my owned TBR down to under 50. Currently, it stands at 231. Eek! To be fair, many of those are books at my Dad’s house that I’m intending to unhaul, but I currently can’t go and pick them up due to COVID-19 restrictions. Hopefully by my next check-in at the end of June I will have been, picked them up, and unhauled them! I also need to go through and check that the list is up to date because there may be some I have already unhauled on there.