My Ambitious Reading Goals for 2024

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I’ve had a difficult relationship with reading goals in the past. As far as numeric goals go, I’ve done pretty well! But over the last years, I repeatedly set ambitious reading goals that were more specific like “read 5 translated books” and failed. A lot. Maybe, I thought, reading goals just don’t work for me. So in 2023 I didn’t set any! If you’re wondering how that worked out, you can read my 2023 reflection post!

I Didn’t Set Reading Goals in 2023. Do I Regret it?

As you can clearly tell from the title of this post, for 2024 I am back with ambitious reading goals, baby! But one thing is different this year: I’m not actually that attached to achieving them. Instead of tying myself to achieving some arbitrary numbers because they sound cool in my head, I am using these reading goals as inspiration to have a fun bookish year where I make reading a priority.

My Ambitious Reading Goals

After reflecting on my year without reading goals, in 2024 I’m going all in on personal reading goals and reading challenges! Am I going to achieve all of them? Maybe, maybe not. But my hope is that in pursuing these reading goals, I will prioritise bookish fun, fill my daily life with stories, read widely and both within and outside my comfort zone, and become a more discerning reader in my tastes.

So without further ado, here are my ambitious reading goals for 2024!

1) – I want to read 100 books

That’s more than I have ever read before and it is coming right after the slowest reading year I’ve had since starting this blog! It’s an ambitious number for me but averaging 2 books a week is actually not that crazy when I break it down. While it is a fun number, I primarily want this goal to motivate me to read consistently and to work on reducing my TBR. It’s the overarching reading goal for me this year, everything else is honestly added fun in reaching for this number.

Which brings me to my next goal:

2) – Reduce my physical TBR to 100 books or less

I know that owning more than 100 unread physical books is a privilege and honestly kind of absurd, considering that over the last years I’ve barely read any physical books! After unhauling and reorganising my shelves, I did an updated count of how many unread books I own and currently that number sits at 195. To be honest, it’s still more of an estimation since those are just the books in my own apartment at uni and quite a few are nonfiction books I am likely never going to read in their entirety. But theoretically, I have 195 physical books to read!

Here’s the goal: read and get rid of books so that by the end of 2024 I have 100 or fewer unread physical books on my shelf. Essentially, I want to reduce my physical TBR to a number that doesn’t give me a fucking heart attack when I look at it!

Part of this TBR reduction project is also a more general effort to…

3) – Curate my book collection to be more in line with my tastes

I reorganised my shelves by genre and it’s been very illuminating to see what genres I own most of and which parts of my physical book collection I actually want to invest in. For me, those collections are sci-fi, thrillers and mysteries, and my death and forensics nonfiction collection. There’s also a collection of “books with unusual formats” since those are books that I actually want to own physical copies of because their physicality is part of the story in some way! As I am hoping to read a lot this year and stretch my reading into different genres, new perspectives and voices, I expect that my reading tastes will expand with that effort. So maybe, my physical book collection will include even more specific categories! I’ll keep you updates on this as the year develops. That being said…would anyone be interested in a virtual bookshelf tour with my favourites from each category?

4) – Attempt the 52 book club challenge

Essentially, it’s a challenge with 52 prompts to read 52 books across the year! This challenge won’t be a huge focus for me and I am likely not going to read a book for each prompt. But I do like the idea of having some guiding reading prompts to inspire me to read books I maybe otherwise wouldn’t have picked up. You can find out more about this challenge on their website!

5) – Get my review copy TBR to zero

Yes, you read that right. I am not just striving for those 80% on NetGalley, no. I want to see a sweet, sweet 100% flash on my profile. At least until I inevitably request more books. Essentially, I am looking to do a full reset of my review copy TBR. The backlog of eARCs and ALCs has gotten too big for my own comfort and I want to do my due diligence and actually prioritise reading and reviewing those titles. This will be a big focus for the first season of 2024!

6) – Read 30 books in 31 days again

This is a challenge I have attempted twice in the past, once successfully. The lessons I learned from that reading challenge are documented in a neat little post here. Those kinds of daily reading challenges serve two main purposes for me: give me an excuse to ruthlessly prioritise reading in my daily life and immerse myself in as many stories as possible. Oh, and of course they tend to help my TBR a lot. Hey, that sounds a lot like it would work well with your other goals, Lay, I hear you say. And well, you are right, dear reader! Attempting another 30 books in 31 days challenge works perfectly with my overarching reading goals!

7) – Participate in a readathon

Historically, I have been really bad at readathons because I am such a massive mood reader. Additionally, I also just tend to forget about readathons I wanted to participate in unless I consistently remind myself. Life just gets busy, you know? But across the bookish community, there are sooo many cool themed readathons! In 2024, I want to try and participate in at least one of them.

8) – Read my way through my death books collection

Last year, I didn’t really read any of my death books. Which is a shame because death and forensic science (forensic anthropology in particular) are as strong an interest as ever for me! In 2024, I once again want to make more of an effort to read the books in my collection so I can then talk about them on the blog. Your friendly neighbourhood death lady is back, baby!

Let’s Chat!

Those are my pretty ambitious reading goals for 2024. Like I said, I don’t to expect to hit all or even any of these, really. They’re fun challenges and guiding stars for me to have something to aim for with my reading. Knowing myself, I will add and abandon goals throughout the year anyway.

Because I read relatively little in 2023, I’m excited to really dive back into books in 2024. I want to keep up with new releases and make an effort to find and support lesser known books. 2024 is the year of devouring and screaming about books, I think.

✨ Do you also have ambitious reading goals for 2024?

✨ What’s a non-numerical bookish goal you want to work towards this year?

I hope you have a lovely day,

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