Much like TBRs become graveyards of aspirations unless you actually make a point of reading the books on them, goals are also useless unless you follow up on them. Back in January I gave myself some reading goals; with the year half gone, how does my progress look?
1. At least 48 books
At the time of writing I am either on par or ahead of the game. It depends on whether you want to count different translations of a book as the same or different: I read La vengeance m’appartient in French, Swedish, and English.
2. At least 4 books in French
Three so far, by some miracle or other.
3. At least 25% of books in Swedish
Not a problem at all thanks to a strong start to the year.
4. At least 12 non-fiction books
Already ten at this point! Not sure how that happened but I’ll take it.
5. At least 12 books that have been in my library for over a year
This is where we start to fall behind, though only a bit. At the time of writing this number stands at five.
6. At least 10 books from my to-read list (as of January 1, 2024).
One of the few criticisms to be leveraged at Storygraph is that there doesn’t appear to be a “date added” function on the to-read section, meaning I have to rely on memory. I’m finding this tricky going; since this post has been a work in progress for a few weeks and I’ve come back to revise, I’ve found that I’m not sure what counts and what doesn’t. I’m going to be very conservative with this estimate and also note the titles here for my own reference, which at this point is six so far:
– Summer
– La vengeance m’appartient
7. At least half are by women or enby authors
Exactly on track, which is slightly disappointing since I assumed I would be ahead of the game.
8. At least 10% of books from Black authors
It’s impossible to fully evaluate success or failure on a percentage until the final count is established, of course. Assuming that my annual number should end up at “about five books,” then for halfway through the year I’m ahead of the game with four. The interviews with Samuel Delaney, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose in Flame Wars (“Black to the Future“) are worth noting as well, though I’m not going to try to pad out my numbers by equating one essay with a whole book.
9. A book from at least one new-to-me country (as of January 1, 2024)
At some point in the spring I got it into my head that my target was ten new-to-me countries per year, so I hustled a bit more than I would have otherwise and managed to meet and exceed this goal already! Countries in question: Senegal, Syria. Here’s the map so far:
