It’s that time of the year again. The time when I pour over all my statistics about the hundreds of books I read, the thousands of posts I wrote and the millions of visitors who landed on my blog. All meticulously recorded in spreadsheets and brought to life through 3D graphs, bar charts and pie diagrams.
Who am I kidding?
The wizardry and attention to detail you’ll have seen reflected in 2003 reviews from other book bloggers, is noticeably absent here in BookerTalk land.
Absent for the simple reason that I’ve never tracked things like an author’s gender or ethnicity; publishers’ names; genres and sub genres, year of publication etc etc. I do have a spreadsheet where I record each book on my TBR — title, author, author’s nationality, when I bought/borrowed, read, DNF’d or gave it away. But i don’t have the enthusiasm or energy to analyse all of that.
So this post is going to be a simple look back at the “plans” I made for the year and whether I stuck to any of them or once again veered off down completely different paths.
1. Read What I Own
Part of my plan for 2023 was to make a dent in my TBR, driven partly by guilt but more by an increasingly desperate lack of space. The idea was to ..
“…put more effort into reading books in my TBR. That includes physical copies and e-books (especially all those requested via NetGalley that I have yet to open).”
To help me on my way, I
- revitalised my TBR book jar;
- tried to get into the habit of taking a few books off the TBR shelves and deciding whether to keep or let go (capturing the results in a Sample Sunday post) and
- set a #23in23 target where I would read 23 of the books I’d acquired before 2023
How did I do?
My TBR has gone down to 283 (from 298 same time last year) so not a huge change but it’s still in a downward direction.
The book jar has been a great success. Of the 11 books I picked out at random, I’ve now read nine. So I’m definitely going to continue with this approach in 2024.
I almost met my #23in23 target (by midnight on Dec 31 I had read 22 books and was a quarter of a way through the 23rd. So I am counting this as a success.
The sampling of the TBR shelves didn’t quite go according to plan because I forgot to do it some months (sigh). The result was that I “sampled” 18 books and kept most of them (14 to be exact) which didn’t open up as much extra shelf space as I need.
I’ve since let go of a pile of non fiction books that were a hangover from my working life. I thought when I retired that I might want to refer to them again but six years have now elapsed and I’ve not opened the once so decided they would be of more use in the library of a local university. Finally I can move some books off the floor onto shelves….
2. Read The Classics
The “plan” was very simple — read some of the books on my second classics club list that I created in July 2022. Based on current performance I predict it’s going to take me as long to complete as my first one.
This year I only ticked off four books from my list of 100 titles but two of them were twice as long as a standard paperback ( Armadale by Wilkie Collins came in at more than 700 pages and The Old Wives’ Tale by Arnold Bennett 600+). Can I count them twice? No? Oh you are all so strict……
I did complete two of the three Classics Club Spins – Armadale and The Old Wives’ Tale but ran out of time for the third which delivered me In the Castle of My Skin by the Jamaican author George Lamming. Never fear George, I’ll get to you later this year (possibly).
I’m counting this as a qualified success.
3. Get Those Reviews Done
Ah now this is where all my good intentions vanished into nothingness.
My intention was to cut down on the length of time between when I read a book and when I write the review. I said back in January last year “Ideally I’d like to have them written within a month of finishing the book.”
Did that happen? Are you kidding me? I think I managed it twice. The backlog is as long now as it was last year. There are some books I read a year ago that are still waiting to be reviewed. Maybe it’s time to say goodbye to my intention of reviewing every book I read?
4. Choose Reading Events Wisely
This was an attempt to tackle my tendency to get enthusiastic about all the wonderful reading events and challenges happening in the blogosphere. I love the spirit of camaraderie in these events but I always over-commit myself. Hence my plan that in 2023 I would join in only when I already had a suitable book in the TBR and had the time.
I never expected my level of involvement in reading events would fall to such a non existent level.
I managed to join #20booksofsummer once more. It’s been such a regular feature in my calendar that I was reluctant to let it go. But I did have to lower my sights to 10 books instead of the 15 I’ve aimed for in previous years. NonFictionNovember came and went with just one contribution from me but, despite good intentions, I didn’t get to do anything for the other event that month: NovellasinNovember
Technically I can consider this particular goal was a success but I rather wish I wasn’t quite so successful. I began to feel envious when I saw all the posts coming through my news feed for Reading Ireland month, Japanese Fiction Month and the club weeks organised by Karen and Simon. I’ll still be cautious about what I take on this year but with better forward planning I should be able to join a few more.
Reasons to be Cheerful?
Two successes, one complete failure and one qualified success add up to a pretty good year all round. Having said that, I don’t treat my reading plans/goals or whatever you want to call them, too seriously. I’m not out to win any bonus payments for good performance!
It’s good to have some form of a framework but I’m not going to let it dictate what and how I read. I reserve the right to ditch any so-called plans and go off in a totally different direction if the mood takes me.