2023 Plans and Challenges

Finally it’s time to stop looking at 2022 (as fun as that’s been) and to start focusing on 2023.

Typically, I’m reticent to get into calling my shots, as it were, too much anymore—there’s a project from 2020 still hanging over my head to point out the problems with me doing that. I’m sure there are older abandoned (or “paused”) projects, too —I just don’t want to go spelunking through the archives to find more personal failures (minor, to be sure, but technically failures).

I do have things I want to accomplish here over the next 12 months for a variety of reasons—and listing them like this helped last year (although, you’ll see a lot of echoes here from that post. But most of those echoes are of a “continue doing this” nature). So, here’s what I’m going to shoot for around here in the next 12 months.
Continue that Literary Locals Project!
Cut down on my Goodreads Want-to-Read list and the unread books that I own (a perennial project, but I made some strides last year)—at least two of the Book Challenges this year should be a fun way to help.
I’m going to finish my Classic Spenser series and maybe find another Classic to do a project read-through. We’ll see about that. (This is a repeat from last year, but it’s nagging at me)
I’m going to continue to be picky in the Book Tours I participate in. I still like Tours, they expose me to things I wouldn’t normally read—and I’m going to keep doing them. But if I’m picky, it helps me focus on other things.
Similarly, I’m doing fewer Book Challenges. I like the ones I’ve picked out—but they’re concrete things, no more of these “Read as Many of X as You Can” challenges. They don’t move the needle one bit for me as far as picking books—I read as many as I’m going to anyway, just with a count. But Challenges with specific targets can be fun. I’ll talk about those in a minute.
Try to interview more authors (maybe others, too?), and get better at that, too. The Literary Locals series is helping with that.
I have one other new feature that I’ll be debuting soon(ish). I’m excited about it, but need a couple of more things to happen before I tell you anything.

2022 Book Challenges

Goodreads Challenge
My oldest son taunted me into upping my annual goal to 250 this year. I’ve topped that the last 7 years, so I feel pretty good about meeting that. I’d kept my goal lower because 200 seemed realistic—and anything above it was just gravy. Ultimately, I really don’t care if I hit it—or beat it.

Well, okay, I don’t care that much.

12 Books
I did this one last year, and it really expanded my reading. This year looks like it’ll do the same. There are 2 books I’d had on my list of “should probably read” and 1 book that I’d never heard of before, but instantly wanted to read as soon as it was recommended. The rest? I’m looking forward to reading them, but I’m relatively certain I wouldn’t have picked on my own. BTW, I could use one more recommendation to finalize this list.

2022 While I was Reading

I’ve done this one for the last few years—and Ramona’s done a great job of stretching me. And will continue to do so—this year’s categories look like a lot of fun, too.

Your TBR Reduction Book Challenge

I really appreciate the way this one is put together, and it’s pretty easy—just 1 book a month and my TBR should go down by at least 12. This was pretty helpful last year, and I expect the same this year. I’ve actually already knocked off the January stretch goal, and should have the actual goal done next week.

Beat the Backlist Reading Challenge;

I’ll be pairing this one with my Goodreads Want-To-Read goal and the TBR Reduction challenge as much as I can. It’s really just a way to trick myself into doing better at both of those. I’ve seen a few people do this lately, and it seemed like a good idea. Still, I’m not a glutton for punishment—I’m only going for the 24-prompt version.

I’ll also undoubtedly do the 20 Books of Summer Challenge…that’s been pretty fun. And I can easily combine it with 2 or 3 of the above challenges, to be super-productive.

That’s everything I have planned, I can’t wait to see what unplanned things happen around here. Hope you’re around to join in the fun!

(Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay)