Finally it’s time to stop looking at 2023 (as fun as that’s been) and to start focusing on 2024.
Many of my goals and the challenges I set for myself for 2023 were not accomplished. I’m okay with that, mostly, because some of what came up along the way ended up better than I’d hoped. And the rest…well, really didn’t matter much anyway. So I’m over it.
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.
Cut down on my Goodreads Want-to-Read list and the unread books that I own (a perennial project, but 2024 was not good for the size of that stack)—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 the last couple of years, 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.
I was planning on cutting back on the Reading Challenges I was trying, but ended up just exchanging two for two new ones. There’s plenty of overlap possible between them, so that’ll help. These are concrete tasks, no more of these “Read as Many of X as You Can” challenges. 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 want to continue the Literary Locals, but I think I need to find a new phase of it, something different.
I plan on pressing forward with Grandpappy’s Corner, and hopefully do posts for it more frequently.
2024 Book Challenges
Goodreads Challenge
My oldest son taunted me into upping my annual goal to 250 last year. I think I’ll go for that again–I’m not sure I’ll beat it this year. Some things might come up to cause me to read a little less–and I’ve got some slower reads on my calendar for the year. So if I hit that, I’ll be more than satisfied. If I miss it, well, I really don’t care–it’s just habit to set a goal for this at this point.
Well, okay, I don’t care that much.
12 Books
I did this one in 2022, and it really expanded my reading. I thought the same would happen last year, but…wow. I got distracted. So I want to take another stab at this group of selections.
Reading with Wrigs
This is a fun-looking challenge designed to step into the gap left by the retirement of the While I Was Reading Challenge. I’m looking forward to giving it a shot.
The 2024 Booktempter’s TBR 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, more if I can squeeze in some of the stretch goals. This has been pretty helpful the last two years, and I expect the same this year.
Backlist Bingo 2024
I enjoyed participating in Armed With a Book’s Bingo a few years ago, so when I saw this one announced, I found myself ignoring my resolution to cut down on challenges for the year.
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)
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