Reading for leisure has always been one of my favorite hobbies. I lost the habit during college and have been trying to build it back up.
So 2017, I made a goal to read 50 books, or roughly 1 a week. Looking at pure numbers, I failed miserably. I read 29 out of 50. My page count underwhelmed as well. Only 3 of the books I read had more than 300 pages.
However, there was one big win. I was reading books again! Goodreads, which I highly recommend to all my friends who read, has a reading challenge feature. I partially have this feature to thank since I’m competitive and this allowed me to compete with myself.
For 2018, I refined my goal. This time, I didn’t want to just focus on book count, but I wanted to focus on content and quality as well. Challenging myself with longer, more difficult reads by authors outside of my comfort zone. I tend to read books written in 20th — 21st century by white male authors who live in Western civilization. This year, I wanted to branch out and read more points of view.
Here are what those refined goals are:
- Read 3 books a month (36 total)
- Read longer books ( < 300 pages)
- Half of books by women
- A few books by non-western authors
- A few books by winners of the nobel prize in literature
- A few books by writers of color
- A few books written before 1900
Note: a few was left generic on purpose. It’s greater than 1, but no specific number required
Here is where I stand so far:
- Yes. 18 books read thus far
- Yes. I’ve almost read as many pages in 6 months, as I did in all of 2017! 5664 pages in 2017, 5426 pages in 2018
- Not yet. 7/18 = 38% women authors
- Yes. 4/18 = 22% non-western authors
- Not yet. 1/18 = 6% by nobel laureates in literature
- Yes. 2/18 Black authors, 3/18 Asian authors, but 0 MENA (middle east north africa), hispanic or indigenous authors
- Not yet. 1/18 books written before 1900
Not bad, but still have room to grow!
You can see everything I read in 2018 here with my manually collected stats or here on goodreads. My 2017 stats are here.
