I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I used too, but I never stuck to them which then caused me to beat myself up for my presumed “failure”. (Don’t worry. I used to be the Queen of Negative Self-Talk. Nowadays, I’m more like a lady-in-waiting.) The only exception to this rule is setting a goal for the number of books to read in my Kindle app.
I am an avid reader and have been as long as I can remember. If you had asked me several years ago if I would ever make the change from physical books to ebooks, the answer would have been a resounding NO. However, the transition began slowly before I retired. Trying to juggle a purse, lunchbox, and book among other things when going from the car to the office and back was a pain. Since I’ve always got my phone, converting to reading using the Kindle app was sort of natural. Eventually, I noticed that the app tracks what I read (duh) and prompted me for a “reading goal” at the beginning of a new year. Not having any idea how much I actually read, my initial goals were guesstimates at best.
According to my Kindle app, my reading stats for the past few years are as follows:
- 2019: 41 titles read (no goal set)
- 2020: 160 titles read with a goal of 45. It seems I don’t estimate well, LOL.
- 2021: 156 titles read with a goal of 100. Better estimation, but still on the low side.
- 2022: 114 titles read with a goal of 125.
2022 is the year I learned that the Kindle app does not give you credit for re-reading books. (Seriously Kindle? What’s up with that?) Since I did a lot of re-reading in 2022, it’s time to crunch the numbers and find out how many book I actually read in 2022. *cracks knuckles*
- Two new books came out in Nalini Singh’s Guild Hunter series, so of course I re-read the first 13 books in the series in preparation.
- A new book came out in Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changeling Trinity series so I re-read 14 of the 15 books in her Psy-Changeling series and the first 5 books in the Psy-Changeling Trinity series. (I skipped one book in the original series because I really don’t like the hero in that book.)
- A new book came out in Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series so I re-read the first 12 books in the series.
- A new book came out in Faith Hunter’s Soulwood series so I re-read the first 5 books in the series.
Side note: I don’t always re-read a series when a new book comes out. It kind of depends on how long it has been since I read the series or since a new book released.
So, let’s see:
- 114 books counted by the Kindle app
- 13 Guild Hunter books
- 14 Psy-Changeling books
- 5 Psy-Changeling Trinity books
- 12 Mercy Thompson books
- 5 Soulwood books
- 163 number of books actually read in 2022
Booyah! Take that Kindle app! Yes, my competitiveness is making itself known, LOL. Just for giggles, I set my reading goal at 125 titles again this year. However, based on the computations above I may bump it up to 150.
So, are you a reader? If so, do you set any sort of reading goals? And, ebooks, physical books, or both?
Linda Lou's Life 
I am a reader but a slow one, very deliberate, and rarely read any series of books. I used to set goals and challenge myself with proscribed lists of what I should read, but stopped that. Now I read what I want, when I want, and never keep track. I majored in English Lit in undergrad and got enough of required reading back then. Now it is for fun.
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I agree. I read for fun and read what I want, when I want. The idea of book clubs has never appealed to me because I don’t like the idea of being told what I have to read and discuss; that’s a little too much like book reports from my school days.
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I’m a reader, and I love my e-books too, but I’ll be lucky if I end up reading 20 this year!
Actually, I’m off to a rockin’ start. But that’s not the norm.
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My reading pace has definitely picked up since I retired. When my kids were young, most of my reading consisted of short magazine articles that could be finished in a matter of minutes.
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I’d consider myself an avid reader. The problem is, I am also a really picky one. The older I get, the less likely I am to waste my time on bad, or even mediocre writing and tropes. So I think I read fewer books every year, possibly because publishing has shifted from a focus on quality (not just in source material, but in copy editing, etc.) to acquiring manuscripts from people with a lot of followers or celebrities. But like you, I’ll go back to my favorites and mostly they don’t disappoint.
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I guess I’m only semi-picky. It’s rare for me to not finish a book; there’s always the hope that it will get better. That hope is not always realized, but it’s always there!
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