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?