In order to look ahead to what I want to accomplish in my reading life for 2020, it is necessary to look back at 2019. I need to see what parameters were set in order to ascertain which ones worked and which ones didn’t. This will help me decide on what is the most important focus of 2020. My reading life consists of more than just reading a certain number of books each year. There are several organizational pieces that go into managing what to read, how to read, — yes, how to read means the medium in which I consume a title, dead tree, kindle, audio — what has been read, when it was read, and finally analyzing the lingering emotions about the title.

Since approximately 2017 I have had the standing reading goal of 52 books a year. This is the minimum number of titles that I can see myself completing in order to maintain a healthy personal development and business education, while allowing escapism reading to be the primary focus. 52 is not the number I chose for the 2019 Goodreads Challenge. I wanted to stretch myself to 75 books, and whelp, I hit that in July. As of this posting, I am at 135 books for the year  but I still have over 36 hours left in 2019. This year I am going to try to chill at an even 100 titles.

Let’s talk about how to track that number. I use two methods. Goodreads magically updates itself with the majority of my kindle reads and I manually enter the dead tree as I make sure the dates are accurate for each of the completed titles. The second method is good ol’pen and paper. But my process is special to me, and I really want to talk about it in more detail…with pictures!

There is this little planner company called Plum Paper. I have designed my own planner since 2016 and have been thrilled by the product and its changes year after year. I get the 7×9 spiral bound planner. Yes it’s big. Yes I buy a handbag piece of luggage just so that it can travel in style with me wherever I go. It is quite literally my whole life and I would probably actually die if I ever lost it – my meal times and reminders to breathe are contained therein. #Enneagram1

In 2019 I used this monthly spread to keep track of the what, when, and how of my reading life. It’s a great visual to see what I have accomplished each month and over the course of the year. I used the lined pages within each month’s tabbed section to formulate my bookish attack plan. Sometimes the plan worked out, it was always edited as the month progressed, but most of the time the monthly plan was destroyed by none other than Nikki’s holds situation… Ok, fine, and my lack of commitment to one book over another.

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For 2020, I am going to continue to track via GoodReads and in my planner, but with more stickers! I swear I am a grown-ass woman. I’m going to probably crush my goal of 100 books. I am going to keep the rules of reading at least one non-fiction book a month and allowing myself to DNF at will. Otherwise, I’m just going to see where my reading journey takes me. Welcome to the ride.

For 10% off your first order of $30 or more at Plum Paper, and to help keep me in my sticker habit, email me at ashley@heartwantsbooks.com and I will send you my referral code.

~Ashley

As an #Enneagram6 (with a strong 5 wing), I understand Ashley’s need to organize all the things (6 goes to 3 in stress) (for more information on the Enneagram, visit The Enneagram Institute or Your Enneagram Coach).  However, my ability to stick with/my dedication to multiple tracking methods is … quite limited. We started the Modern Mrs. Darcy 2019 Reading Challenge in January and I quickly decided that perhaps I’d do the challenge quarterly and see where I landed.  However, I never completed it, not even once. Despite having a plethora of titles in translation I own (both Kindle and dead-tree), I read zero translated titles this year.  I don’t think the half dozen or so books with a smattering of untranslated French count, even if they were joyous experiences (and two made it into my favorites – check back Thursday for the official lists). Oh well. I also abandoned that tracking tool (a Google Docs Excel I custom set up to track my reading by month) in June (on accident, but still).  In addition to that reading challenge, I had a few additional goals. 

• I set a goal of reading my Amazon First Reads selection every month, which I think happened all of once (yes, I did download the free book(s) each month).  Update, I checked, it didn’t happen at all).  
• Another goal was reading one dead-tree (physical) book each month from my stack.  I read several physical books from the library (out of desperation), but none from my stack, and certainly not 12.  

• I wanted to read one book a month from my e-book stack.  I read one all year, in January.  
• I wanted to read one non-fiction book a month.  Through October I read at least two each month (reading four a month for the first quarter), and then none in November and December (with 36 hours left, and one non-fiction I’d still like to tackle this year).  I may pick up two non-fictions in the last hours of the year, just to make November my outlier. Regardless of if that happens, I’m calling this a win, since at least with averages, I definitely upped my number of non-fiction titles read, which was my actual goal.  
• I set a Goodreads goal of reading 75 books this year.  I completed this challenge in July and then decided in November to see if I could hit 150.  As of 12/30, I have 152, and I’m 45% into Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and plan to read at least one additional book (my non-fiction), perhaps more before the ball drops. 
• Rate and review each title I read.  I did this through July (with the exception of some titles I purposefully didn’t, as you’ll be reading about them here in the coming months).  I have a goal of at least rating and writing a little review about all of them still, but we’ll see. I genuinely enjoyed most of them and want to be a part of helping readers find more books they’ll enjoy, and avoid those they won’t, so this is near and dear to my heart. 

My analysis of my 2019 goals tells that I set too many goals for me to realistically track and accomplish given the rest of my life and my (lack of) dedication to this number of goals.  There’s also my holds situation, which Ashley kindly referenced. I have 53 (54 is my record high, in case you were wondering) books on hold with my electronic library, which does include 5 non-fiction titles. While this would stress many people out, even if that number wasn’t only one-third of the books they read this year, roughly, it doesn’t bother me.  They’re mostly suspended and I’ll get to them when I get to them. It is frustrating I can’t place the newest, shiniest title on hold because I’ve surpassed the maximum of 15 (yes, you read that right – I have 53 of 15 hold spots filled), but I do have physical holds I can place if I need to read a title sooner. As a bonus to me, the physical lines are usually shorter, even if Kindle is my preferred method of consumption reading.  (I have seven holds on my physical library account right now, only two of those are for me and suspended, the other five are for my children, and are not suspended.) 

All that said, here are my 2020 goals:

• Read an average of at least one non-fiction book per month, preferably two.
• Read a total of 104 books this year.  That averages out to two a week.  While it’s less than my anticipated 155 this year, I do plan to re-purpose some of my reading time into time spent writing about books, and that time has to come from somewhere.  Perhaps in July I’ll decide to see if I can hit 208, perhaps not.
• Rate and review each title I read.  Do note dear readers that some reviews and ratings may be delayed because you’ll see a more in depth review here at Heart.Wants.Books later on.  I also plan to be more timely with these in 2020 than I was in 2019. 
• That’s it.  Nothing more lofty or complicated because, as I’ve proven, I don’t stick with goals that don’t bring me joy.  I’ll be reading mostly from my library or Kindle Unlimited this year and will go from there. I’ll probably purchase a few of my favorite titles, or those I anticipate to be favorites (I’ve already pre-ordered one in fact and you’ll definitely be seeing a review of it here), but that’s about it for my plans, aside from my holds list and whatever else sounds fun in the moment.

Reading is an adventure, and I hope you’ll join us on it!  Soon we’ll be posting about our plans for January. I’m really excited and I hope you will enjoy the journey!

~Nikki