Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme that was originally created and hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books starting in August 2019, and was then cohosted with Dani @ Literary Lion from May 2020 to March 2022. Book Nook Bits has hosted since April 2022.
February 24: Are reading goals worth it?
(Aria)
Prompts: We’re two months into 2023 – how are you feeling about your reading this year? Do you have a yearly reading goal? Do you think that those kinds of goals help you to feel motivated to read more books, or just causes stress? If you set yearly reading goals, when and why did you start setting them? Would you consider reading without aiming for a number? If you don’t set reading goals, why not?
So far this year, I’m actually feeling really good about my reading. I’ve read more by this point than I usually would, though I’m not quite sure how, and I’d say I’ve probably read a few more I wasn’t fussed on than usual, but overall I’m happy. I do have a yearly reading goal – I set one every year, and though a few years ago I increased it gradually as I hit each ‘goal’, this year I’m sticking with one reasonable goal, which I’ll have a look at in June and see if I want to increase it or just try and see how far above it I can get (I love when the percentage shows as over 100!).
I don’t think reading goals add to my motivation, but they don’t cause stress either. Actually, something that has helped my motivation has been the reading challenges I’m doing – it’s so satisfying to cross them off the lists, and it helps me hugely in picking out what I’m going to read next. I started setting Reading Goals in 2015, and at the time it was partly because I wanted to see how many books I was managing to read in a year. I don’t necessarily aim for the number on my reading goal, either – I have tried that before and it just made me feel sad when I didn’t reach it! I started setting my goal based on what I read in previous years, but in 2021 I dropped it down to 50, even though I’d read 127 in 2020 (thanks to lock-downs), and in 2022 I kept it at 60 – my total in ’21 was 94 and I hit 95 last year, though I still put my goal at 70, to keep it reasonable.
How are you feeling about your reading so far this year? Do you set reading goals or prefer not to?
Unwrapping Words 