Hello again to my small scrap of the internet, all negative seven of you who read this thing (negative mathematically, not in terms of your attitude, which I’m sure is lovely).
I made two big reading goals for 2024: to tackle at least half of my physical TBR (“to be read”) list and to read less than the year before.
TL;DR I failed both goals, but especially the goal to read less.
But first, a few excuses
I meant to write this post in 2024, but I’m full of excuses:
- Physically, I’m tapped out. I had mastitis a few weeks ago and was recovering from a C-section before that and was pregnant before that, and in general, I’m obscenely sleep-deprived. I’m also quite literally depleted from breastfeeding around the clock.
- I have a one-month-old baby who is hungry every two to three hours like clockwork and likes to be held for naps and, well, I only have the two arms. And my four-year-old wants some attention too sometimes. (I’ve finally resorted to finishing this blog post on my phone while nursing. I hate typing on my phone because my thumbs are weirdly ginormous, so you’re welcome, internet ghosts.)
- And finally, I just didn’t feel like writing most of the time. I’m the worst about following through on my creative projects, as evidenced by the fact that I haven’t posted in something like seven months. Classic Paige, waiting on a flaky muse.
Rationale for my 2024 reading goals
In 2023, I set my all-time reading record: 120 books in a year. But I felt glutted on books; I could barely remember much about any of the books beyond a vague sense of whether I enjoyed reading them or not. So I decided to recalibrate in 2024 and focus on savoring what I read and slowing down a bit.
And as a lifelong reader and a librarian by trade, I’ve accumulated a lot of books (though not as many as you might expect), several of which I’ve never actually read. The looming pile of books I’ve been meaning to get around to was beginning to feel overwhelming.
I’m not one for New Year Resolutions really, but at the beginning of the year, I made two reading goals: to read less and to conquer at least half of my physical TBR (in other words, read at least half of the unread books that I own).
And as I already admitted, I didn’t meet either of my goals this year. Let’s assess where I went wrong, shall we?
2024 goal #1: Read LESS
When I discovered I was pregnant with my second child in the spring, I thought I had this thing in the bag. Surely I’d be too exhausted to read as much as 2023, so if nothing else, that would slow me down.
However, it turns out that the exhaustion of pregnancy slowed me down in every other area (adulting, work productivity, blog writing, etc.) but reading. To no one’s surprise but mine probably, reading was my chosen form of rest more often than not when the rest of it seemed overwhelming. And then, once baby boy arrived in late November, my Kindle and audiobooks protected me from falling asleep or losing my sanity on the long nights of breastfeeding a newborn every 2-3 hours.
In the end, I read 131 books (about 47,944 pages, according to Goodreads) in 2024, up from my previous record of 120 books (approximately 42,433 pages) in 2023. To be fair, 2024 was a leap year, so…
2024 goal #2: Read half of my physical TBR
I read about 19 of the books I already owned but hadn’t read. I have 22ish remaining, not counting the handful of books I acquired over the year (mostly gifts, I swear). These numbers also don’t include the dozen or so professional development books gathering dust in my office closet. I can only tackle a few of those a year and rarely during the school year when I’m using most of my mental faculties up during the work day.
I didn’t quite meet this goal, but I’m pleased with the progress I made! I plan to repeat this goal for 2025.
2024 reading celebrations
I may not have met my goals this past year, but I have a lot to celebrate! My usual fare is predominantly fiction; I inhale fiction, and I pick at nonfiction. In 2024, for the first time, I read an average of 1-2 nonfiction books every month. I’ve actually had one nonfiction book a month as a reading goal in previous years, but never met it. This year, unintentionally, I surpassed it!
I also read the Bible all the way through for the third or fourth time in my life, which is always an undertaking. (My honest Goodreads review is ⭐⭐⭐⭐ and reads, “Minus one star for selfish human reasons: because it’s hard to understand sometimes and because Numbers is so freaking boring.”)
While I didn’t meet my physical TBR goal, I did make a significant dent in it and rehomed several titles that I didn’t love to our neighborhood Little Free Library.
I discovered some new favorite titles, which I’ll share in another blog post…if I get around to it…if you’re reading this, please pressure me into following through. [Edited to update: I did it! I did the post!]
And finally, I made ONE WHOLE CENT from this blog despite ghosting it for most of the year! I laughed so hard when I saw that. I feel like I should frame a penny in celebration and hang it by my computer. The question then is, heads or tails?
In conclusion…
All in all, not a bad reading year. Once again, I forgot most of what I read because I read too many titles for my tired mom/teacher/human brain, but I think the successes outweigh that. I’m calling it a win.
paige in the library 