Reading Resolutions 2015

Happy New Year, folks. After reporting on my abysmal failure at my 2014 reading challenges earlier in the week, its time to start fresh with new reading goals for 2015. This year I’ve signed on for fewer challenges, but I’m also hoping to motivate myself with more meaningful goals.

2015 Goodreads Challenge

In 2013, the first year I tracked my reading on Goodreads, I read 122 books. Last year, I set a goal to modestly increase that number to 125, and finished the year with 130 books read. In 2015 I am aiming to read 116 books. I am lowering the number a bit this year, because rather than going for quantity, I want to spend time focusing on my second goal.

Diversify 2015

This year rather than signing up for a lot of outside challenges, my goal is to work on diversifying my reading, with a specific focus on reading diverse authors. I already try to pay attention to diversity, but this year initiatives like Diversity in YA and We Need Diverse Books prompted me to take a closer look at my actual numbers.  It appears that just trying is not enough, since only about 10% of the books I read in 2014 were by minority authors. This is a challenge that is definitely much more about the journey than the destination, but since we tend to manage what we measure I’ll be tracking my reading, aiming for about one in four of the books I read this year to be by writers who are members of a visible minority.  Race isn’t the only aspect of diverse reading, and numbers aren’t everything, but this is one area of diverse reading in which I am visibly lacking, and I want to spend 2015 working on doing better. I hope that by spending a year focusing on finding authors whose work I enjoy, I will be ably to more naturally incorporate diversity into my reading in the future.

What reading challenges or goals have you set for yourself this year?