I wrote this yesterday

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want for next year’s reading goal to be. It’s always a tough choice for me though I can’t say why exactly I find it to be such a big deal. I guess maybe because I have such an obsession with reading and books in general that I can’t help but put a ton of weight on it. I think I might actually enjoy tormenting myself about what I’m going to read and how much. I think I actually have fun deciding what kind of shit I’m going to put myself through each year.

 

This year my original goal was like 50,000 pages and then my stretch goal was 55,000 and then once I got to where I had just about hit that I decided that my new stretch goal would be 60,000. In the past I’ve worked to have my goals made by December 28th, but I decided that since I’m doing a the stretch goal from my stretch goal that I can give myself a few extra days to reach it. Which means that I (probably) won’t be starting my challenge for next year until January 1st this year which I haven’t done in quite some time.

 

The other thing I’ve done for the last few years is the PopSugar Reading Challenge. They put one out every year around like October or November for the coming year and I’ve completed that their challenge at least two years in a row, possibly three. I found their new list about a month ago or so and I’ve been debating whether or not I want to do next year’s list or not. It usually is kind of fun to find books to fit the different “requirements” and try to find ways to read books I already want to read match something on the challenge list.

 

The challenges do push me to try things I wouldn’t normally and to stretch outside my usually genres which I do think is good for me and often results in my finding a book a really love that I wouldn’t have expected myself to enjoy. But it also means ending up in the middle and sometimes slogging through books that don’t really interest me or are depressing or graphic in ways that aren’t good for me. I think it’s good to get out of your safety zone sometimes but sometimes that safety zone is there for very important reasons.

 

Some of the requirements that have me considered in this year’s challenge are True Crime, Nordic Noir, and a novel about death or grief. These are potentially triggering things for me and I’m unsure of how some of these things will go. I don’t know that I think it’s a good idea for me. As much as I love reading challenges and the fun of creatively filling in requirements, I think I’m going to pass on doing one of the usual ones this year.

What I do want to see if I can do is if I can read/listen to 65,000 pages next year. I may try to keep up with fanfics too. That was the plan this year, but I only managed to do that for about a month and half so I can’t say that I feel confident that I’ll be able to manage that. I mean, 65,000 is a lot of pages. Technically I think that’s an average of about 178 - 179 pages a day which is like three of hours listening to an audio book or one of the longer graphic novels so definitely not easy. At the same time, I’d really like to try. I guess we’ll see what happens!