My Reading Goals In 2016

As I have mentioned in previous blog postings, I desire to experience a different kind of reading during 2016. This year I am only reading for me. No longer will I feel the pressure to keep up with the trend in the book communities, no longer will I gravitate towards the hyped up books that everyone is talking about, and no longer will I be reading children's books and young adult books (other then a few select young adult authors that have earned my respect). Some of the most disappointing reads this year involved books that were randomly picked up at the library, but the majority of disappointing books were those that are categorized in the young adult genre and were chosen based on talk through the BookTube community. No more. I have a carefully planned out array of books for my reading material during the year 2016. All books were carefully selected by research and cater to my newly developed tastes.

In the new year I will be reading a large amount of fantasy. Adult fantasy. Epic fantasy, high fantasy, they are all wonderful. And this brings me to my next reading goal for 2016. I will no longer be reading for quantity, rather for quality. Once you set that Goodreads reading challenge you begin to feel pressured to read in order to make that goal. That is not always a good thing. I myself have noticed that I shied away from some of the larger and thicker fantasy novels on my shelf because they would take too long to consume, instead opting for the smaller books so that I could read more in less time. That's absolute silliness. This year I will be setting my reading challenge to a more manageable amount so that I don't feel like I have to cram in those empty book calories. Who doesn't want to read 100 books over the course of a year, but what if you feel disappointed and unsatisfied with a large portion of those books? Was it really that great of a goal? No, instead I am going to read the books that I want to read, even if some of those books do have over a 1,000 page count. Maybe less books will ultimately be read, but if I enjoy a large majority of those books then it will make me happier then a larger book count ever did.

Another goal of mine is to reread some favorites. It has been a really long time since I have reread some of my favorite books and I am just itching to do exactly that. I always feel like I need to continue to tackle my TBR pile, and that rereading a book will get me no where. I will be doing as I please this year. Those unread books aren't going anywhere, and reading is a activity meant for enjoyment. Don't make reading into a job, or some kind of chore.

I am going to contradict myself here, but another goal of mine was to try to read the majority of the unread books on my bookshelves this year. I'm not going to stress out about it, but since I did a vast book unhauling earlier in the month I now feel like this goal is a little more realistic then what it formerly was.

2016 is going to be a good reading year!