Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Goals for 2024

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

Previous Top Ten Tuesday Topics

• 24th October: Atmospheric Books
• 31st October: Hallowe’en Freebie – Books featuring spooky hares
• 7th November: Book Titles That Would Make Great Newspaper Headlines
• 14th November: Reasons Why I’m Thankful for Books
• 21st November: Mainstream Popular Authors that I Still Have Not Read
• 12th December: Books On My Winter 2023-2024 To-Read List
• 2nd January: Favourite Books of 2023
• 9th January 2023: Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2024

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As a mood reader, bookish goals area a sort of movable feast – an inchoate mass of vague ambition and hopes. Will I be concerned if I don’t meet these goals and ambitions? Not a bit! Is reading a chore or a joy? Definitely a joy for me, and a slavish adherence to goals neither motivates nor inspires me! If they do for you, then I am happy for you but it feels too rigid for me.

Number of books

Genuinely any reading is wonderful and, whether you read one book or a hundred and fifty, you are a reader!

• I have set myself a somewhat arbitrary goal of 60 books this year – I tend to average at about a book a week over the past few years.

I have also been learning Italian over the last year or so, even turning the settings on my phone into Italian which has affected much more of its use than I’d expected: maps, apps, games, news are now both in the Italian language and actually have an Italian focus.

• I would like to have read at least one book – let’s be honest, a short book! – in Italian this year.

Genres

As always, as a mood reader, I don’t tend to avoid specifying any specific genres to read. That said, I did make a conscious decision a couple of years ago to branch into science fiction more, and am glad I did!

• I would like to read more poetry this year – which is a familiar ambition! I am fairly familiar with the traditional literary canon, and those poems that keep getting anthologised, but would be interested in growing my famliarity with contemporary poetry.
• I would like to re-read more of the classics, reading with an adult eye what my University courses fed me at a rapid pace as an eighteen year old – perhaps a Shakespeare play a month, some Austen, some Dickens

Authors

I did feel at times in my reading last year – and the year before – that my reading was rather samey.

• I’d like to read with more variety: more authors from outside the UK and USA industries, more authors of colour, more authors from cultures and with experiences other than the western one.
• I’d also like to read more independently published authors this year – tap into the well of talent that doesn’t fit into the boxes and predilections of the big five publishing houses.

NetGalley

NetGalley is a fantastic resource for readers and – I hope – a positive experience and opportunity for writers.

• I would also like to make more use of NetGalley this year and request (and be approved for) at least a dozen books, plucking a fairly arbitrary figure from the aether.
• I would also like to keep on top of my NetGalley percentage and end the year on at least 90%,

I’m not doing too badly with this already: I have four books for 2024 approved, and have requested a fifth, and two of those are on my Most Anticipated Books post last week.

Tracking

I have moved from Goodreads to Storygraph this year. I have been on Goodreads for many years, but have never really become part of the community there and Storygraph has a range of pretty graphics!

• Therefore, one goal is to keep it up to date and current.

I do also keep my own tracker with the usual data – dates books begun and finished, page count, publication date – and a few pieces of other data.

• Alongside keeping Storygraph up to date, therefore, I am also resolving to keep my own tracker up to date.

Blog

I did fall far behind in my blog posts last year, especially in the latter half of the year.

• I would like to keep up with the Top Ten Tuesday and post each week, even if it is brief.
• I would like to post at least three reviews a month too – which should be keeping track with my reading but also I may post reviews of my backlog of books.
• I currently have 896 subscribers to the blog and it would be great to reach 1,000 as, again, an arbitrary round number…

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Upcoming Top Ten Tuesday Themes

January 23: Books I Meant to Read in 2023 but Didn’t Get To
January 30: New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2023
February 6: Top Ten Quick Reads/Books to Read When Time is Short (Books under 150 pages, or if you’re not a novella reader maybe spin this to be books you could read in a day or a single sitting.) (Submitted by Jennifer @ FunkNFiction.com and Angela @ Reading Frenzy)
February 13: Love Freebie (in honor of Valentine’s Day tomorrow)
February 20: Bookish Superpowers I Wish I Had (e.g. never accidentally buying the same book twice, every book I buy would be automatically signed/personally dedicated by the author, the ability to read faster, etc.) (Submitted by Cathy @WhatCathyReadNext)
February 27: Covers/Titles with Things Found in Nature (covers/titles with things like trees, flowers, animals, forests, bodies of water, etc. on/in them) (Submitted by Jessica @ a GREAT read)