You’ve already seen that I did pretty decently at the goals I set for 2021. However, I do feel like some of the goals I set, specifically the TBR ones, weren’t the most realistic. So for 2022 I tried to be a lot more mindful about the goals I’m setting. I started thinking about my goals in the last quarter of the year, but I really honed in on what I wanted to achieve at the very end of December, when I was sick for a week and couldn’t do much else but sit in bed and think. So I thought. And hopefully the goals that I set this year will not only be manageable, but fun and productive as well!
Blogging Goals
Before I start on my personal reading goals, I want to talk about the two goals I have for this platform.
Firstly, I’ll once again be taking part in the Book Blog Discussion Challenge hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction and Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight! I adore this challenge, and I love how it has a communal aspect where you can link up your discussion posts for other bloggers to easily find and discuss with you! My hope is that this year I not only write a fair amount of discussion posts, but I also check out some discussions that other bloggers have written and comment on those to give my two cents on the topic!
Secondly, I’d really love to reach 950 followers by the year 2023. I would stretch this goal to 1000, but I want to be reasonable. I think that gaining around 100 followers can be possible with enough consistent posting and interaction with other blogs. And that’s why I’m making this goal. Not just for the numbers, although I’ll admit that’s part of it. But I feel like having a goal for growth will push me to blog with purpose. And that’s something I’d really love to do in 2022!
Buying Books
After going through all my book buying habits, I realized that I want to be more mindful with my book buying. I’m not going on a book buying ban because that’s just not a realistic goal for me, but I would like to only buy a maximum of 60 books this year, which is an average of 5 books a month. If I buy 62, that’s okay. If I buy 56, that’s great. But I want to give myself a number that I can reference so that I never get tempted to buy 10 books in one purchase, but rather spread out my book buying in many little splurges. Plus, I feel like this will also help me think twice about whether or not I really NEED to buy a specific book. Last year there were too many times where I bought books I wasn’t really interested in just because. This year, I don’t want to do that.
Let’s hope I never walk out of Barnes & Noble with this many bags this year!
Culling the Bookshelves
Just like I want to be more mindful about the books I buy, similarly I want to be mindful about all the books I own. I want to continue unhauling books after I read them and don’t love them, or after it has been several months and I’ve lost interest in reading a TBR book. Ideally I will no longer have to unhaul TBR books since I’ll be getting better at buying books that I want to read immediately, but whatever it is, the essence of this goal is that I end 2022 with only books I’ve enjoyed, or think I will enjoy on my shelves!
NetGalley
This is possibly the goal I am most excited for. I’ve slowly been working through my backlist NetGalley titles, until now I just have one remaining. Of course, I also have some upcoming releases that I need to read and review, but getting through that backlist is what’s making me being able to set this goal in the first place.
You see, I would like to reach the 100% NetGalley ratio at some point during the year. Yes, that’s right. I want to get through every single book on my NetGalley TBR and review them all before requesting/getting approved/clicking on widgets for new books. I don’t care if I only maintain the perfect ratio for a day. I just want to prove that it’s possible, and show off that I managed to accomplish this impossible sounding feat!
Only 7 more books to read to reach that 100% mark!
Reading Experiments
In my mashup of a review and discussion post, I created two bookish experiments for myself. I then realized that if I didn’t include them in my goals post, I’d forget about them and would never see if I managaed to accomplish them or not. So here they are!
Try New Genres
As I mentioned in the original post, I want to read 3 books from 3 genres that are not romance or graphic novels. I believe I’ll be reading some literary fiction for one of the categories, but I really don’t know what to choose for the other two genres. Any non-depressing or heavily traumatic books from any other genres (Besides mystery, thriller, or horror) are welcome. I really need your recommendations!
Writing Reviews for a Month
After managing to write more than 12 reviews in 2021, my newest reviewing goal is to attempt to review all the books I read in one month over on Goodreads. This can be a review as short as a line or two, to a long full length review, as long as I talk about the book in some way! I might still go back and do this for January, but if you think it would be fun for me to do this in any other specific month, let me know!
Quarterly Check In
My last goal is one that I’m setting for accountability purposes. I feel like I will do best at my goals if I actually remember what they are! So I would like to check in every 3 months to see how I’m doing on my goals. I probably won’t make a dedicated check in post for these check ins, but I will try to include an update of how I’m doing in my wrap ups for March, June, and September!
Paper Procrastinators 
It’s important to have goals. I especially like your goal to limit the books purchased this year and try and spread it over a year. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of buying lots of books in one go as they’re cheap but then you can’t always find the time to read them. And I should really follow your example and be more mindful of the physical books I keep. Good luck with your goals this year.
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I really like setting these bookish goals for myself every year. It lets me be more purposeful about how I’m reading!
I thought long and hard about what I wanted my book purchasing goal to focus on, and in the end I realized that I don’t mind if I buy books, as long as I read them. So spreading out my purchases will hopefully lead to me reading more of the books I buy!
And I’d definitely recommend trying out an unhaul of your books. It feels so great to only have books you feel fondly about on your shelves!
Thank you!
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I not big on setting goals and following it but like last year I’m going try writing discussion posts. Good luck with your goals.
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I feel like setting goals and keeping goals are two separate tasks! But I hope you manage to write some fun discussion posts!
Thank you!
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I love your realistic goals. They made me think about what my own might be, too. Great point about keeping them intentional, like not the number as the goal but the effort that leads to the number. Good luck!! I’ll be waiting for the check in to keep you accountable, at least to remember your goals lol 🎉
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Thank you! I’m really happy that I set manageable goals this year. Hopefully this means I’ll be able to achieve them all pretty easily!
And I’m looking forward to my check ins as well! I’m glad to know I won’t be the only one excited to see the progress I make on my goals throughout the year!
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Good luck, I think your goals are fantastic!
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Thank you! It took me a while to come up with these goals, so I’m glad you appreciate the ones I ended up setting!
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Genre recommendations- what about a sideways step into fantasy? (Yes, I’m biased as it’s my favourite genre!)
Sharon Shinn writes really good fantasy with strong romantic elements, her Twelve Houses series would be my rec!
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I actually used to read quite a bit of fantasy, but that was quite a few years ago at this point. But you have me intrigued by Sharon Shinn, especially since you mentioned romantic elements! I’ll have to check out her Twelve House series! Thank you so much for the recommendation!
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Awesome goals!! I’m also attempting to be more purposeful with my book buying, but for a slightly different reason: I want to shrink my physical TBR! Also: I’m cheering you on for the NetGalley goal!! I’m currently in the 60-70 percent range for feedback ratio, so the fact that you’re already in the 90% range is super cool 🥳
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Thank you!
Right now I actually like the number of books on my TBR. I wouldn’t mind if my TBR stays in the 40-50 range, since I’m a mood reader, so I like having lots of options available to me. But if my TBR were any bigger, I’d want to shrink mine as well!
And thank you for cheering me on! I’ve worked quite hard to get to the 90% range, and now I just need to work a little bit harder for a little bit longer to reach my goal of that glorious 100% ratio!
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We share the culling the bookshelves one 😂 Up until now, I’ve kept pretty much every book I’ve ever bought or been gifted, and the number has gotten to a point where it’s very overwhelming… 😅
But your other goals are pretty great, too, and I wish you the best of luck with them!
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Great minds think alike, it seems! Oh wow! That’s a lot of books to keep on your shelves. This is probably the third or fourth time I’ve done a big unhaul. I can’t imagine going so many years without ever getting rid of any books! You must have amassed quite the collection! Best of luck culling the collection down to something less overwhelming!
Thank you! 💕
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These are some great goals, I’m also hoping to reach 100% ratio on NetGalley at some point this year. Good luck with these 💜
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I’m quite proud of my goals as well! I really hope I can accomplish them all!
Best of luck reaching your 100% ratio on NetGalley! I hope you reach it quickly and easily!
Thank you! 💕
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I hope you active all your bookish goals for 2022! I will look forward to your discussion posts, I always love reading them!
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Thank you so much! I really hope I achieve all my goals as well!
And that makes me so happy to hear! I already have some discussions planned, so hopefully you should be reading one or two of them pretty soon!
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These are some great goals! I’m also trying to be more realistic this year. For books out of your comfort zone I would maybe recommend All Systems Red from The Murderbot Diaries series. The series is all novellas (around 200 pages) so nice and short for trying something new. There’s action and some dark humour but I wouldn’t describe them as depressing – it’s mostly the adventures of a socially awkward robot who prefers Netflix to humans. 😂
I’m definitely setting book buying restrictions on myself this year, since my reading goal is to complete my entire (current) owned TBR by the end of the year. Based on the amount I read, the number I have right now will take most of the year to get through! I want to try only buying books when I want to read them straight away, rather than stockpiling them for some mysterious “later” that never quite seems to happen. 🤣 Good luck with all your goals this year! ❤️
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Thank you so much, Abi! Realistic goals are the best! I hope you’re able to accomplish all the goals you set for yourself this year!
Ooooh, I’ve heard such great things about that one and actually even read the first chapter or so and was really enjoying it, but then I put it down for unknown reasons! I’m going to definitely try to prioritize that as a book I read this year now that you mentioned it and reminded me! Thank you so much for the recommendation!
Completing your entire TBR sounds so daunting! I probably could accomplish this goal if I wanted as well, given that I read about 80-100 books a year and only have about 50 books on my TBR, but being the mood reader that I am, I don’t think I’d end up reading them all despite the manageable number of books. I think this a really fantastic goal though, that combined with mindful book buying can result in you ending up with a blank slate from which you can re-build your TBR!
Thank you! 💕
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Oooh, I hope you enjoy it when you get to it then! I actually read the whole Murderbot series twice last year, and All Systems Red three times. If you’re into audiobooks I really recommend those ones – the narration is amazing and they’re only 4 hours long!
It can be a bit scary when I first write down all the books but once I get started it’s usually not so bad (plus I bribe myself with the promise that after X number of books I can buy new ones, haha). I usually have a more manageable number though. Last year it was only 18 but this year I’ve ended up with 37 🙈 I’m not much of a mood reader but I think it would definitely be harder if I was!
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Ah best of luck for all of your goals! I’m so happy you’re doing the discussion challenge again, I love reading your posts so much. I also love your resolution about buying books and being mindful of the ones you have, it’s something I’ve been trying to work on lately, just as well. While I never buy so many books all at once, i want to think more about it everytime I buy a new book, because… I don’t have infinite room and I’d like to almost be certain to keep books I buy because I genuinely liked them. It’s tough to know, sometimes, but… I want to try aha 🙂
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Thank you, Marie! I think that even if I decided to not make any goals in a given year, I’d still participate in the Discussion Challenge because of how much I enjoy writing discussions!
I was very deliberate in how I formed that goal because while I do think I purchased a reasonable number last year, I wasn’t very conscious of the particular titles I was adding to my collection and my level of interest in a given book, which is why I set the particular goal I did. So far, I think it’s working well, so that’s a relief! Best of luck to you on this goal as well! It’s definitely tough to try to predict which books we’ll enjoy the most, but I think that as long as we’re making educated and thoughtful decisions, that’s truly the best we can do, regardless of how much we end up enjoying the books we buy!
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