Before I dive into my goals for 2019, let’s look at my reading goals and achievements from 2018:

• I read 130 books.
• I only DNFed 3: one because it was just terribly offensive, one for triggers, and one because I just didn’t find it interesting.
• Of the 130 books I read, 70% (91) of them were written by women, 22% (29) were written by men, 8 of them were written by a male/female writing team, one was written by a female/female writing team, and one was written by a nonbinary author.
• I really was not as successful as I would’ve liked to have been when it came to reading books by authors of color. Only 32 of the books were written by AOC, which is just about 25%. What I find particularly interesting is that it felt like I was so often reading books by specifically Black women, so that just goes to show how my perception and bias played into that feeling.
• Twelve of the books I read were written by authors who are LGBTQ+. (There may have been more – this was based on queer authors who either self-identified in their author bios and/or who I follow on social media.)
• Altogether, my page grand total: 39,198.

I had wanted to increase my percentage on authors of color, and I didn’t accomplish that. I need to be more intentional in that regard, and account for the bias. (It reminds me of that “when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression” quote.) I wanted to read 5 books in translation, and I only read two, only one of those was written by a woman. So I failed there, too. Perhaps my biggest shortfall was in only buying 10 new books until I organized and read some on my personal shelves. Yeah, BIG failure there.

But I did want to read 10 books by LGBTQ+ authors, and I accomplished that. And I also read 10 essay collections.

Finally, here are my top 14 books of the year, in no particular order:

• The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss
• Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren
• Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb
• Bingo Love by Jenn St. Onge and Tee Franklin
• An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
• Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
• Mem by Bethany C. Morrow
• An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green
• Spying on Whales: The Past, Present, and Future of Earth’s Most Awesome Creatures by Nick Pyenson
• The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
• The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins by The McElboys and Carey Pietsch
• Becoming by Michelle Obama
• Kindred by Octavia Butler
• White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

Goals for 2019

I’m trying to be even more planned and intentional this year, hoping that will help keep me on track. Some of these are just hankerings that I’ve been having, and some of them are, again, attempts to keep me away from buying new books until I actually have my shit together.

• The biggest one there is that I need to read at least one book a month from my personal backlist that I haven’t already read.
• I set my reading goal on Goodreads to 125.
• I want to read or re-read all of Jane Austen’s books. Although it may be surprising, I actually haven’t read all of her books. I’ve seen three different TV/film adaptations of Mansfield Park, but I’ve never actually read it.
• I’d also like to read/re-read all of the Brontes.
• Having read two Octavia Butler books this year, I want to read more of her work. (I know I’m SUPER late to that game.)
• I also want to read/re-read all of Toni Morrison’s work.
• I would like to pick a book a month from various lists of classics written by people of color, though I don’t want to plan that one ahead.
• I would like to write something about at least 90% of the books that I read, whether that’s a blog post, or a one-sentence review on Goodreads or Instagram.
• I am planning to read both a play every month and a musical every month. (Got this idea from my good friend, Laura. She’s a genius.) The plays are all ones that I have never read, with one exception. The musicals are all ones that I have not seen on stage yet, and I will also plan to listen to the soundtrack of them.
  • PLAYS – January – Sweat by Lynn Nottage; February – The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams; March – No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre (I have read this one before); April – The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov; May – Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee; June – The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht; July – Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett; August – Medea by Eurypides; September – Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe; October – A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry; November – Fences by August Wilson; December – The Misanthrope by Moliere.
  • MUSICALS – January – The Fantasticks; February – Pal Joey; March – Kiss of the Spiderwoman; April – A Chorus Line; May – Tick, Tick…Boom!; June – Caroline, or Change; July – The Scottsboro Boys; August – The Wild Party; September – Aida; October – Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson; November – Miss Saigon; December – Hello, Dolly!

Whew. That feels like a lot of goals, but it also feels slightly more planned than my goals last year. So here we go!