2019 Reading Goals AKA Let’s Get Organized And Kick 2019’s Butt!

We’re officially over a week into 2019 and I haven’t shared my reading goals yet. I mean, I’m still way ahead of last year (when I posted them the second week into February) but you know, there is a time and a place and it’s now.

And speaking of a time and place for a post – I know I haven’t gotten my Best Books Of 2018 post up yet but I’ll hopefully have that going up by the end of the week, in some form. I can’t decide how I want to do it just yet. We’ll see what I end up going with, I guess. xD

But anyway, back to today’s post! I really liked having goals set up for myself last year and I’m hoping having them again this year will motivate me to complete as many as possible. Nothing quite like stating publicly what you want to get done!

Read 65 Books

As every year, I like to start off my reading goals with the number of books I want to read for the year and 2019 is no different – well, minus the fact that I’m being quite ambitious with my initial goal of reading 65 books.

Usually, I’ll set my reading goal at 50 books and then just see how I do throughout the year. I’ve upped my goal in the past or lowered it, depending on how I was doing and whether or not Goodreads was stressing me out. Which, spoiler alert: has already happened.

I didn’t realize that in order to finish 65 books in 2019 I’d have to read more than a book per week and we’re already into week 2 and until last night, I hadn’t finished a book yet. Which put me behind schedule. Fun things, people. Fun things.

Should this continue to happen and I find myself being stressed out by behind schedule, I’ll lower my goal down to 50 again. I’d rather have peace of mind than a higher number.

Read 15 Contemporary Books

We’ve covered my new found love of contemporary in various posts in the past two years so I don’t have to make a whole thing out of it here. I just know that with spring and summer there’ll be a ton of awesome contemporary novels out there that I’ll want to read and I want to make sure I get to at least 15 for the year.

Read 5 Adult Books

This is a new goal for 2019 that I’m quite excited about! I used to read just adult books as a teenager (for some reason, the young adult section of my library back then never drew me in) and for some reason, I don’t reach for those books anymore. But! 2018 had some really fantastic adult books (fantasy mainly, that I saw) that I want to give a chance this year! And since this is a new goal, I want to start out slowly. Obviously, if I find a ton more books I’ll be more than happy about that too.

Read 10 Debut Novels

This was part of my 2018 reading challenge too and I really enjoyed having it there, so I’m bringing it back again. There are so many fantastic debut authors out there that I want to read and explore/discover this year. Unfortunately, I’m not quite as up to date, so if you have any suggestions, please share them in the comments!

Empty Unread Books Box

I recently had to reorganize my shelves again (I’m constantly running out of space… I wonder why) and I decided to take off any of the unread books that I had on there and put them in a separate little box of shame for myself to give myself more space for new books. There are currently 13 books in that box and I want to make it a mission to get through them this year. It’s about god damn time for some of them, let’s just say that.

Read Books I Buy ASAP

This one should be fairly easy to stick with as I only allow myself to buy books I’m super excited about and will read immediately. I’ve been on a much stricter book buying budget since early-ish 2018 where I only buy new releases that I’m super excited about and will read right away and that’s worked out really well and I want to continue this in 2019.

Read & Review German Review Copies

Even though I’ve been on a rather strict book buying budget lately, I still got quite a few new books through review copies but those haven’t gotten the love they deserve and I need to change that in 2019. I currently have 7 books that were sent to me for review that I want to get to early in 2019. This is also going to help me work towards my goal of emptying that book box!

That’s it for my reading goals for 2019 – so far. I might think of more to include down the road which I’ll just include in my goal check-ins that I’ll be doing around April! 🙂

I was originally going to include blogging goals too but I quickly realized that I was talking too much and this post was getting quite long so I’m splitting this into two different posts to make it easier for all of us. That post should come sometime next week, I think! 🙂

Now that I’ve shared my reading goals, I obviously want to hear about you guys’ too! Do you set yourself reading goals or do you prefer going into the year without them? Why or why not? What are some of your goals if you’ve set them for yourself?

And I might need your help with coming up with some fun debut novels to read for 2019, so if you guys have any recommendations I’d appreciate it if you left them in the comments down below!