2019 Reading Goals Wrap Up

1. Read 45 Books - Progress: 38 / 45 +10
2. Finish Lord of the Rings Challenge: Finished last quarter
3. Back to the Classics - Progress: 8.5 / 9 +2.5
4. To Be Read Challenge - Progress: 3 / 3 +1
5. Newford Part 1 - Progress:  6 / 12 +2
6. Austen Challenge - Progress: 3 / 7 +2

Top 3 Books This Quarter

Austen, Austen - Mansfield Park
Pullman, Philip - The Secret Commonwealth
de Lint, Charles - Memory and Dream

Top 3 Books This Year

Austen, Austen - Mansfield Park
de Lint, Charles - Dreams Underfoot
Arden, Katherine - The Winter of the Witch

Thoughts: Interestingly enough, two of my favorite books of the year were read in the first quarter of the year and one in the last quarter of the year. If that doesn't define this year of reading, I don't know what does. I started the year off pretty strong with 14 books. That's also where most of my children's reading came in - more about that in further thoughts about my goals below. I ended the year.... feeling better about my reading again. It just took some time to get there. 

1. Read 45 Books (originally read 52 books).
    38. I was curious as to why it was so hard for me to get even close to my goal this year. So I looked back over my last two years of reading where I managed 60+ books. And I noticed the majority of my reading was children's books. In 2017, 43 out of my 69 books were children's novels coming out to 62%. Last year 27 out of my 60 books were children's novels which comes out to 45%. This year, only 9 out of my 36 books were children's novels which comes out to 25%. Interesting. Also interesting, when I started this blog, it was to read more adult literature, as I'd been stuck in children's for a long time due to my job. But this year, I found myself struggling with Readers Advisory at work, something I haven't struggled with since I started my job. While I haven't publicly made any goals to read more children's literature, I have made some career goals to read more children's literature with a more systematic plan in place to diversify my reading within.

2. Finish Lord of the Rings Challenge.
    This is the only challenge I completed as intended from the beginning of the year. It was an interesting idea, reading the books in chronological order. Ultimately, while the exercise was interesting, I didn't appreciate it all that much. The first and second ages of Middle Earth were interesting. So was the extra information we got about what was happening during the books. But I really didn't enjoy jumping back and forth in the middle of things. I also don't enjoy the books all that much. Which is funny because I'll probably go back and read them again in 10 years. My favorite part of reading the books this time around was seeing just how much the D&D races and classes were influenced by them.

3. Read 9 (originally 12) categories in Back to the Classics
   Read 8 books fully and consciously decided to not finish a ninth that I had planned to read due to not enjoying it. This was a weird list for me. I was very excited when the year started! However, I found myself not enjoying many of the books I was reading. They were slogs to get through, and because they were slogs, I wasn't interested in reading. So I wasn't reading. I'm not sure what happened or why I wasn't happy with my book choices. I'm not sure if the challenge is coming back next year, but if it is, I have a different idea for how I want to go about completing it.

4. Read 3 (originally 12) books off my To Be Read Pile
    I really wanted to read all 12 of my books. However, for some reason, I kept putting these novels off in favor of other challenges which ended up being very uninspiring and tedious. Of the three that I read, my favorite was Ombria in Shadow. Deep Work was illuminating, and I've been using the ideas I read in it to help me be more productive overall. Born With Teeth was fine, but took a lot longer to read than I would have expected. If this challenge runs next year, I plan on revamping my list and seriously participating over priority of other challenges. 

5. Read 12 books from de Lint's Newford Collection
    Managed 6 out of 12. As this was a lower priority challenge, I ended up pushing it aside for other books fairly often. However, now that I'm reading more of them, I'm sad I did so. I like de Lint's writing, and I've enjoyed reading his books in the last month or so of this year. I'm definitely going to make it more of a priority to read these books next year.

6. Read all 6 of Austen's novels AND her unfinished works, juvenilia, and novella.
    Much like the Newford challenge, this took a very low priority in my reading this year. I read three Austen novels. They were honestly some of the most enjoyable novels I read this year. Will definitely finish this challenge next year.