The Ride: 2013 Reading Plan

The Princess and the Goblin, McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales,
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, Kikomachine #1, Hark! A Vagrant, Building Stories

See these books (not my messy desk behind them)? I dipped into these lovelies last year, but I never got to finish them. For a few of them, such as My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, McSweeney's Mammoth Book of Thrilling Tales, and Hark! A Vagrant, I did more than dip; I was halfway in. Was reading each of those a little at a time, until I was either distracted by work or by other books.

A big part of this year's reading plan, then, is to ensure that I finish these books. Based on what I've read, these are all books worth my time. Besides, I'd like to get them off my messy desk.

What else constitutes my reading plan this year?

Well, because I purposely did not join any reading challenges last year, explicitly stated or otherwise, I'm going to swing the opposite direction and join a few this year.

1. FFP's 2013 Diversity Challenge - This year, my book club, Flips Flipping Pages, has revived its Diversity Challenge. The last one was held in 2009 and had  been relegated to the dark abyss of buried discussion threads. But we've now dug up the challenge and come up with new categories to explore the wide range of content nowadays. The challenge even comes complete with an excel file.
2. Goodreads 2013 Reading Challenge - This is more a quantity challenge than anything else. But I thought I'd use this Goodreads function just to formalize it. My number is 52. It's lower than the number of books I read this year, yes, but it's really more of a placeholder number. When I targeted to read 100 books or more, I didn't like the reading choices I made just to fulfill the number. So now it's a completely doable number.

My other goals are the following:

• Read more books by African woman writers (a carry-over from last year)
• Read at least 2 books in the Time 100 List (I don't think I made any headway on this list last year.)
• Read under-the-radar books (No specific number. But I'm going to keep my eyes out for them. I think there are many great books and writers out there that don't get the audience they deserve. Would like to give a few of them one more reader: me.)

What isn't on my list of goals for this year is any kind of book-buying or book acquisition resolution. I completely give up on those. I give up! I tried limiting my book buying to 12 a year. I tried limiting it to $23/month. I tried reading my TBR books and not acquiring anything until I had read a book in my TBR. Nada. Nothing worked.

To be fair to myself, all of those things did limit my book buying somewhat. Only, I was never completely successful. And so, no such goal for me this year. I will trust on my discretion about book buying and see where that leads.

The rest of my reading? As usual, I'm going to try to keep it loose. I did try to program my reading before (like in 2010), but I realized that didn't work for me either. It's kind of hard to program one's reading, what with the constant flow of book recommendations you can get from your favorite blogs, book clubs, friends, and news sites. Would you like to hear another funny thing? Those books in that 2010 link? To date, I've still only read a total of 6 of them. Out of 41 in my 2010 TBR. You see how useful historical perspective is? Makes you realize what a joke all of this personal goal-setting can be.

The only defense? To be cool about it. That sounds so very Fonzie, but what I mean is that even if I don't get there, I sure as hell am going to enjoy the ride.