First of all, I can’t believe how fast 2018 went by. It feels like just yesterday my husband and I were out at our friend’s place playing tabletop games and bringing in the new year…and now it’s almost time to do that again!
I usually have a few reading goals going on throughout the year and 2019 will be no different. First, let’s take a look at how I’ve done this past year.
2018 Goals
Goodreads Reading Challenge – Goal: 120 books. Actual: 204 books. Woohoo! I really didn’t expect to read so much this year, I’m not sure what happened.
r/Fantasy Book Bingo Challenge – Goal: Fill out the card between April 1st, 2018 and March 31st, 2019. Actual: Well, this one is still in progress, but so far I’ve gotten all the squares filled out except for one, so doing pretty darn good!
Catching Up on Series – Goal: Read a lot of sequels and finish off some series I’ve started. Actual: Well, at least 65 books I read out of my 200 books were sequels to fantasy series. I know a large chunk were non-fantasy books and several stand-alone novels, so I’m thinking I actually did pretty good with this goal! I caught up with several series and finished about 17 off. I’ll know details more once I update my reading spreadsheet and go through my stats.
Dresden Files – Goal: Complete the series up to current point. Actual: Huzzah! Goal met!
2019 Goals
Goodreads Reading Challenge – I’m setting this one at 100 books. If I get a huge head start I may up it in number like I did this past year. I don’t want to be too ambitious though because you never know what lies ahead.
r/Fantasy Book Bingo Challenge – This is a challenge that I’ve created and run for the reddit r/fantasy forum for the last four years. I need to finish my last square for the 2018 bingo (you can find the current card and details linked here). Then the new one starts in April. I haven’t even started drafting the new card yet, I’m super behind, haha, whoops! I usually don’t have problems with this challenge because I read so widely within the genre that I inevitably find things to fill out my card with, but we’ll see what happens!
Catching Up on Series – Yes, this is still going to be on here! Thank goodness so many of the books coming out next year that I want to read are sequels, hahahaha. No but seriously. O.O I’m making good progress on some series, and I’ve started my series tracker bullet journal to help me out with this one. Hopefully I’ll get a lot of books colored in over the next year!
Discworld – I really want to go through the entire Discworld series. I’ve only read two and a half of the books so far and I’ve always wanted to read them all. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do the entire series in one year, I have a lot of other things I want to read and there are over 40 books in this series, but I think I should be able to get through somewhere between 15 or 20 of them. I know a lot of them are short and I know that some people can binge the entire series in a month, but I am not that person. I really do have a lot of other things I want to read and bouncing around has always been my style (hence why I have so many ongoing series). So I’m trying to be realistic here. We’ll see how it goes though!
Other Bookish Plans
- I want to try and participate in at least one read-a-thon in 2019. Yes, please give me a weekend free to do nothing but read, that would be fantastic!
- Go to one or more convention/book festival. Right now I am thinking about attending Balticon in May, and I definitely want to go to Capclave in the fall. Baltimore Book Festival is my usual hangout but with them moving the dates around this year to coincide with Light City (dumbest idea ever, who the heck came up with this?) we’ll see how it goes. If all else fails, there’s also Chessiecon in the fall which is conveniently right near my work.
- Keep an eye out for any signings or other author events in the area. I really want to check out Charm City Spec sometime soon.
- Give my blog a makeover! When I rebooted WTF, I just threw some graphics up and picked a new theme that worked for the time being. I don’t hate it or anything, but it was always supposed to be temporary. So I want to make some new graphics and possibly get a new layout. I want to draw the graphics myself! I’m so out of practice but I want these things to have a personal touch. I probably won’t have much time until after the new bingo period starts so it may not be until later in the year but look forward to some changes in the future!
Those are my goals for next year. Does anyone else have any goals or bookish plans for next year? Leave me a note in the comments, I’d love to hear from you!
Way Too Fantasy 
I have never completed the bingo challenge. This year my goal is to read more Fantasy Fiction so I can also compete with the bingo. Reading goal is upped to 30 books this year since last years goal of twenty was a peice of cake. Not sure I will ever get up to the amount of books that you read but it is really fun trying.
You’re doing great! Glad to see you enjoying so many stories. 🙂
Congrats on smashing your Goodreads goal! I still haven’t decided what goals I want to focus on next year, I’m usually not very good at keeping up. We’ll see…😁
Thanks, Tammy! Well, I really could have been better at not starting new series but… we’ll see how next year goes! Thankfully a lot of the books I’m looking forward to are sequels 😂
Great job on how well you did on your goals for 2018!! I’m hoping to use this weekend to think about and plan my goals for 2019 so we’ll see what I can come up with!
Thanks! Good luck with your planning!
I’ve been eyeing the r/fantasy bingo for a while, but I didn’t realize you were the one behind it! I may jump in when the new one starts this year. 🙂 Congrats on your Goodreads goal! I may try to set myself the very modest goal of 50 books this year, I have so many competing hobbies it may be difficult to do more than that. We’ll see!
Yep, tis I, lol. 🙂
Thanks! I think that’s a good idea, no need to pressure yourself!
Good luck with all of your 2019 goals! I’ll be posting mine on New years eve but for now I’m still trying to work them out haha
Thanks! Looking forward to seeing yours!
Whoa, congrats on reading so much! I want to start the Discworld series in 2019 because I’ve heard so much about it!
Thanks! Hope you get a chance to! Small Gods is one of my top 5 favorite books ever. 🙂
So far, the only challenge I know I’ll be doing is the Goodreads challenge and my Audiobook Challenge. I’ll probably add more as I go along, but I never want to overload myself 😀 Oh, and I managed to hit 200 books today, yay! Squeaking by with a day to spare 😉
Yeah, totally trying not to overload myself either so most of my challenges are ones that I’m pretty sure I can handle which maybe isn’t much of a challenge? LOL
Congrats on hitting 200, that’s awesome!
Well done with this year’s goals and good luck for next year. I don’t really set goals anymore as I’m just terrible at sticking to them these days for some reason.
Lynn 😀
Thanks, Lynn! Well, most of my goals are pretty achievable for me I think so not too much of a stretch and feels like cheating a bit in that regard, lol.
They are all amazing goals and I wish you would conquer them all in this 2019!!!!!
Thank you!!!
Good luck with Discworld. [speaking as someone who’s now just 2 books from completing a multi-year reread Discworld reread project]
It’s daunting, there being so many books. Well, more daunting for me, since I read 1-2 books per month, rather than your 2 books every 3 days rate. But even so. Yet, at least at first, it’s easier than you might think: Discworld, particularly early Discworld, is often the perfect light entertainment to let you recover from something heavier, or to read when you don’t feel like reading. Plus, of course, even the long ones are short by Fantasy standards. For instance, despite my normal slow reading speed, I re-read the first half of the series in only a year and a bit. I’d imagine you could easily read the whole thing in a year, or at most two.
Are you reading in publication order? I’d suggest that. I can understand why, for a first read, some people prefer to stick with one set of characters at a time, but I think if you’ve committed to reading them all anyway, you understand more of the injokes and can appreciate more of the development of the style and the world if you start at the beginning and read through to the end.
In any case, enjoy! I don’t know which two and a half you’ve read already, but necessarily that means you’ve got at least a handful of all-time classics to discover (plus a bunch of perfectly enjoyable not-quite-classics to go with them…)
Thank you! I’m planning on reading in publication order. Of the books I’ve read in the past–Small Gods is one of my top 5 books of all time, which is one of the reasons I want to read the rest of them. Reading in publication order is probably optimal for me anyway, I don’t tend to binge read very often so bouncing around between the mini-series within will feel more natural to me anyway. 🙂
I agree with that – sometimes, when books share characters and styles but don’t actually have an ongoing plot, reading them all at once risks getting tired out. Pratchett did us a favour by rotating his topics…
May I ask which other Discworlds you’ve read? If you haven’t read the early Discworlds yet, you may be in for a bit of a shock, if you expect them to be like Small Gods, but power through! It’s a series that was constantly evolving in style…
The one problem with reading Small Gods really early on, though, is that it’s debateable whether Pratchett ever wrote anything as good as it. It’s certainly got to be in the top three or four, and I think it might be the world’s consensus favourite (with the possible exception of Night Watch…). Personally, in my re-read I think I unexpectedly opted for Lords and Ladies as the best, though that’s not a common opinion, and for The Fifth Elephant as my personal favourite. But one of the joys and confusions of Pratchett fandom is that for any possible ranking of his books, you’ll eventually find someone on the internet who agrees with it…
I’ve read part of The Colour of Magic but then got distracted and read other things. That happens sometimes. The other one I’ve read is Guards! Guards!
Love these goals!! And I’m excited for that makeover and especially THIS –> “I want to draw the graphics myself.” Can’t wait to see what you come up with. 😀
And speaking of drawing, I’m planning on doing doodles of books that I read each month (characters, objects, abstract figures and stuff) and showcasing them on the Wrap Up post. Not every book. But some. Aaaand if you want to join me on that, I’d be totally not unhappy. 😀 Like, I want to get more confident with casual drawing/painting (which I’ve been told is good for your mental health) and sharing them with people. And I think it’d be fun!
Oh, that sounds really, really fun! Maybe I can try doing that, although I may have to start out with a few here and there until I get caught up and ahead on some things again. I really let myself get behind and have a whole pile of things in my drafts folder…lol.
Yay!! And yeah no, do it at your own pace! I just thought it’d be a cool, hopefully-not-stressful thing we could do in between reading. 😀
For sure! I just need to get caught up on some things first (I feel like I’ve been behind since November…lol)
Good luck with your discworld reading plans 🙂 Great goals!!
Thank you!