2025 Reading Challenge discussion
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Reading goals for 2023▪️Goodreads challenge: 70 books
▪️Series: pick a few specific series to focus on continuing/finishing
▪️Challenges: don’t start a lot of new long running challenges even if they sound fun!
▪️Physical tbr: keep track of my hauled books again, and get that number down. [goals: 2023 hauls read 50%, 2022 hauls down from 26 to 15, 2021 hauls down from 6 to 4, pre-2021 down from 28 to 15]
▪️Prioritize my own picks (and work books) over random book clubs and buddy reads.
▪️Diversify (higher % POC authors than 2022, same for female authors and non binary authors)
▪️More non-English authors (higher % than 2022)
Books I want to reread in 2023Books on my shelves I don’t remember, to decide whether or not to keep:
-Jouw hart is van mij
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-De Einstein code
-De verdronken tuin
-all my Nicci French books
Old (and new) favorites:
-The Neverending Story
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-Ogen van tijgers
-Neverwhere
-His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass
-Discworld: next up:
Books to get to soon(ish)-
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-Crime and Punishment with Jayne
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-The Lost Apothecary with sirens?
-The Priory of the Orange Tree with Brady (BnB)?
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-The Golden Compass with Kelcii
-Sundial with Chloe
Series I’m working on (and which book is next up)Priority series for 2023:
-Mistborn, Era 1:
-The Farseer Trilogy:
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-The Green Bone Saga: Jade Legacy
-The Dark Tower: The Waste Lands
The rest:
-The Wormwood Trilogy: The Rosewater Insurrection
-The Thursday Murder Club: The Man Who Died Twice
-The Murderbot Diaries: Rogue Protocol
-The Lunar Chronicles: Scarlet
-A Song of Ice and Fire: A Clash of Kings
-The Arcadia Project: Impostor Syndrome
-Between Earth and Sky: Fevered Star
-A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder: As Good As Dead
- - - - - - - - -2023 progress: - - - - - - - - -
-Shades of Magic: A Gathering of Shadows
-Throne of Glass:
-Alex Stern: Hell Bent
-Gesa’s Menagerie: Heart of the Pride
-The Brown Sisters:
-Imperial Radch:
-Wanderers: Wayward
-Thursday Next: Lost in a Good Book
-Wayfarers: A Closed and Common Orbit
-A Chorus of Dragons: The Name of All Things
-The Hunger Games:
-Giant Days: Giant Days, Vol. 2
-The Last Binding: A Restless Truth
-LitenVerse: Defekt
-Southern Reach: Authority
-Monk and Robot: A Prayer for the Crown-Shy
-The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (but reread original trilogy first after the tv series is done)
-The Kystrom Chronicles: The Unkillable Princess (not out yet)
-Supernatural Investigations:
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-
-
-
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Keeping track of my owned TBRStarting point of my owned TBR, including books I’m currently reading:
1/1/2023: 69 books: 58 physical books, 11 ebooks.
Minus: read/dnf-ed/unhauled without reading
Plus: bought/gifted/got for free
📚January: 68 books: 57 physical: -1, 11 ebooks: +1 -1
📚February: 68 books: 58 physical: +2 -1, 10 ebooks: +1 -2
📚March: 66 books: 57 physical: -1, 9 ebooks: -1
📚April: 64 books: 56 physical: +1 -2, 8 ebooks: +1 -2
📚May: 67 books: 59 physical: +3, 8 ebooks: +/-0
📚June: 68 books: 56 physical: +1 -4, 12 ebooks: +5 -1
📚July: 69 books: 57 physical: +1, 12 ebooks: +4 -4
📚August: 69 books: 55 physical: -2, 14 ebooks: +4 -2
📚September: 70 books: 54 physical: +1 -2, 16 ebooks: +3 -1
📚October: 69 books: 52 physical: -2, 17 ebooks: +1
📚November: 70 books: 54 physical: +5 -3, 16 ebooks: +2 -3
📚December: 72 books: 56 physical: +2, 16 ebooks: +3 -3
Shelf of bookcovers read in 2023
Physical books hauled in 2023 (and did I read them)January: none!
February:
💰Mickey7
💰The Hero of Ages
March: none!
April:
💰Catfish Rolling
💰✅The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (read before haul)
💰✅Om nooit te vergeten (read before haul)
May:
💰De man met duizend gezichten
🎁✅Het laatste feest
🎁Iedereen liegt
June:
💰✅This is How You Lose the Time War (read before haul)
💰Schuilplaats voor andere tijden
July:
💰✅Nothing But Blackened Teeth
August: none!
September:
💰Murder in the Family
October: none!
November:
💰✅Vicious (read before haul)
💰✅The Book of M (read before haul)
💰✅The Immortality Thief (read before haul)
💰✅Several People Are Typing
💰The Best of All Possible Worlds
💰Strata
💰Six of Crows
💰It Happened One Summer
December:
🎁The Troop
💰The Christmas Wish
Still to read 2022 hauled books🎁✅Royal Assassin
🎁Winter's Orbit
🎁A Clash of Kings
🎁Omringd door idioten
🎁✅De echoman
💰✅Dromen androïden van electrische schapen?
💰SF Verhalen 6
💰✅Juliette of het geluk van boeken
💰Code 39
💰✅Verity
💰The Man Who Died Twice
💰The Night Circus
💰The Shining
🎁De 19 dingen die je nooit met collega's moet doen
🎁Zeven talen in zeven dagen
💰The Priory of the Orange Tree
💰Fairy Tale
💰Later
💰✅The Well of Ascension
💰✅The Appeal
💰If You Could See Me Now
💰Nation
💰Blake's 7
💰✅November
💰My Best Friend's Exorcism
🎁✅The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
Still to read 2021 hauled books💰To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
💰Neuromancer
💰Foundation
💰✅Black House
💰Rusalka
💰✅House of Leaves
Approved ARCs by pubdateFebruary:
✅A Blackness Absolute, Ghost Orchid Press, pub: 21-02-2023 (through ARC mailing list)
March:
✅A Good House for Children, Serpent’s Tail, pub: 1-3-2023, arch : 1-3-2023
✅The Ten Percent Thief, Rebellion Publishing/Solaris, pub: 28-3-2023, arch: 21-3-2023
✅Camp Zero, John Murray Press, pub: 30-3-2023, arch: 30-3-2023
April:
✅The Bone Shard War, Little Brown Book Group/Orbit, pub: 20-4-2023, arch: 25-4-2023
📖Neverest, Ghost Orchid Press, pub: 25-4-2023 (through ARC mailing list)
September:
✅Vanishing Bodies, BooksGoSocial (selfpub/indie), pub: 26-09-2023, arch: 30-07-23
✅The Death I Gave Him, Rebellion, pub: 12-09-23, arch: 06-09-23
2024:
January:
📖The Grief House, Bloomsbury, pub: 18-01-2024, arch: 25-01-2024
📖The City of Stardust, Hodder&Stoughton, pub: 25-01-2024, arch: 25-01-2024
February:
📖Fathomfolk, Little Brown Book, pub: 29-02-2024, arch: 05-03-2024
March:
✅Floating Hotel, Hodder&Stoughton, pub: 21-03-2024, arch: 21-03-2024
January📚Plans: ✅finish November, ✅finish A Darker Shade of Magic, 📖Babel (booksta friend rec), 📖Royal Assassin, 📖Black House, ✅Heir of Fire, ❌Guards Guards (reread)
✅January Pages challenge Storygraph
📚Reality:
November
De valse Vermeer
A Darker Shade of Magic
Het kerkhof van de zee
Heir of Fire
A Blackness Absolute
February📚Plans: 📖finish Royal Assassin, ✅finish Babel, 📖finish Black House, ✅A Good House for Children (ARC), ✅The Appeal, Verity
✅MF Readathon
📚Reality:
The Appeal
Touched by the Tyrant
Mariana’s Trench
Gryphon’s Pride
Babel
A Good House for Children
March📚Plans:
✅finish Royal Assassin, 📖finish Black House, ✅The Only Good Indians (Chloe’s bookclub, from the 20th), 📖The Ten Percent Thief (ARC), ✅Camp Zero (ARC, with Amber, from the 6th), 📖The Bone Shard War (ARC, with Alice, from mid March), ❌Guards Guards (reread), ✅Stargazy Pie (Booksta Friend Rec)
📚Reality:
Royal Assassin
Stargazy Pie (dnf)
Camp Zero
The Only Indians
April📚Plans:
✅finish Black House, ✅finish The Ten Percent Thief, ✅finish The Bone Shard War, ✅finish Perfect, ❌finish Trauma, ❌finish Grenzen, ❌finish Lege steden, ✅KS!, ❌Neverest? (ARC), 📖House of Leaves (TBR jar, with Alice), 📖The Last House on Needless Street (audio, booksta rec)
📚Reality:
The Ten Percent Thief
The Bone Shard War
Get a Life Chloe Brown
Na die nacht
Black House
Perfect
May📚Plans:
✅Convenience Store Woman (buddy with Kim), ❌Wanderers (buddy read here, in May/June), ✅The Hunger Games (dystopian readathon), 📖Ancillary Sword (library), ✅finish The Last House on Needless Street, 📖The Well of Ascension, ❌finish Trauma, ✅finish Falling Hard for the Royal Guard, 📖finish House of Leaves, ✅Nooit meer thuis
📚Reality:
Falling Hard for the Royal Guard
Nooit meer thuis
Convenience Store Woman
The Last House on Needless Street
Guards! Guards!
The Hunger Games
June📚Plans: ✅finish House of Leaves, ✅finish Well of Ascension, ✅finish Take a Hint Dani Brown, ✅finish Ancillary Sword, ✅The Kiss Quotient (readalong Chloe), ✅Wanderers (buddyread Goodreads), 📖finish Trauma
📚Reality:
House of Leaves (dnf)
Take a Hint Dani Brown
Ancillary Sword
De kat in den boom
The Kiss Quotient
Catherine House
Wanderers
The Well of Ascension
July📚Plans:
✅finish The Eyre Affair, 📖finish Trauma, ❌Hamlet? (because of ARC next month), ✅Vanishing bodies (ARC, arch 30-7), ❌The One (library), ❌Harten Sara (library), ✅Kindred (buddy with Kelcii), ✅De opportunist, 📖The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, ✅The Bride Test (readalong Chloe)
📚Reality:
The Eyre Affair
De opportunist
Kindred
Angsteiland
Beautiful Bastard
Vanishing Bodies
The Bride Test
August📚Plans:
✅finish The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, ✅The Death I Gave Him (ARC, pub 12-09), ✅The Ruin of Kings, ✅The One (library), ❌Harten Sara (library), ❌finish Trauma, ✅De Echoman, ✅The Heart Principle (readalong)
📚Reality:
The One
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet
Eric (reread)
De Echoman
The Ruin of Kings
Hamlet
De Raadselbreker
The Death I Gave Him
The Heart Principle
September📚Plans:
✅Amari and the Great Game, ✅The Secret History (reread), ❌Never Let Me Go, ✅A Second Chance, ✅Catching Fire, ✅The Final Girl Support Group (reread, Chloe’s book club), ✅Nothing But Blackened Teeth, ✅A Marvellous Light, ✅The Last Party, ✅Undeath and Taxes
📚Reality:
Amari and the Great Game
Catching Fire
Giant Days volume 1
Undeath & Taxes (dnf)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer #1
The Final Girl Support Group (reread)
Nothing But Blackened Teeth
A Marvellous Light
The Secret History (reread)
Het laatste feest
A Second Chance
October📚Plans: 📖The Shining, ✅The Luminous Dead
✅Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Group read here)
📚Reality:
Juliette of het geluk van boeken
The Luminous Dead
Dead Simple (audio)
De schaduw van Vermeer
Dromen androïden van elektrische schapen?
How High We Go in the Dark
November📚Plans:
📖finish The Shining, ✅finish Verity, ❌The Grief House? (Arc, pub January), ❌Station Eleven (library), ❌The Haunting of Hill House (library)
📚Reality:
Finna
Annihilation
Het Duivelscontract (reread)
My Not So Perfect Life
Verity
Several People Are Typing
Swashbucklers (dnf)
Floating Hotel
Seven Empty Houses
If Found Return to Hell
A Psalm for the Wild-Built
De 20
December📚Plans:
finish The Shining, ✅finish The Burning God, The Christmas Wish, The Grief House (arc), 📖The Night Circus (SG readalong), ✅Starling House (TBR twin), ✅Where Hope Comes From, ✅Braised Pork, Moving Pictures (reread)
📚Reality:
The Burning God
Where Hope Comes From
Starling House
Braised Pork
2024 plansJanuary: The City of Stardust (Arc), The Sanatorium (Chloe’s bookclub)
February: Fathomfolk (Arc), Dirk Gently #1 (buddyread here)
Q1 stats and goals review📖In Q1 I finished 15 books (and dnf’ed 1). This makes me 2 or 3 books behind schedule for my goal of 70 books in 2023, not too bad!
📖Average rating was a 4,25. So either I read great books, or I rated really mildly (bit of both, I think).
📖Most read genres were horror and fantasy (I need some more scifi!)
As for my other goals:
➡️Focus on 5 priority series: read only 1 book for these so far
➡️Physical TBR goals:
- 2023 hauls read 50%: 0/2 (I didn’t buy much! So this is doable if I keep that up)
- 2022 hauls down from 26 to 15: down to 23 (on track!)
- 2021 hauls down from 6 to 4: working on one (this goal will be met for sure)
- pre-2021 down from 28 to 15: working on one (this will be a challenge)
➡️Prioritize my own picks (and work books) over random book clubs and buddy reads: I did okay in January and February and then terrible in March. This still needs some focus.
➡️Diversify (higher % POC authors than 2022, same for female authors and non binary authors): %POC for Q1 was 20% which is higher than the 19% of 2022 but needs improving. %female for Q1 was 66% which I’m happy with. Didn’t read any non binary authors in Q1 (that I’m aware of).
➡️More non-English authors (higher % than 2022): % in Q1 was 20% vs 19% in 2022.
Q2 stats and goals review📖In Q2 I finished 19 books (and dnf’ed 1). This brings me to 34, only 1 book behind schedule for my goal of 70 books in 2023!
📖Average rating was a 3.84, slightly less than Q1. I had some disappointments in Q2. Average rating for the first half of the year is 3.9.
📖Most read genres were fantasy tied with (weirdly) general fiction and romance! For the first half of the year my most read genre is fantasy, followed by general fiction and thriller. I don’t know what’s going on with the lack of scifi this year…
📖I only had one reread so far this year, even though I had so many reread-plans. Hopefully I’ll fit in some in the next few months.
As for my other goals:
➡️Focus on 5 priority series: read one more book for these so that brings the total to 2 books. So much for priority…
➡️Physical TBR goals:
- 2023 hauls read 50%: 0/7 (or 3/10 if you count the 3 books I had already read before hauling)
- 2022 hauls down from 26 to 15: down to 22 (much work to be done!)
- 2021 hauls down from 6 to 4: goal reached, I’m down to 4!
- pre-2021 down from 28 to 15: down to 22, I made more progress in Q2 than expected.
➡️Prioritize my own picks (and work books) over random book clubs and buddy reads: I did pretty good here and skipped all book clubs and buddy reads that I wasn’t excited to read.
➡️Diversify (higher % POC authors than 2022, same for female authors and non binary authors): %POC for 2023 so far has gone up to 31%, so this is going in the right direction! %female is now at 71%, for some reason I’m reading mostly women this year. Didn’t read any non binary authors in 2023 yet (that I’m aware of).
➡️More non-English authors (higher % than 2022): this went down a bit in Q2, my % for the year is now at 18% vs 19% in 2022.
Challenges in this groupOn the go:
Completed:
Challenges elsewhereOn the go:
📚Help Me Decide 2021/22 (CCC): message 608
📚Help Me Decide 2022/23 (CCC): message 32
📚Reading Roulette: message 9
📚Shrink That TBR (CCC): message 62
📚Journey on the Orient Express (CCC): message 16
📚Deck of Cards (CCC): message 34
📚Connections (CCC): message 7
Completed:
Buddy readsMay&June: Wanderers Buddy read thread
Group reads
October: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
TBR Twin
December: Starling House
Booksta friend recs to read in 2023✅Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution
❌Red Sister
✅Dead Simple
✅Stargazy Pie (dnf)
✅Braised Pork
✅Catherine House
✅The Ruin of Kings
✅Get a Life, Chloe Brown
✅The Last House on Needless Street
✅How High We Go in the Dark
✅Where Hope Comes From: Poems of Resilience, Healing and Light
✅A Marvellous Light
Out of sight, out of mind…the owned ebook tbr(This does not include my ARCs, because I plan those into my reading by publication date, as soon as I get approved.)
📖De therapeut
📖Tot snel
📖The Way of Kings
📖The Rosewater Insurrection
📖Under Fortunate Stars
✅Swashbucklers
📖Bang Bang Bodhisattva
✅If Found, Return to Hell
📖Lost in a Good Book
📖The Well of Lost Plots
📖Murder in the Family
✅A Second Chance
Prep for the new year:▪️evaluate 2023 goals: how did I do, how did I feel about them, were they beneficial/fun?
▪️evaluate 2023 reading overall: the good, the bad, the ugly. What could make 2024 (even) better?
▪️brainstorm 2024 goals
▪️think about possible switchover from GR to SG. Gradual? Partial? Method? Timing?
▪️figure out the sections for 2024’s Shelf of Stuff. Keep what works, change what doesn’t, or switch it up for funsies.
2024 goals brainstormThings to possibly make goals for:
▪️Number of books/pages: 75 books, 30.000 pages
▪️Series: going to try to focus on 5 priority series again, but with more of a mix in genres, not all chunky fantasy series. Also I’d like to try to read series books a bit closer together so I hopefully remember everything better.
▪️Challenges: abandon all pre-2023 challenges. No starting intense new ones. Small ones for fun are okay.
▪️Diversity: again increase %POC authors and %non-binary authors vs 2023 %.
▪️Physical tbr: goals per haul-year was fun, going to do that again. Plus 33% for 2024 hauls. And keep the TBR shelves as a maximum space.
▪️Rereading: reread more books than I did in 2023 (only 5!).
▪️Numbers of books at once: 4 is the absolute maximum. 2 or 3 is better…
▪️Work books: at least one a month.
▪️ARCs: maximum one per publishing month, and no requesting new ones if I have an outstanding request for that month.
Evaluating 2023 reading goals▪️Goodreads challenge: 70 books ➡️ 80+ books read ✅
▪️Series: pick a few specific series to focus on continuing/finishing ➡️ this was a bust, I picked 5 series but only read 3 books from these series and only finished one series ❌
▪️Challenges: don’t start a lot of new long running challenges even if they sound fun! ➡️ didn’t start any new long challenges ✅ (also didn’t finish any of the ongoing ones, and I should probably just abandon them)
▪️Physical tbr: keep track of my hauled books again, and get that number down. [goals: 2023 hauls read 50%, 2022 hauls down from 26 to 15, 2021 hauls down from 6 to 4, pre-2021 down from 28 to 15] ➡️ 2023: read 19% ❌, 2022: down to 17, good enough for me ✅, 2021: down to 4 ✅, pre-2021: down to 21 ❌
▪️Prioritize my own picks (and work books) over random book clubs and buddy reads. ➡️ did pretty good with this, but I need to intentionally read a bit more work books ✅
▪️Diversify (higher % POC authors than 2022, same for female authors and non binary authors) ➡️ increased percentages in all areas ✅
▪️More non-English authors (higher % than 2022) ➡️ slight increase ✅
2025 Reading Challenge
Books mentioned in this topic
Starling House (other topics)Braised Pork (other topics)
The Christmas Wish (other topics)
Where Hope Comes From (other topics)
The Burning God (other topics)
More...
Links to previous years:
My 2022 Member's Corner
My 2021 Member's Corner
My 2020 Member's Corner
Quick links to most used posts below:
Months
Challenges