2020 challenges and goals

Good morning bookworms!

Welcome to my rant post where I’ll be discussing all the things I want to accomplish this year, while simultaneously whining about how I signed up for too many things last year, and oh yeah, I still haven’t read a book yet in 2020.*

As per 2019, I have signed up to a LOT of challenges for 2020. And by that I mean, more than I can cope with. HUZZAH!! ? So, we’ll do a quick challenge overview, talk about how I’m going to tackle this each month (spoiler, it will be poorly), and then I’ll set some goals that I won’t look at again until January 2021 and then be surprised when I’ve only accomplished half of them. Fun times ahead!!

• This has now been rectified. I have read ONE book in 2020.

2020 Reading Challenges

Goodreads

As per usual, I have signed up for the Goodreads challenge. Last year’s goal was 90 and normally I increase my goals by 10 each year, except where I have read more than 10 of the goal in which case I up it by 20. Last year I read 122 books. I still think this is obscene and likely to never again be repeated, so this year I am making my goal 100 (although secretly I want to make it 80 so I don’t stress out… ???)

Magical Read-a-thons: O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s

I am still behind on this from 2019 as I am yet to complete my NEWTs from August. I was secretly hoping that I might have achieved them during December without the pressure of announcing it, but I didn’t look at the prompts so let’s say no! My next thought was to do it this month, but alas I’ve been in a reading slump since A Heart So Fierce and Broken so even though I have the last two weeks of January off work, that probably won’t happen either. Regardless of when I squeeze this in, it’s back to O.W.L.s in April and I’ll likely be participating again!

Beat the Backlist

2019 was pretty successful for Beat the Backlist for me so I’ve signed up again! I’ve posted my list and am going to start marking books off soon!! We’re not doing wizarding house colours this year though, so I’ll have to change my badge on the sidebar soon!!

For 2020 I have pledged to read 75 books from my backlist.

Beat the Backlist Reading Bingo

Last year I signed up for Epic bingo… which was really pretty dumb. This year I do plan on reading more, but still not enough to cover every box. I’ll start with the regular bingo, and move to the epic one if I finish the normal one first!!

#StartOnYourShelfathon

Our amazing friends at the Quiet Pond have introduced a new friend, Castor, to help run this fantastic year-long read-a-thon. Much like Beat the Backlist, this challenge focuses on reading books that you already own, so I won’t be adding newly bought books to my Backlist list this year, even if they are ‘backlist’ books. At the end of December I updated the list with all the books I had purchased that qualified even if they hadn’t come in yet, so we should be up to date.

Basically my owned, unread backlist books come to a staggering 260 books. I want to get this down to 200 by the end of 2020.

PopSugar Reading Challenge

I’ve always seen this challenge around, but never actually signed up for it. 2020 is the year this changes. Yup, I am going to tackle the unexpected and try and complete as many ticks off this list as I can. I’ll be honest, I don’t expect to hit them all – but I am certainly going to have fun trying!!

Other challenges

As well as the above, it’s probably highly likely that I’ll do other challenges like the A-Z Reading Challenge and the Year of the Asian reading challenge again. I just haven’t made a specific post about them yet (and I’m not 100% sold on stressing myself about this at the moment either). I also haven’t filled out the online forms yet and I don’t know when I’ll get a chance as yet either.

I’d also like to leave myself open to the possibility of little challenges throughout the year. I’m inclined to sign up for things like Destiny’s ARC mountain reading challenges and other small weekly or weekend readathons, depending on my mood, availability, etc.

2020 Goals

Despite how I carried on before, I don’t think my goals for 2019 were all that bad, just a little unfocused… So, I’ve upgraded some of the items that were vague and changed some numbers for 2020.

Books

• Read 100 books
• Clear the ARC backlog
• Re-read Austen (or more classics in general)

Blog

• Publish 20 posts per month
• 1,250 followers
• Average monthly views of 2,500
• Figure out which type of posts I enjoy most / try something different each month
• Re-vamp a bit. Get that header you’ve been meaning to do.

Bookstagram

• Post 156 times on bookstagram (equivalent of 3 times per week)
• 2,000 followers
• Post minimum 1 story per week

Twitter

• 500 followers
• Start a books read in 2020 thread (and maintain it)
• Engage more

Life

• Paint and re-carpet the apartment
• Put up photos and shelving
• Get actual outdoor furniture
• Stop putting off doctor appointments
• Be healthier
• Do 1 (minimum) fitness thing per week

So, that’s all my plans for 2020. What are some of your plans?