The other day, I was talking to one of my most respected reader friends about our favorite books of 2018, and she asked me what my reading goals are for 2019. I realized that I had only really thought about this in terms of numbers, and I needed to put a little more muscle into my reading plans. So, without further ado, here are the goals I’ve set for myself in 2019:
Read 75 books.
I’ve hit or exceeded this for the past 5 years…except for 2018. I read 73 books last year. I cannot express how irritated I was on December 30th to realize I wasn’t going to hit my numbers. Devastating, but I guess running your own business sometimes gets in the way of plowing through 1.5 books a week. Oopsie. That said, this year I’m determined to hit it, and things are looking good so far (until said business gets in the way again, but we’re not going to worry about that just yet).
Read more poetry.
I love poetry - so much so that I was the kid who wrote poems on the beach during school vacation, filling endless unicorn notebooks with my very profound adolescent thoughts. As I got older, however, I read less and less poetry outside of the classroom. Aside from the weekly poem in the New York Times Magazine (well done, by the way), I haven’t made reading poems a practice. I last read milk and honey two years ago and was pretty disappointed, so I am committing to seeking out poetry I love this year, starting with the legendary Mary Oliver.
Read diverse authors.
This sounds painfully obvious, but it’s an ongoing commitment to seek out authors that heretofore have not been considered part of the “canon” (a word and concept I sort of hate), and, most importantly, authors expressing life experiences and perspectives that are different from my own. I’ve made this a practice for most of my reading life - reading works only by dead white men has never appealed - but it feels more important now than never. I started this year with Heavy by Kiese Laymon, a thunderbolt of a book that I’ll review in the coming week for you.
Read 3 books on the New Vanguard list.
Lady writers! The New York Times is my primary source for book recommendations, and so I was thrilled when they put out The New Vanguard, a list of works by female authors (all fiction). I’ve read Americanah and The Neapolitan Novels, all favorites, and many of these are waiting on a shelf, analog or digital.
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I’d love to hear what your goals are for 2019!