Redux: Reading goals for 2012

Captain's Log, Stardate 01.11.2012

I know I just posted about this but I read this post by Danica Favorite and am inspired to challenge myself with new reading goals this year.

1) Read the 4 Love Inspired Suspense novels each month. I should be doing this already, but I’ve been bad about keeping up with them. I’ll usually only read two Love Inspired Suspense novels each month, and after looking at my book catalog, I realized that I’ve been reading all backlist books, not current ones. So I will be trying to read all current Love Inspired Suspense novels each month.

2) Start at least one new-to-me author each month. I copied this straight from Danica because I think it’s a fantastic idea. I also recently lamented on Facebook and Twitter that I had a ton of free ebooks on my Nook but I never seem to get around to reading them. Well, here’s my chance, because most of the free ebooks I get are new-to-me authors whose books I got for free because I wanted to try them.

3) Start at least one old book from my TBR pile each month. And let me confess, my TBR pile ranges in the thousands.

You will notice the language on numbers 2 and 3: Start, not read. Meaning, if I start a book and it doesn’t interest me, I reserve the right to not finish it and still count it toward my reading goal for the month. Aren’t I devious????

The reality is that I’m a slow reader. I’m not as slow as some, but I’m definitely not as fast as Danica and some other readers who can read a Love Inspired in an hour. (I know! Don’t you hate her???)

I don’t have the time to spend on a book that doesn’t captivate me. Some of you will gasp, but since I have so little reading time these days, because I do so much writing instead, I have to be very protective of the time I do set aside for reading.

Now, in order to accomplish these lofty reading goals, I realized today after talking with my friend Dineen Miller that I need to set small, attainable goals each week or each day.

So I will commit to at least 30 minutes of reading each day. I will set my timer and not do anything else but read. (That actually sounds heavenly to me. I have a feeling that won’t be a problem!)

If I read 30 minutes a day, that’s three and a half hours of reading each week. I can definitely finish a book in three and a half hours, depending on the book. I might even get a book and a half done each week. I think this will allow me to get 6 books done a month.

What do you think?

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