Reading Goals 2021
Happy New Year readers! I hope you have a wonderful and safe celebration today and/or tomorrow! And may 2021 be more peaceful than 2020 has been for many of us. With the new year upon us, and having reviewed my past year of reading, it’s time to think to the future. A new year means new goals, right? While making (or really keeping…) New Year’s Resolutions isn’t my favorite part of the celebration, I do enjoy sitting down and planning out what I want to read in the next few months. And I REALLY enjoy being able to put checkmarks next to what I’ve done. It’s an amazing motivator for me. Hence my lists and planning...
So where to start? As I was looking at my shelves of TBR books and wondering how they could be MORE full than they were at the beginning of last year I noticed something. I have TONS of books by female authors that I just haven’t gotten to yet. Like, a lot. More than I really thought I had when I started making the list. So this year, I have decided to focus on those stories. Not for big feminist reasons really, but well… maybe? In the fantasy genre, we focus a lot on the big names. And most of those names go with men, starting with Tolkien and on down. But there are some outstanding works by women writers and I need that balance more in my life. Here is where I plan to start:
Martha Wells Murderbot series
Seanan McGuire Wayward Children series
Robin Hobb Realm of the Elderlings, particularly Liveship Traders, Tawny Man, and Rainwild Chronicles
VE Schwab A Darker Shade of Magic series and The Invisible Life of Addie Larue
Karen Miller Kingmaker/Kingbreaker duology
Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and Piranesi
Charlie Holmberg Paper Magicians series
Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus and The Starless Sea
Tamsyn Muir Locked Tomb series
Megan Whelan Turner Thief Queen’s Thief series
Kaufmann and Kristoff Aurora Rising series
And to add some other longstanding waits:
Brian McClellan Powder Mage trilogy
Brandon Sanderson Skyward series reread/book 3, WoK Prime, RoW reread, Dawnshard reread, Mistborn Era 2 reread
Neil Gaiman American Gods, Stardust, other?
Tad Williams Empire of Grass, and maybe the third in that series? I guess I should check on some publication dates for some things…
I won’t necessarily do all of these in order, I tend to bounce around a little between series. But I have a brand new Kindle Paperwhite and a bunch of these ebooks (especially the novellas courtesy of the Tor.com book club) that have been staring at me for a year or more. Knowing there are almost a dozen books that are novellas or short novels makes this list seem slightly less daunting than it looks on paper, but it is a mighty and powerful list.
In addition, I’m going to be trying to fill in a 2021 reading challenge from Linzthebookworm/Logophile that helpfully has 5 levels of 12 books each. Most of my current reading ideas can map fairly well onto what they’ve laid out already, so I hope to get a good portion of that done as an added bonus. I recommend checking it out yourself if you are struggling to figure out what to read this year, it has a bunch of helpful prompts and they are always sharing what they’ve been reading in their challenge.
Well, that’s about all I have to say. I’m hopefully not too overly optimistic, but I’m really looking forward to this next year of reading. And the layout I’ve been working on is far superior to the post-it note list I’ve had the last few years. What are your reading goals for 2021? Or are you a non-goal browse through the library or bookstore reader?
My first pages in my bullet journal… a new experiment for a new year.
