2020 Reading Goal

I am back! It has been sooo long since I blogged! I drifted off the blogging when I started my Youtube channel. Then life got busy and I have not been consistent with that. But I do still post somewhat on Instagram and Facebook, so if you would like to see what I am up to, you should follow me there!

Anyway, the reason for this post is to chat a bit about New Years….it is a new year and a new decade. People typically set goals for themselves to better themselves. I used to be that type of person. I would get really excited about something I wanted to get better at and I would set my goal. However, I never had a plan for accountability… no plan to see if I was really following through with what I intended and no way to check in on myself so of course I would give up. After years of doing that, I became cynical and failed to set up goals. I always thought, why bother when I know I am not going to follow through?

This year, I was on my same cynical mood and did not even want to think about setting up a goal. However, after hearing everyone come up with goals and things they wanted to achieve, I got to thinking… Maybe I CAN meet a goal. I just need to pick something that I KNOW I miss…something that perhaps I used to do that I don’t anymore…

Enter…reading! I used to LOVE to read! I could read a book in a couple days. Then, I went to grad school, got an “adult job” and an “adult life”…. I am constantly feeling mentally exhausted and picking up a book and reading seemed like so much work to me. So much so that I gave up on something that I love to do. So, that’s my goal for 2020. 

I decided I wanted to get back into doing something that I enjoy. After thinking about it, I figured if I wrote it down and came up with a plan on how to tackle it, I would follow through. It also helps that my husband wants to get back into reading as well. This means we are now reading before bed, and keep each other accountable. This is the true way I can meet my goal! 

I decided to write down a list of books I wanted to read. My goal is to read 12 books in 2020. Yes, this might seem like very few books, but I figured I haven’t really read in a while so I did not want to overshoot the amount I could read. I figured reading one book a month would be a great accomplishment! So, I picked one book a month. After having written them down, I realized it is totally possible that I read more than one a month or that I read a different one that month (I will be going to the library to pick up most of these books so it really depends on availability).

Anyway, I wanted to share the list of books I picked with you. Two of them are more like scripts so I have actually already finished one and expect to finish the other rather quickly. For this reason, I added a few back up books. Here’s what I have so far:

Fantastic Beasts and where to find them – JK Rowling 

Harry Potter & the Cursed Child – JK Rowling

Born a Crime – Trevor Noah 

A Beautiful Terrible Thing – Jen Waite

The Topeka School – Ben Lerner

The Old Drift – Namwali Serpell

Women Talking – Miriam Toews

Patsy – Nicole Dennis-Benn

The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

The Testaments – Margaret Atwood

The Institute – Stephen King

The Silent Patient – Alex Michaelides

Bonus books:

Recursion – Blake Crouch

Over the Top – Jonathan Van Ness

The Five – Hallie Rubenhold

I will try to post at the end of each month how many books I got to read that month and perhaps a brief comment on what I thought about each! Do you have a goal for 2020? Let me know in the comments below!

Thanks for reading!

~Naty