Reader Rayna

Month: January 2017

  • Why I Set My Goodreads Challenge to One Book

    Hey peeps! It’s that time of year (the very beginning) where everyone (or a lot of people) are wondering what to set their Goodreads Reading Challenge goal to for 2017. A lot of people want to exceed last year’s goal by X amount of books, and some just want to read the same amount they did – or even less. I was thinking about my own challenge and I was going to set it to 30 books again this year, but as I thought more and more about it I realized how much I crave a stress free year.

    So I set my goal to one book. And I’ve already accomplished it.

    I want to do more than just be a book blogger this year, so I want to do a lot more of my other passions this year than just reading. That’s one of the major reasons why I set my goal to one book. I have more passions than just reading and they’ve been thrown to the wayside these past couple of years.

    The other major reason is that by setting it to one book, no matter how many books I’ve read, that feeling of accomplishment will still be there. I don’t feel that pressure that everyone feels when they set that goal. It always seem like we have to reach it, like we have no choice in that matter. But we do.

    I don’t think reading, or any passion/hobby/activity should be stressful. We’re doing this for fun, right? We’re doing this for ourselves, to have a voice in the reading world, to share our love of books. So why stress about how many we read?

    If you want to set your goal to 100 books, go for it! If you want to set it to 10, go for it! Do whatever you think will make you happy and just set out to achieve that goal! I hope you all have a stressless reading year and that you read the books you want.

    Let’s Chat! ≧◡≦

    What did you set your challenge to, if you did set it? Do you think it’s a good idea to just have one book as your goal, or do you think having a larger number to reach for is better? Tell me your thoughts!

  • Reading & Blog Goals for 2017

    Happy New Year everyone! Aren’t you glad 2016 is over? I’m excited for the new year because it means new beginnings, and I’ve never felt more genuinely excited for new beginnings since this year. I don’t know what it is, but I’m just anticipating what this year could potentially bring. I’ve already talked about my writing goals for this year, so now let me talk about my reading and blog goals for 2017:

    Reading Goals

    • Read at least 30 books.
    • Finish several books on the Beat the Backlist Challenge. I think this is a great challenge to really cross off those books that have been on my shelves 5ever.
    • Read more diverse books.
    • Finish the Harry Potter series, dammit.
    • Read more adult books (not there’s anything wrong with YA, I just want to read more adult things).

    Blog Goals

    • Comment on more blogs! I know I said this last year, but I want to keep it up because I have commented more this past year, but not as much as I’d hoped.
    • Maybe change the way I review. My review style has been transforming slowly the longer I do reviews, so it’s a natural progression kind of thing. I like my review style, though, so this one’s just kind of an optional one.
    • Have fun with what I’m doing.

    I honestly don’t have that many goals that I want to achieve this year in reading or blogging because I just want to enjoy my time doing both, which I think is the most important thing of all. As long as I’m doing that, then everything else can fall into place afterward.

    Let’s Chat! ≧◡≦

    What do you hope to accomplish reading wise? What about you blog? Are there some things you definitely want to tackle this year?