reading goals!

Now is the season for every company to give you it’s wr*p up, and goodreads is no exception.

I’ll be fully transparent here and acknowledge that I’m not as much a fan of this habit at the moment because it’s all really divorced from any sort of actual reflection and a bit more fannish/cliquish, used to sort people into this kind of person or that kind of person, all based on what you consume and how much of it. not a very holistic view of the self, but then, these corporations don’t really care about that. they care that you’re using the product, and the answer to that is always more, more, more.

that said! I do love my reading goals and I don’t blame people who set them. I like following along with my friends, who all have very different reasons for their own goals. (I stay on goodreads because I like seeing what they’re reading!) I have a very different target in mind, though, when I set my goals every year. Especially the last couple of years. I put my goal high not for anyone else, but so that I can remember that I can read instead of playing on my phone. I can read instead of moping over a scene that’s not coming out right. I can read instead of worrying over sales or stalled workout progress. BUT I can also write! Or anything else! And those other things are equally valid to achieve the main goal—waste less of my time on social media. If I don’t make my goal, that’s cool. I just change my goodreads goal to match what I did achieve because I’m proud that reading got done. Oops, I cheated! But who am I cheating? The little goodreads fairies? 🤷‍♂️

Last year, I started keeping a tiny analog notebook of my reads for a few reasons. One, because goodreads doesn’t account for ARCs or drafts that I read. It doesn’t account for other types of story I engage with, like Critical Role or other Actual Plays (still on the fence with whether these go in the notebook or not, honestly, but it’s good for me to keep track of the stories I’ve loved, one way or another). It’s a place where I can keep my thoughts without judgement.

This year, I may also set specific reading goals, but they will be related to a specific outcome I want, and that outcome isn’t numbers—it’s, I want to learn more about this, or I want to read this author’s entire oeuvre, or I want to improve my style.

Also, I love this post which is also a zine about reading.

Honestly, it’s the one thing that I think a lot of readers could stand to do—get off social media, I mean. It seems like every time I poke my head back into the nether regions of the internet, there’s another slap-fight over who is really reading—ebooks readers? audiobookers? 150 book-a-years? It’s pretty inane, on the whole, but one thing does catch in my mind.

The people who read a lot and brag about it, goading people into picking fights with them about whether or not what they’ve read is real. What a wild way to spend one’s precious life!

On the surface, that sounds great, reading a lot. A score against anti-intellectualism! People are reading a lot and being proud of it! Woo! Except, when you scratch the surface and see how the people are reading, how much they’re skipping, how little actual book is sinking into the skull—the lack of reading comprehension, the inability to grapple with complex ideas (from nonfiction to complicated relationships and moralities in fiction), hiding from books that are “too big”—and then, actually, it does feel like anti-intellectualism again, with a dose of clout-chasing and ego. And if it weren’t for the clout-chasing and the ego drive, they wouldn’t be shouting about how much they’ve read. Even the bro-stoics are bucking this trend—just read Ryan Holiday on speed reading.

Because what does the number actually matter?

It’s the books themselves, the stories and information within, the things you learn about yourself and the world. Not how many you consume. And how many books someone else reads shouldn’t matter either, nor if they’re honest or dishonest. If they’re skimming, skipping narration or chapters, not my business. Their loss. I care about the way someone can talk to me about a book. What they got from it, what they think I’ll love about it. Even why they didn’t like it, if it’s an interesting thing.

I’m not a slow reader or a fast reader. I go through times in my life where I read voraciously and times when I am lucky to read a phone-sized page a day. But none of that matters. I’m just a reader. I like books. I like to learn. I love stories and imagination.

I read.