Hi Everyone! I hope you are all having a great start to the New Year. Today, I want to talk a little bit about my reading resolutions for 2024!
One of the great things about the start of a brand new year is that anything feels possible. It’s a fresh start, a time to get rid of bad habits and create better ones. And I love doing this in my reading life – it always makes me reflect on what I really want to change in the reading year ahead.
Last year was a bit of a … not good… year for me in general, and I really felt that in my reading too. Not that the books I read were all terrible, they were just lackluster, I guess.
I had a year filled with mainly 3 star reads, and just seven new 5-star reads!! Because of this, I’ve decided to really try and focus my goals around books and genres that I’m super excited for this year.
So, here are my reading resolutions for 2024!
1. Read Less Books
This sounds pretty backwards right? Most people usually set higher reading goals for the year. Usually, I do the exact same.
But I think I read too much last year.
I got very in my head about reading a lot of books, and that made me gravitate towards picking up things that I could read quickly, but still find enjoyable. This is where Kindle Unlimited enters the scene.
I read a lot of books on Kindle Unlimited last year. This is obviously not a problem as KU is a great service. But looking back, most of the books I read were forgettable for me, and I didn’t make a dent in my physical TBR at all. It just feels a bit silly now because I own so many books that I’m excited for, I just … didn’t read any of them.
So, this year my goal is to read less than 50 books. I’m hoping that by really thinking about the books I’m picking up, I will have a much more enjoyable reading year!
2. Mainly Read Books that I Already Own
Leading on from my last goal, I want to mainly read books that I own this year, especially from my physical TBR. As I said, I really leaned towards ebooks last year, especially on Kindle Unlimited, and I practically avoided physical books.
I have been tracking my reading for the past few years (I’m a nerd who loves pretty graphs), so I can actually give you all specific numbers! As you can see from this chart, 58 of the books I read were in ebook format last year.
Of that 58, 78% of them were through Kindle Unlimited. Therefore, the majority of the books I read were borrowed books.
That is, quite frankly, ridiculous when I know how outrageous my physical TBR is right now! And so, this year, I want to make sure that 50% or more of my reading is from my physical TBR – no Kindle Unlimited for me this year!
3. Read 10 Fantasy Books
Now, I love romance books, and always will. But I’ve been in a bit of a romance spiral recently – I haven’t really been reading from all of my favourite genres. Another of my little charts shows the genres that I read last year:
As you can see, half of my reading was just straight up romance, and then there is another 17% for romantasy and 26% for paranormal romance. That totals up to me reading 93% ROMANCE BOOKS!!!
As you can imagine, this is something that I want to change this year to add a bit of variety to my reading; variety is the spice of life, as they say. So I decided that, because fantasy is one of my favourite genres, this was one I would enjoy swapping the romance books out for.
4. Read 5 YA Contemporary Books
This goal really ties in to my main objectives for this year: read more from my physical TBR, and branch out of romance.
I love YA books, and have collected a hefty stack of unread YA contemporaries in my book collection. But I haven’t really read any for… a while.
So, I thought I would choose a smaller, more manageable number to ease myself back into this genre. Even though it is only 5 books, I think I will feel good about making a small dent in this section of my TBR!
5. Read a Classic Every Quarter
Lastly, I’ve decided I want to dip my toe into some classic literature this year. Now that I have finished my literature degree, I have found that I haven’t really been gravitating towards classics as I’m not forced to read them for school!
Don’t get me wrong, I loved reading the books I had to study, but I haven’t really incorporated this genre into my personal reading yet. And so I thought that this goal, reading a classic per quarter, would give me a bit of a deadline to work towards without feeling like I’m back at uni!
And that’s it folks! Hopefully, I will actually stick to these goals this year (I’m notoriously bad at keeping to new year’s resolutions). I’m mainly hoping that by putting this down “on paper”, and the thought of having to give you all updates, will keep me on track!
so, here’s to a great reading year in 2024!
Do you like making new year’s resolutions? Have you made any reading goals for this year?
Let me know in the comments!
Living Through Fiction 
3 thoughts on “My 2024 Reading Resolutions”