I know we are a full week into the new year and this is a bit late, but I can only disrupt the publishing schedule so much. Normal service will be resumed next week I promise. Anyway, here we are now with my Reading Resolutions for this year, such as they are.
The first you already know about and it’s no more 50 States challenge. The number of states that aren’t fun is nearly into double figures – and that’s just too many for me to put up with, especially as they all end up being in the last couple of months of the year. And I’m not starting any new challenges, to replace it because the same thing will happen – I’ll end up reading things I don’t enjoy and also buying more books to complete them and that sort of defeats the object.
The second one I’ve actually already done (although you’ll see it in its old state in the stats post tomorrow) and that is clear out the Goodreads to read shelf. It’s been over 800 for months, and it went up again in December as I added all the new releases for 2026 while I was writing anticipated books. And so I spent some time (probably a couple of hours all together) going through all 28 pages of books on to read shelf and removing a whole load of them and it’s now under 600, and hopefully I’ll get it down further.
And then this is the one that is on the list ever year: Reduce the physical to read pile. As I said earlier, one of of the issues with reading challenges is that I never seem to be able to complete them without buying more books and that means that the pre-orders and the other stuff I buy just end up sitting waiting to be read. And we’re now at a point where there are three overflow piles in front of the to-read bookshelf and that’s ridiculous. So I need to really work on that this year. I will have another sort through it to weed stuff out as well and do a round of 50 pages and out on things (which might also get the good reads to shelf down further) but that will have to wait a week or two because I’ve only just done a charity shop run and cleared space to move in the office and I can’t start filling it up with stuff again already!
Wish me luck…
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 