Thanks to these two bloggers for sponsoring the annual Blog Discussion Challenge:
- Nicole at Feed Your Fiction Addiction
- Shannon at It Starts at Midnight
Just about a year ago I wrote what Notes in the Margin would be up to during 2024.
Now, I’m happy with the way last year’s reading turned out, particularly how I ended the year with a sense of accomplishment rather than anxiety and disappointment. Therefore, I’m going to use the same approach to reading this year: I’ll be reading within the general topic of Life Stories in Literature but with no goals set for number of books or pages to read.
I like to think I’ve always been independent enough to make my own decisions without worrying what other people think, but my jumping on the bandwagon of reading statistics in previous years suggests that I haven’t been. So I was pleased to find some validation of my current choice of unplanned reading in a newsletter from Ella Creamer, a member of the editorial staff of The Guardian. (Because the following quotations are from a newsletter, I can’t back them up with links to a web page.) In examining “why we have the urge to set reading targets,” she spoke with some novelists about their goals and how they track their reading.
“Where does this urge to track and set goals for our reading come from?” Creamer asks. “We don’t generally set targets for other forms of cultural consumption . . . So why for books?” One reason may be that tracking statistics helps readers “find a community to talk about books with.” But, novelist Yiyun Li told Creamer, setting a reading goal “seems to me to focus on numbers or statistics for others to see, while reading feels to me an intensely internal dialogue between one’s mind and the books one reads.” Li added that her only goal is to read “thinkingly.”
And what about keeping track of what you read? Novelisst Kid de Waal told Creamer that although she keeps track of her reading in her head, she thinks keeping a reading journal is a good idea in principle: “The person we are at 20 when we read Jane Eyre is not the person that re-reads it at 60.” I admit I have kept a list of all the books I’ve read since I got my first computer, because that seemed like exactly the kind of task computers did best. Over the years the software has changed several times; what I have now is a spreadsheet of book titles, authors’ names, and date read, with the first entry dated May 1, 1991. If you’re interested in keeping more detailed statistics than my bare-bones spreadsheet, check out the Book Riot 2025 Reading Log, or sign up with Story Graph or Goodreads.
Also, since 2017, I’ve been keeping a detailed reading journal in which I write my reactions, hunches, and questions as I read. This slows down my reading process but also helps me collect information for analysis and review. Keeping this journal makes me focus on important aspects of books—such as writing style, point of view, character development, and narrative structure—rather than on mere statistics. That is, the reading journal helps me read more “thinkingly,” as Li put it.
I’ve therefore decided to repeat my unplanned reading approach of 2024 in 2025, but with one significant change: I must focus more on blogging than I did last year. There. Now, in order to avoid embarrassing myself, I have to live up to such a bold public statement.
In 2025 I’ll also be carrying over from last year these two challenges:
(1) 6 Degrees of Separation
This is a monthly meme hosted by Kate, an Australian book blogger, on her blog, Books Are My Favourite and Best. You can read about the meme here. Take a look at the description and see if you’d like to join in.
(2) The 2024 Discussion Challenge
I’m continuing with these two because I enjoy them, because they help me to think about the books that I read, and because they allow me to interact with the book-blogging community.
How About You?
What are your reading plans for the upcoming year? Do you keep track of your reading? If so, what method do you use?
© 2025 by Mary Daniels Brown
The extracts from that newsletter article give much food for thought. The comment from Yiyun Li resonated particularly. I do keep a record of what I’m reading but my objective isn’t to read x number of books. I’ve seen some people post on LibraryThing that they’ve read around 200 books in a year. Thats an extraordinary number – if I did anything like that I wonder how many I would remember!
I’m always a bit skeptical when people report reading that many books in a year. I want to follow that statement up with the question “But how many of them do you remember?” Thanks for reading and commenting.
Good luck with your reading! I set my Goodreads goal at 9 books this year because I don’t want pressure to hit a number. I just want to enjoy my books.
I love the idea of having a journal chronicling your thoughts as you read, but I don’t think I’d keep up with actually doing it. So glad it works for you, though, because it’s an excellent idea!