I never seem to manage to get these types of posts up on the exact first day of the year, but at least we’re in the first week of the year this time! For 2024, I’m trying to keep my goals and plans pretty simple. I’m also going to refer back to this post throughout the year to see how I’m progressing with my goals. That being said, this post is going to be a bit of a long one and split into a four parts:
- January 2024 TBR
- Reading Goals
- Blogging Goals
- Project Backlist
January 2024 TBR
**All links are to the respective book’s StoryGraph pages for reference. I do not receive any compensation from these links.**
- The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers (releases January 30, 2024)
- What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher (releases February 14, 2024)
- The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett (releases February 6, 2024)
- That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf by Kimberly Lemming (Releases February 6, 2024)
- Wyngraf, Issue 4 edited by Nathaniel Webb
- To Cage a God by Elizabeth May (Releases February 20, 2024)
- Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan (Releases February 27, 2024)
- Tonight, I Burn by Katharine J. Adams
- The Bladed Faith by David Dalglish
These are the books in the order I plan to read them for January 2024. I’m already ahead of the game too because I finished The City of Stardust and What Feasts at Night already this week! I do have a few other books on my list, but it’s not a huge deal if I don’t get to them. I’m prioritizing ARC’s, and I’m only going to read other books if I have time.
2024 Reading Goals
Which brings me to my reading goals for 2024! I will be the first to admit that these goals are pretty ambitious, especially considering I’ve gotten back into knitting this year. However, I am determined to put a dent in my backlog. It’s getting ridiculous, and I think these goals will definitely help with that.
- Read mainly ARC’s
- Get to 80% feedback rating on NetGalley
- Read 75 books
- Read 100 pages per day
My biggest goal this year is to read mainly ARC’s because I have an entirely too large backlog of them. I’m currently prioritizing ARC’s for books that release in 2024. That way I’ll be ahead and on task before tackling the overdue ones. This was also a goal in 2023, but I ended up letting myself mood read and re-read a lot of things instead. Thanks to this spreadsheet from Kal at Reader Voracious, though, I figured out a few things.
First, I need to read about 84 ARC’s to get to an 80% feedback rating on NetGalley. I calculated this based on how many I currently have on my shelf on NetGalley and took 80% of that. Pretty easy. Then, I used Kal’s spreadsheet that I already had filled out to see how many pages total were in all of these ARC’s and divided that by 365 (for the number of days in the year). That’s how I came up with needing to read about 100 pages per day to get through them all.
So, knowing all of this, I feel like goals 1, 3, and 4 all support the ultimate goal of improving my NetGalley feedback rating. I’m also going to be a bit more judicious in requesting ARC’s. Right now, I don’t plan to request any, but if a publisher emails me something they think I will like then it’s unlikely I’ll say no to those.
2024 Blogging Goals
Now, how do my reading goals tie into my blog? Well, in a few different ways, and both my blogging goals and reading goals are meant to support each other. I’m mainly using my blog to help hold me accountable to reading what I should instead of devolving into a mood reading gremlin again this year.
- Post at least once per week
- Post monthly TBR’s and Wrap-up’s
- Blog hop at least twice per month
- Post quarterly Project Backlist updates
One thing I realized over the course of 2023 is that my blog is actually growing! I wrote 32 posts in 2022 and had 684 views on my blog that year. In 2023, however, I wrote 44 posts and had 5,316 views. That’s a 677% increase in views, and I only wrote about a dozen more posts. Part of that increase is due to reading and reviewing more popular titles, but I feel like making an attempt to be consistent with posting last year also had an affect.
Either way, making sure I post to my blog at least once per week accomplishes a few things. It helps hold me accountable to reading continuously, and it will help my blog see more traffic. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not totally focused on traffic to my blog, but it will help ensure I have access to the books I want to read and that my readers want to read about. My blog hopping goal will also help with this. Plus, I want to get to know other bloggers in the book community, and blog hopping is a good way to do that.
My other two goals are primarily to help hold myself accountable to my reading goals. Posting my planned TBR’s each month and then following up with Wrap-Up posts will definitely do that. It’s embarrassing to post about something and then not follow through. Additionally, participating in Project Backlist will help, and posting about my progress quarterly is another way to hold myself accountable (read more about Project Backlist below). Granted life happens, so there will be times I’m not able to stick to my plan. I’m going to try not to beat myself up about it, though, because progress is still progress no matter how small.
2024 Project Backlist
So what is this Project Backlist thing I keep mentioning anyways? Project Backlist was created by Kal at Reader Voracious at the beginning of 2023, and the main goal is to help participants buy less and read more of what they already own. Let’s face it. Most of us are more easily classified as Book Dragons rather than Book Worms due to our book hoarding tendencies, especially me. So, I will be happily participating in this challenge again for 2024.
Project Backlist has a list of goals that participants can use or participants are also encouraged to create their own goals. The main goal I’m going with for 2024 is ARCrastinator – clear overdue ARC list. Now, I have over 100 ARC’s that are overdue at this point (I know it’s a sad state of affairs over here). So, I won’t be able to clear them all. Hence, my goal of an 80% feedback rating on NetGalley. That is still a huge chunk of my ARC backlog, and participating in Project Backlist is going to help me achieve that.
As I mentioned above, I also plan to post quarterly updates on my blog on how things are going both with my own goals and with my Project Backlist goals. Be sure to follow my blog to get email updates for when those posts go live!
Click here to find out more about Project Backlist on Kal’s blog – Reader Voracious.
Do you set reading goals every year? What are your goals for 2024? Let me know in the comments!
Tea Rex Reads 