My 2019 Reading Challenge Recap

Let’s look back at my year of books! Every year I participate in the Goodreads Reading Challenge, setting myself a numerical goal of books to read, as well as some more abstract goals. This year I set myself an easily attainable numerical goal, though I did end up losing sight of some of my larger objectives.

At the beginning of this year, I set myself the slightly lower than usual numerical goal of 45 books, and as of writing this post, I’ve already read 44! I’ve started on my final book and should be able to comfortably finish it before the new year. This is the first time in many years that I won’t be rushing to grab a bunch of graphic novels and children’s books during the final week of December to squeeze in my last few books. You can check out all the books I’ve read for my 2019 Goodreads Reading Challenge here.

My favorite book I read this year (apart from all the eagerly anticipated sequels I already knew I’d love) was The Lady and the Highwayman by Sarah M. Eden. This book wasn’t on my radar at all until a friend picked it up at a convention and loaned it to me. The story is a heartwarming sweet romance that touches on some of my favorite historical topics: the Victorian era and the Penny Dreadful genre. It reminded me a bit of Leanna Renee Hieber’s works with its focus on diversity and social justice in a Victorian context—along with its Gothicism, romance, and touch of the supernatural. I also read a lot of really good anthologies of older works this year, including Women’s Weird and Death by Suggestion. Thanks to these books, I’ve discovered several indie presses and self-pubbed authors that are doing great work to bring attention to often-overlooked pieces of literature. This year I also read more nonfiction than usual—and found that I really enjoyed them! The highlights from this category were Darkly; Monster, She Wrote; and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs. I hope to keep up this trend of reading more nonfiction next year.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve discussed my participation in the We Need Diverse Books reading challenge, and my findings that setting a numerical goal for “diverse books” wasn’t helpful to me. This year, I stopped tracking my diverse reads at all and instead focused on becoming more immersed in diverse reading communities. Personally, I’ve found that actively tracking how many diverse books I read only served to highlight what I already knew—that I wasn’t reading enough books with marginalized characters or by marginalized authors—without providing any solutions. This year I redirected that energy into attending book events with a diverse lineup of speakers, following a wider variety of people on Book Twitter, surrounding myself with fellow readers who value diversity, and looking outside of my usual places for book recommendations. And it seems to have worked! At a rough count, without making a conscious effort, over one-third of the books I read this year featured people of color, members of the LGBT+ community, religious minorities, etc. and/or were written by authors belonging to these groups. I also think that the changing publishing landscape has made this much easier than in previous years. I’m hoping to keep up this momentum next year—2020 is already shaping up to be a particularly popular year for new releases by trans authors.

While 2019 was ostensibly a success in terms of my numerical reading goal and increased diversity, I was less successful with some of the other goals I had set for myself. I had meant to dedicate 2019 to tackling larger and more challenging works, such as some of the classic Gothics I have not yet read or the 850-page tome Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I temporarily abandoned some time in 2018. I didn’t even crack any of those open this year, so I’ll have to return to those goals in 2020. Another priority for next year is reading all of the books that I’ve borrowed from other people and really ought to return. I also plan to round out my Harry Potter reread by finishing Books 6 and 7. Hopefully doing so will inspire more posts in my series on Harry Potter and the Gothic. In light of these objectives, I think I’ll keep the same low numerical goal of 45 books.

What are your reading goals for 2020? How did you fare with your 2019 expectations? Did you have any favorite books of the year? Let me know in the comments!