This year has been a year full of major life changes, including all sorts of changes to my reading habits. One major change is that I’m starting to move away from Goodreads, and am reevaluating how I track and document the books that I read. So this may very well be my last time doing the Goodreads Reading Challenge, specifically, though I will still be tracking my books and setting numerical goals. I’m still experimenting with finding the best alternatives, but one that I’ve started using is StoryGraph. I’m not sure how much I’ll be posting on there, but you can follow along with me at TheGothicLibrary.
The biggest change of 2023, though, is that back in June, I started a new job at a small, independent press that publishes mysteries and thrillers. This new job has changed my reading life in multiple ways. First, working a demanding publishing job means that I sometimes have less mental energy left over at the end of the day for reading. But an even more drastic change was returning to commuting and working in-person at the office after over two years of working from home. I’ve been able to read more print and ebooks on my commute, but have spent less time puttering around my apartment with an audiobook on—a reversal of the shift I experienced in 2020. Working in-person has also meant that I’ve had to drop some of the book clubs that were such a big part of my reading over the past two years. I’m particularly sad that I can no longer participate in Romancing the Gothic’s weekly book discussions on Zoom, though I’ve been finding ways to still read with members of the group, such as by participating in Dr. Sam Hirst’s #AGhostADay reading challenge in October.
Perhaps due to all of these changes and upheaval, I did not have nearly as productive a reading year as last year. I came nowhere near last year’s record of 63 books, and in fact am likely to fall quite a bit short of this year’s goal of 50 books. At the time of writing this blog post, I have read 37 books, though as always I will try to squeeze a couple more in before the year ends. Apart from having less time and energy to read and having less motivation from book clubs, I also read a lot of partial books this year that I didn’t count toward my total. At my new job, I am constantly just skimming or reading a couple chapters here and there of the books that we’re publishing. I also had quite a few books that I picked up for fun or to review and wound up either abandoning or putting on pause when they didn’t hold my attention.
On the positive side, I did broaden my reading in some new directions this year. I’ve particularly been trying to read more mysteries and thrillers to get a better grasp on the genres that my company publishes. Two of my favorite books this year were murder mysteries (or at least partially fit that category): Lavender House and A Restless Truth. Another great read from this year, Lara Elena Donnelly’s Base Notes, was a fascinating thriller that blended in speculative elements. And, of course, I still read plenty of horror, including another of this year’s favorites: What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher.
Overall, I was fairly hit-or-miss with last year’s goals. I did a decent job of reading a few more classics and hefty tomes. The Romancing the Gothic book club was a huge help once again, especially in the first half of the year before I had to drop out of the book club meetings. My biggest accomplishment in terms of reading old, influential texts this year was William Godwin’s Caleb Williams, which I never would have picked up without RtG’s support. Another great resource was the email newsletter Dracula Daily, which was a super fun way to reread Bram Stoker’s classic. I didn’t do as well with my goal to read more nonfiction; in fact, I only slipped one nonfiction book in right at the end of the year: A Haunted History of Invisible Women. I also didn’t do great with my goal of reading the books I already own or have borrowed, but I promise that’s going to happen next year! And I’d completely forgotten about my goal to plan out my reading schedule this year. Somehow I wound up doing the opposite: I over-committed when accepting review requests for the year, which left me constantly scrambling to catch up and regularly reviewing new books after their release dates.
So, in 2023, I’m going to commit more strongly to reading the physical books on my shelf—which will hopefully be easier now that I am reading books on my commute again, and which I really need to do so that I can reorganize my bookshelves and make room for some of the books I’ve worked on. I also want to be more discerning about accepting review requests so that I can more easily plan and space out my reviews. As mentioned above, I’ve already started to move away from Goodreads, but next year I want to let go of my need to still document every book I read there and establish a better alternative method for tracking my reading. I’m lowering my numerical reading goal back down to 45 books. And lastly, I want to continue reading more broadly in mystery and thriller, especially exploring some of the classic writers of the genre.
Do you have any mystery or thriller books to recommend to me? How did you do with your reading goals for the year? What are your new goals for 2023? And how was your year in books, overall? Let me know in the comments!