Reading Resolutions: 2022

My favorite part of the whole year is sitting down and figuring out what all my new bookish resolutions will be. I love the process of choosing which challenges I want to do and then sitting down and planning them out. It always recharges my reading energy and gets me all excited to power through more books. 2021 was a difficult year for me, so I'm happy to be bidding it goodbye and starting off fresh with a new set of plans and goals.

This year, the planning process was a little bit different for me. I finished my Classics Club Challenge last November, so I didn't have to worry about reading a certain amount for that. I'm also not sure if the Back to the Classics Challenge will be back this year (the host's blog has been quiet for months), so I didn't have that to think about either. Without my usual mainstays, I was free to plan whatever I wanted. This was both nice and a little intimidating too. I decided to put most of my focus on reading books from my shelves, as reducing my TBR piles is something I desperately need to do. I also decided to put more effort into reading middle grades novels, as this will be useful for my job. Here's what I came up with for the year:

My usual Goodreads goal is to read 50 books, but this year, I've decided to aim higher. I've always really wanted to read 100 books in a year. I've never done it before, and something about that number just sounds right. The closest I came was in 2020, when I made it to 91. I've decided that I'm going to officially go for it this year. My goal will be to read 100 books.

This challenge is pretty simple - I went though my TBR piles and picked 22 books to read during 22. This will clear up some space on my shelves, and help me to finally get to some of the books I've been meaning to read for ages. You can see the list of all the books I picked for this challenge here.

Another growing situation I have happening on my shelves is unread series of books. When I find a new series I think I will like, I tend to buy the whole thing so I can read them all in a row. Of course, I never end up actually starting these series in any kind of timely fashion, usually because I don't want to become obligated to read several books when I'm trying to get through other reading challenges. So, my idea for this year is to make reading these series into a challenge for myself. You can see everything I picked to read for this challenge listed here. 

My last challenge for the year is to try and read more middle grade novels. I teach middle school language arts, but I don't read a lot of books geared towards that age group regularly. This year, I'm going to make more of an effort to keep up to date with new releases in this area and read at least two each month, for a total of at least 24 this year. This way, I can make better recommendations for my students and grow my classroom library by donating what I read to it. I will maintain a list of everything I read here. 

One other new bookish thing I'm going to try this year is to keep a physical reading journal. I've really been enjoying practicing hand lettering and doodling, so I'm going to give it a shot. That won't change anything here on the blog, except maybe I'll post some pictures from time to time if I'm happy with it.

So, unless Back to the Classics reappears, this should be it for 2022. I'm excited to spend the year reading off my shelves and deepening my knowledge of books for my students. More than that though, I'm really hoping to enjoy what I read and to find some new favorites. I accomplished a lot last year, but I didn't like a lot of what I had to read for my challenges. This time around, I'm aiming to find some stories to fall in love with.