I know I have a section for books and I never post there! Here's the thing! I host a Virtual Book Club on Facebook. Sorry...you have to have a Facebook account to join because we use Messenger Rooms for our discussions. I am also part of The Creepy Book Club (also on Facebook or you can check out their website) and I like to participate in Holly Furtick's Book Club (her discussions are on IG). That's at least 1 book every month if not 3! I'll definitely be working on a layout for my reviews but I want to share some of my goals and how I am planning to track my books and audiobooks!
WHAT WAS MY GOAL FOR 2022
I am so glad you asked! Let me start with the fact that I have set book goals for myself every year for the last 3 years and this year is the first time I reached my goal.
Being home the majority of 2020 and 2021, I wasn't really reading or listening to audiobooks...or at least I wasn't tracking them. This year I decided I wanted to track everything. Every book I read to Freya, every book I read, and every book I listened to. I wanted to consume in some way shape or form 48 books. I found myself driving a lot more to earn money so I listened to a lot of audio books on the road in lieu of no time to actually read.
Not only have I completed it, I'm going to exceed it. I just finished book 49 yesterday for book club today (December was a 2-fer in VBC). I also have 4 books and 2 audio books that I have started this year that I want to finish before we move into January. They are "Midnight Sun" by Stephanie Meyer (Twilight told from Edward's perspective), "Midnight Flight" by VC Andrews (Broken Wings series Book #2), "The Retreat" by Sarah Pearse (Detective Elin Warner #2), and "Turkey Trot Terror" by Kathleen Suzette (Cozy Baked Mystery #3)...and "Before She Disappeared" by Lisa Gardner and "Siege and Storm" by Leigh Bardugo (Book #2 in Shadow and Bone Trilogy) that I'm listening to on Audible...so I could round out the year finishing 55 books read/listened to.
WHAT IS MY GOAL FOR 2023?
I want to get back to reading more books. I have nothing against audiobooks and I'm going to keep my audible subscription but I'm not going to COUNT my audiobooks towards my goal in 2023. I'm still going to track them but I'm getting ahead of myself. My goal is to read 36 books. These can be physical books or eBooks (I love my new Kindle). If I were to read each book for all of the book clubs then this would be done however, for example, Holly's book for January book club is "Demon Copperhead" and the book is over 500 pages. That is too much for me to commit too for a month so I used one of my credits to get the audio book. That one is still 21 hours long!
To help meeting the book count, I happened to stumble onto a template for 23 books in 2023 from Angie Sutton (@readwithangie on IG - check her highlights) and she said that she uses this template as a way to read the books that are already on her shelves that she hasn't read yet. I have a lot of books on my bookshelves that I haven't read yet so I'll make my list of 23 books and add those as my extras.
HOW AM I GOING TO TRACK WHAT I READ AND LIST TO?
You can thank Angie again for sharing her "Angie Way" method. I was kind of doing this on my own when I was trying to read at least one book a month. I would take the number of pages in a book and divide it by the number of days in the month and then read that number of pages every day. It was a lot easier than trying to commit to a chapter when some of my books can have very long chapters. She does this but has multiple books that she is reading. She adds up all the pages from all her books and then divides it by the number of days in a month and then schedules out the number of pages she will read each day.
I'm kind of doing this but back to the way I was doing it before...at least for right now. Since I know my book club has our discussion the last Saturday of the month, I schedule out the pages for that read to finish by the day before. The Creepy Book Club usually has a few discussions with at least one the last week of the month so my goal will be to finish by the Sunday before the final week of the month. Holly announces her next book and the date of the discussion at the same time so that's easy to schedule as well. I have January all set up kind of using Angie's Way.
For January I have 31 pages to read every day until the 22nd when I'll finish my Creepy Book Club book. Since I'm listening to Demon Copperhead I have about 1 hour to listen to every day and that book club is on the 24th. I think her discussions are usually on a Tuesday evening at 8pm EST. In addition to these books, I also want to read Pillars of the Earth again. It's a really long book but its one that I just want to read maybe a chapter here and there so I'm not really scheduling those pages. Depending on the following month's book club announcements for CBC and Holly's book club, I might start reading or listening to those in those last few days (page length or time will determine that).
I'll also be tracking the number of pages I read each month and how much time I listen to audio books. These are going to be just what I am reading and listening to and will not include what books I read to my daughter. BONUS TRACKING
I found this lovely girl on IG named Abbie (@britishbookreader) and she has an Etsy store where she sells these book marks and journal trackers. She is currently closed until 12.27 for the holiday but check out her stuff. While I am going to track all the books I read on Good Reads, I'm going to use the bookmark for all the books I read with my daughter and then the journal tracker will be color coded with blue books for physical books, green books for eBooks, and orange books for audio books.
Then there is the Kindle Challenge. This winter quarter is the first time that I am really participating. I will have all the mystery badges completed as of tomorrow and the other two will be done at the end of the month, a perfect month and read for 75 days. I will have completed all 15 badges. Assuming that it will be 15 badges again, I have set up 2 pages after March tracking to track my Kindle Challenge.
These are the first three sections of the current Kindle Challenge that I think are standard for each quarter. The top 3 are the number of days read (15, 40, 75). Second row is for books completed (1, 2, 3). Third row is for ready streaks (1 day, Perfect Week, Perfect Month with week and month being able to 'level up').
This will be for the 6 Mystery Reveals. These will each have a date that the reveal will happen and have a 'hint'. Once it is announced, then you can complete it. For example, one for this quarter is called Prime Early Access and that just required to read some around Prime Weekend and Chills and Thrills was reading a book from their list of thrillers. The one I will finish tomorrow is called Sweater Weather and it's reading 3 days between 12.15 and 12.31.
SO WHAT WILL THE BOOK SECTION OF MY SITE LOOK LIKE MOVING FORWARD?
I don't have an answer for that just yet. Maybe I'll do a monthly recap with some ratings of the books that I read and what is to come in the next month. Maybe I'll pick one of the books that I read or listened to and write about that one. For now, I'm thinking that a monthly recap might be best and I can actually start with December. It won't be as detailed as the ones to come because I haven't been keeping track of pages or time listened to audiobooks.
If you're looking for a book club, you can always request to join my Virtual Book Club (VBC) on Facebook. You have to answer the following questions to join: How do you plan to participate (physical, ebooks, audio, check all that apply), and what is your favorite book/series and author. Simple as that. We also have a featured post at the top of the group with our TBR. You can review the PDF and list in the comments any book you want to add to the list.
Happy Reading!
**This post contains links but none of the links are affiliate links. I get nothing by you clicking on any of these links...well except if you join my book club and then I get to see you in my group and my discussions...but nothing monetary! I promise!**
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