I love to read. It is easy for me, however, to get overwhelmed by the amount I have to read. The reality is that no one is forcing me to read, but myself. There is a saying I picked up from the last school I attended that needs to be applied here: “It’s only a lot of reading if you do it.” I actually want to do a lot of reading, just not all at once because if I have so much reading that I don’t get too any of it…am I really reading?. So, this year I am going to reset my Goodreads.com list to reflect reality rather than my ambitions.
Honestly, I thought I would get more reading done this year, but so much changed during the year. In fact, while I didn’t know it when I set my goals in January 2016—by the end of the year, I was in Korea. The problem that I have is that I see books all of the time that I want to read and many times, I pick them up to read but get distracted by life or other things in life and I lose momentum. After I lose momentum, it is then more difficult to regain the initiative.
I hope that this year will be different. I want to set some rules to my Goodreads list. And Goodreads is important because it is a place where I can record what I am reading and stay accountable or at least feel like it. It is a guide to my reading list, if I am using it properly. So, what are those rules?
1) If I’m not “currently reading” take it off the list. If I have stopped reading the book in 2016, mark “read” and move on. This is hard because I haven’t “read” the book. In all honestly, however, I did—I read it enough until I lost interest. I just didn’t read these books enough to provide an accurate review.
2) Limit the number of books to one book of choice, one project book (a book that is a part of an overall series of reading—this year the project is Eugene Peterson’s books after I finish a book I’m reading by Billy Graham), and one audiobook. I should have no more books in my que and there are really no waivers.
That’s really all of the rules I need. I think resetting my Goodreads list and using Goodreads more effectively will help me get a handle of all the reading that I want to do.
I would love to hear how you use Goodreads and how you may manage all of the reading that is out there! Please leave the comments below!