Lucy Irene

Every year.

Every damn year.

I jump on social media and see the reading goals of others. The enormous lists of books that they have read the year before. The articles: “How I read 100 books in a year”.

So I set myself a goal.

Compared to these voracious readers, my goal is small. It seems achievable. After all, I carry a book around at all times, and I’m studying literature and writing. Of course, I can make it to 52 books in 2017!

Ok, maybe it will be 40 in 2018.

Perhaps I should be realistic and make it to 26 for 2019.

I’ll just try 12 this year. If I read more than that in 2020, that’s great.

I never hit my goal. Ever.

My eyes glaze over when people, seeing the book that I have been carrying around for the last 2 months, ask, “You must love books; how many do you read?”

I flinch when they comment, “Are you still reading that?”

Books begin to feel like a weight pressing on my chest, a shadow just behind me.

Fighting The Failure

By about April every year, I start ignoring my reading tally, feeling like an utter failure. I tell myself that I am swamped. That I am studying full time and working 30 hours a week. No wonder I can’t finish the books that I pick up.

“Perhaps I am just reading the wrong books,” I hear you say. Maybe, but I am not exactly picky in those books I do pick up. I have tried numerous genres and various qualities, yet something crumbles when there is a goal to meet. Even the shortest, lightest novellas become too much, and I turn the television on and watch the same thing over and over.

I have used numerous tactics to stop the crumble and become a voracious reader. I did the obvious thing and created a Goodreads account to track my reading and share my goals. I often found myself going back and having to fill in what I have read, guessing dates and getting frustrated at the app itself. As soon as it started telling me how many books behind I was, I gave up.

So instead, I tried to start a bookstagram. I only posted twice. Then, I started creating Bujo spreads to track my reading, obsessively designing them. I never filled them in. I downloaded Bookly last year and have not even opened it. Don’t even ask about the Filofax!

Clearly, counting the number of books I read was not working. I mean, as a literature student, I read some massive books! They take time! Instead, I decided to try and read a certain number of pages in a year, which also gloriously failed. Frustrated, I just tried to hit a certain number of pages in a day. Surely I could develop a “reading habit” and become an insatiable reader? It was suggested in all of the research I had done on how to read more. You know, the researching I was doing instead of actually reading…

Unsurprisingly, counting pages per day also did not work.

Next came the spreadsheet. Massive. Complex. I make a hell of a spreadsheet. It was the perfect thing to track everything about what I was reading. I entered every book I owned and marked the date they were read starting from 2014, taking the dates from my Goodreads account. I was so proud. Until I discovered I had only read 92 books in the five and a half years it covered. I was not living up to my book-nerd reputation.

So, I bought a large scratch-off poster of the “Top 100 Books” — who decided these books I do not know — to read through with my partner. All I had to do was read the books. I didn’t have to do it in a prescribed time. It would almost be like a two-person book club! This surely will motivate me!

I have so far avoided each and every one of the books on it.

The Solution

I was relieved when I discovered I am not alone in feeling this way. According to The Atlantic, in 2018, only 16 per cent of people actually completed their Goodreads Challenge. They suggest that setting a reading goal can actually make reading itself a chore rather than encouraging us.

This is precisely how I have been feeling each year setting a reading goal.

So I have decided, this year, not to set a goal.

I never used to have a reading goal when I was in my teens, and I ploughed through hundreds of pages after every library visit. I got through The Wheel of Time books (the eight that had been released by the time I hit my mid-teens) in the blink of an eye because it was not a chore; it was a hobby. The thing I did instead of putting something mindless on television.

If I only read one book in a year, that is ok. And it is ok for you too. There is already enough pressure in everyday life; we don’t need to let ourselves or others add to it.

It’s not about the number of books that you read in a year; it is about the act of reading itself. And personally, I hope to have many long years ahead of me in which to read books, so why the rush?

Anyway, maybe it is time that we all give ourselves a rest?