My overall reading goal for 2024 is 60 books and 18,000 pages up from 52 and 15,000 pages from last year. I will always try to keep my reading goal achievable. It puts less pressure on me and allows more flexibility for other things in my life.

Top reading challenges for 2024

1. Read 60 Books
2. Reading Glasses 2024 Challenge: A couple of activities are more difficult than last year but achievable.
3. The StoryGraph’s Genre Challenge 2024: I entered this one because it had books which I tend to already read or plan to read.
4. Read more from my physical TBR: Read at least 25 books from my physical TBR shelves so I can free up space. In 2023, 23% of the books I read were from the TBR. Ideally I’d like to increase this to one third or at least one quarter by the end of 2024.

The rest of these are more guidelines and ongoing challenges:

• Read 3 books from the Boxall 1001 list: Continuing this life long challenge.
• Read more from previously started series: I should try to read more from series that I started and wanted to continue.
• Track the settings: This was an idea from the Reading Glasses podcast. I’ll track it with my book reviews and hopefully a map.
• Read 1 poetry book: I would be glad to read a couple of poetry books per year. It is hard to discover poetry that I love. There have been a lot of misses but I should keep trying.
• Read 1 Shakespeare play: Lots of Shakespeare in my physical TBR so I should read at least one of them.
• Read at least 1 French book: Succeeded this in 2023 and hope to do better with some Tintin in French too.

Ebooks, audiobooks, and E-reader upgrade

Starting in the last half of 2023, I began to whittle down my library check-out’s. I would usually have 15-20 items from the library at any time. This ballooned during the lockdowns to sometimes 40-50. Even 15 is a lot. I switched to audiobooks (especially audiobooks of those in my already owned TBR) and ebook hoarding. The library can be addictive so part of my goal here is to only have less than ten or five physical library books at any time.

I still have too many physical books so I will continue to read them or listen to them in audiobook or even ebook when travelling. I have a collecting and hoarding tendency for my hobbies and past-times. Moving to a digital collection and consumption is a wee bit better at least.

I will continue to use my library’s Libby and CloudLibrary collections. I have the opportunity of accessing another smaller library system’s digital content as well.

In the past, I would primarily use my e-book reader while I was travelling. I love my Kindle 3 Keyboard. It is now almost 14 years old. A lot of those years had light usage which is why the battery and condition of my e-reader is excellent for its age. I would even buy another model if I had the chance. I am planning to replace the battery.

I’ve been wanting a new e-reader for awhile and plan on getting a Kobo with the next upgrade. As much as I love my Kindle Keyboard, I sideload most of my ebooks so sticking with Amazon and Kindle is not necessary. Secondly, the Kindle Oasis model was the one I was most interested in but it has not been updated since 2019. I really like physical page turning and want a slightly bigger screen. It is looking unlikely that Kindle will make an update so I will go with the Canada based Kobo which also has Overdrive integration.

I will continue to blog about almost every book I read here.