I feel slightly guilty for even suggesting such a thing as reading goals. Last year’s goals were never even close to being attained–I never reread the short list of books I wanted to. I did read a ton of other things, though.

However, the new year it is, and new years are for new goals, or really just for lists, perhaps…I don’t think I’d really call this page a goal. It’s more just to organize everything. I don’t think I’ll read all of these books this year. I’m not sure I should read them all this year.

I am not part of any reading challenge, but was inspired by another reading challenge to put my books into categories. Several books overlap categories, so I wanted to arrange them in a way that showed the overlap. Some overlap more than one category, but I couldn’t figure out a way to represent that quickly and easily, so I decided to forego that.

My main categories are:

Essays
Short stories
Female authors
Russian fiction
Translated fiction
Poetry/plays
Non-fiction

There are thirty books in all. A couple are leftovers from last year that I wasn’t able to finish; one is a re-read of one I read last year.

As you can see from the picture, they are arranged as rays radiating from a center. I drew shapes around them showing their common category; they look like petals to me.

I am also trying to keep a “commonplace book” this year of quotes I love.

when I read

I am sometimes asked when I am able to read. The truth is I read during the night while I’m up with the baby, or early in the morning before the kids wake up. Sometimes I read before bed at night, but that’s a little more difficult as I’m usually quite tired then. During the day I read while nursing if I can. Not always–but sometimes. The little bits add up.