In 2021, I created two different reading challenges for myself, one for the summer and one for the fall. I think that doing them quarterly instead of yearly helped me to stay more focused because I knew I had three months to meet some of my goals. (I made the goals larger than I would complete on purpose, giving myself some necessary wiggle room.) Even though no one else really paid attention to my little challenges, posting them online (both here and on my Instagram)

I didn’t ever write down my progress on my autumn reading challenge—I probably still will, though it will be out of order chronologically.

And December was just not a good month for me, emotionally, so I didn’t create a winter reading challenge.

But! Since the quarterly challenges did help me to read more, I will pick it back up in March by creating a spring reading challenge.

And until then, here is my list of year-long reading goals for 2022.

• Read one poetry book every month. I didn’t finish any entire poetry books in 2021, although I read several halfway through.
• Read one book of essays in each even month (like February, April, June…). Poetry and essays are something I love but have turned away from for reasons I only partly understand. It’s time to change that!
• Write a blog post about every book I read. (I did pretty well with this last year.)
• Heroine with 1001 Faces. Greek Myths: New Retellings. And the chapter in The Understory about Scandinavian burials. Read these three as I work on my story. (Keeping this nebulous because it is far too tiny of an idea to share yet.)
• Advocate for books more vocally. I’m not sure what this will look like, other than posting more on Facebook about controversial books, book banning, and reading in general. I would like to find a political group to become a part of that helps to advocate for freedom of thought, libraries, and reading but not sure if that even exists in Utah. More research required!
• Reread Beloved and Never Let Me Go.
• Keep a list of books I get at least one-quarter the way through but don’t finish.

Here’s to a 2022 filled with amazing, gorgeous books and lots of peaceful reading time!