June Update on Progress

I’m in the middle of writing a review while on breaks from cleaning out my waterlogged basement (finding the soaked inspection report from when we bought the house five years ago, with its recommendation to replace the water heater, which at 12 years had exceeded its life expectancy, was the cause of much bitter laughter), but I thought I’d take a few minutes, at the start of this new month, to review my 2008 reading goals:

1. Read 100 pages a day, or 36,600 over the course of the year. I am far behind on this, at an average of 87 pages a day. Although I started the year off like a house afire, life, and some slower books (particularly Tom Jones and Sacred Games), got in the way. However, I’d rather not get tied up in numerical goals, and find myself reading short, quick books in order to achieve an arbitrary number of books or pages, and I’m pleased with the quality of what I’ve read thus far.

2. Read more books I owned coming into 2008 (60%). I’m not doing so well on this goal, either–exactly half of the books I’ve read thus far were purchased this year. Even worse, though, is my book-acquiring trend–although most of the books I’ve acquired have been from BookMooch or the library, the fact remains that I have acquired 49 books so far this year, and read only 32. (I’m not counting audiobooks in these calculations.)

3. Read 25 books of nonfiction. I’m closer to target here–I’ve read 9 thus far, and I’ve been eyeing a number of others.

4. Get more global, and read more in translation. While this could be defined in a number of ways, I have not counted anything from the U.S., England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, or Australia. I’ve read 8 books so far that would qualify (from the Middle East, Egypt, Cuba, Iran, Nigeria, India, and Israel).

5. To write reviews of the books I read. So much for good intentions. I still have 13 reviews to write!

I still have seven months to achieve my goals, so I’m not concerned. And they’re arbitrary goals anyway, so I’m still not concerned (well, except for the one about whittling down Mount TBR). But I will try to catch up on some of those reviews over the next couple of weeks . . . after I finish mucking out the basement.