[issybird]

I'm going to keep my overall goal of 120 books for next year. It worked pretty well for me this year and it's just a benchmark; I don't want a goal so large that I'm tempted not to read what I want to read.

My plan each year is to assign half my benchmark to challenge categories, so 60 of those, again. But I'm planning to repeat a mistake I identifed in an earlier year, so I'm changing my structure a bit to accomodate it.

So, my theme reads will be non-fiction books in the categories of the ancient world, Ireland (for the centenary of the Easter Rising) and the Napoleonic era (which should have been this year, for the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo, but c'est la guerre). The mistake is that I've found that more than two theme reads tend to be counter-productive, so I'm assigning a total of 30 books to all three categories, so I can run with something if it truly appeals (although the point is to acquire a basic competency of sorts in all categories). I plan to include ancillary fiction, but it won't count toward my goal.

In terms of TBRs, I've two goals. The more important is to get serious about my paper books and have a real reduction in the total unread, and not just to replace them as fast as I read them (or faster, if I'm being honest). So, no paper books bought at all in the first six months of the year and twelve books net reduction in the paper TBR.

The other TBR reduction goal is really just smoke and vanity. I want to shave another 12 books off my Goodreads want-to-read category. This is smoke in that my GR wtr is the tip of the iceberg in terms of my unread accumulation and vanity in that I regret to say that I snicker a bit at some Goodreads want-to-read lists which number in the literal several thousands. My motivation is to get mine down to next to none, so no one looks at my list and thinks, "What is she smoking?"

That leaves six books, assuming you're counting and haven't moved on long ago. I decided that rather than parceling out the six among my various goals, I'd save it for a mini-goal of whatever occurs to me during the year.

I've got a long-term goal of reading all of Wodehouse in close to chronological order, but that's over several years and doesn't count toward a 2016 goal.

Th-th-th-that's all folks!