I did well on my reading goals this year.
I picked Nicole Helm as my auto-buy author I was woefully behind on so read a lot of her books over the year (11 books + 4 newsletter/website short stories that were "backlist" plus all of her 2017 releases: 8 books + 1 newsletter short story).
I discovered her back in 2014 and had read most of her books released to that point, but then when the Harlequin e line folded and she reworked
All I Have to be Superromance length, I didn't read the (re)release right away....which snowballed into me becoming woefully behind as she's a prolific writer. I would buy her books as they came out and in the TBR they sat. There were some misses, but overall I had a lot of fun reading so many of her books this year.
I am way behind on several authors like that. So picked Kylie Brant to catch up on in 2018 (I have 9 of her books in my TBR currently but thankfully she only has two new releases scheduled for 2018 so it should be "easier" to catch up on her.)
I also went "shopping" in Calibre (via cover view) and picked ten "must read" books as well as one book published per year (2001-2018) for one of the
reading challenges at AAR. I have 6 challenges scheduled for the year with all the slots filled in (a mix of TBR and favorite authors' upcoming releases). Plus I plan to do the Easy Eighteen challenge for novellas.
I have chosen a few other autobuy authors I am not very far behind on to catch up with. I also plan to read one of the *coughdon'twanttoadmithowmanytherearetochoosefrom* series I bought in its entirety by an author I have not yet read (I picked Elizabeth Hunter's Cambio Springs series). And I also did einey meaney moe to select a few authors to read three backlist titles each. And a few other small goals.
I've been doing the AAR reading challenges since 2009. But I have taken this particular approach for the past few years and found it really helps with my TBR. When I want something to read I pick from the list as there is a wide variety to suit whatever mood I'm in. The challenges are flexible and I can always switch out a book if I want to DNF something. But I have found having goal books/authors and loosely "scheduling" books to read actually helps me to read more.
As for shopping...I did well with only buying books I planned to read right away unless they were majorly on sale this past year. I wasn't perfect, but I did much better than I had been. Of course having less money to buy books with also "helped"
. As did the fact I pruned down my autobuy author list in 2017.