Its that time again to share the books I am planning on reading over the next 31 days. I decided to rethink how I used monthly tbrs and what aspects would work for me when looking to achieving my goals.
The structure of a tbr keeps me motivated in a month to read all the books I set out for myself, but by fixing which titles I want to read I found it removed the possibility of mood reading and put me into slumps when I did find a book I wasn’t enjoying. I would like to set fixed tbrs of 5-6 books a month to help me pick up books outside of the fantasy genre, and allow the rest of my reading for that month to be selected on a whim.
My other half has been playing guitar for years but felt like in 2020 the lack of structure over the year lead to him playing less than he’d like. And I found that once I hit my goodreads goal in November all motivation dropped off pretty much immediately. So we are doing a monthly challenge in 2021 to keep us working on our hobbies every month. We created 100 prompts each for our respective hobbies – 100 guitar solos, and 100 prompts based off my physical tbr.
Then, a small game of snakes and ladders determines the numbers between 1-100 that we need to fufill and our to be read/riffed has been set! Two points awarded for every prompt completed in the month it was set, 1 point if you complete it outside of the month. Hopefully the low stakes competition will keep us entertained all year long.
My list of prompts includes the titles of 25 non-fiction books I own that I would like to read as one of my 2021 goals. It worked out beautifully in January that snakes and ladders picked out two of those non fiction books for me, as my target is to read two books off the list a month.
All of my other selections are books I have been especially excited for over the last few months. Raybearer was a christmas gift so it will be great to get that read as soon as possible. Ideally I’d like to read 10 books in January, so I have left myself plenty wiggle room to mood read as it suits me and pick up arcs I need to finish.
I hope you are looking forward to starting your first book of 2021. What is your first book of the year?
a bookish blether 