Today is my 14th Blogiversary! Fourteen years of blogging about books and libraries. Inconceivable!

It seems like an appropriate day to discuss my reading intentions for 2024. This year I intend to keep my reading life simple, less structured or scheduled.

1) 52 Books

For years now, my annual numerical goal has been 52 books. That’s one book per week, which is manageable even if I’m reading more big books here and there.

I’ve recently seen chatter on social media about not focusing on the number of books one wants to read and to focus instead on the quality of one’s reading. Such posts have tended to be by productivity gurus who are embracing a less is more philosophy. I can dig it.

People can stress themselves out with numerical goals that end up harming their ambition rather than supporting it. The one year in recent memory when I set a goal higher than 52, I actually ended up reading way less. I psyched myself out.

Reading deeply and reflecting on what I read is important to me, but it all depends on the type of book and my purpose in reading it. Sometimes I just want a quick thriller or horror novel to entertain me. I don’t pick up those novels with deep reading or reflective pondering in mind. Sure, it can happen, but that’s not the plan.

2) The Willa Cather Short Story Project #WCSSP2024

This year we will be wrapping up the Willa Cather Short Story Project. Inconceivable!

We have only eight stories to go. They are:

1. January 2024 “Behind the Singer Tower” 
2. February 2024 “The Bohemian Girl”
3. March 2024 “Consequences”
4. April 2024 “The Bookkeeper’s Wife”
5. May 2024 “Ardessa”
6. June 2024 “Her Boss”
7. July 2024 “Double Birthday”
8. August 2024 “Uncle Valentine”

As always, you are welcome to participate anytime, for all, a few, or just one story.

3) Reading What I Want When I Want

While reflecting on my reading life, I realized a big dissatisfaction revolved around delaying the reading of a book for some future event. It happens pretty regularly. I’m excited to read a particular book, but when the scheduled time/event/themed month rolls around, I’m not ready for it. Life might be too unexpectedly busy or maybe I’m not in the mood. I end up losing steam, feeling resentful, or just not reading the book. It isn’t very pleasant.

Graduating from library school last year may also have something to do with this desire to read what I want when I want. As much as I enjoyed the experience, graduate school involves a lot of reading on deadlines which can wear you down.

I’m unsure how this will work with buddy reads, which I enjoy, and the Book Cougars readalong picks. Romance is our theme for 2024 and there will be four readalongs. I’ll figure it out as I go along. I also don’t want to get too rigid about not planning my reading.

And I do have one buddy read planned for March: Moby Dick with my friend Kate. We welcome others to join us!

4) 19th Century TBR

I would like to read a few specific 19th-century novels that this year. They are The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë, Silas Marner by George Eliot, and A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

5) Author of the Year: Margaret Fuller

I have never chosen an author of the year, perhaps because I’ve been focused on Cather for so long. As the Willa Cather Short Story Project winds down, I plan to ramp up the focus on Margaret Fuller (1810-1850). I will begin with a re-read of Summer on the Lakes, in 1843.

Fuller made some appearances in The Peabody Sisters by Megan Marshall (one of my top reads of 2023), which fanned the embers of my desire to actually read more of Fuller’s work.

One of my most anticipated releases this year is Finding Margaret Fuller by Allison Pataki (March 19 from Ballantine Books). It is a fictionalized account of Fuller’s life. I am considering re-reading Megan Marshall’s biography, Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, or some other biography before or after the novel.

Last year, I read Brenda Wineapple’s biography, Hawthorne: A Life, prior to reading Alice Hoffman’s The Invisible Hour and it tanked that novel for me. I could not get into Hoffman’s romantic portrayal of Hawthorne after reading the biography documenting some of his not so romantic beliefs and behaviors.

6) Romance!

As mentioned above, romance novels are the Book Cougars theme this year. We always select four books to read for our annual theme, one per quarter. For this first quarter, we are reading Indigo by Beverly Jenkins. We have yet to determine what the other three novels will be.

I plan to read some nonfiction about the romance genre such as The Darcy Myth by Rachel Feder, which I started last year but decided to wait until this year.

It would be inconceivable to my younger self that I am embracing romance novels. I am writing this on a flight home from visiting my Mom. We watched several good romance movies together, including The Princess Bride. She’d never seen it before — inconceivable! — so that word is stuck in my brain again for who knows how long.

Have you set reading goals or intentions for yourself this year?