Whoops, a little late since we are nearly through January now (how??) but here we go with my reading plans for 2024. I had such a great reading year in 2023 overall, but there are definitely things I want to do differently this year.

No pressure.

My main reading mantra for 2024 is ‘no pressure’. Last year I put a lot of pressure on myself, mostly through readathons. While I had fun participating, I did feel the need to just be constantly consuming books as fast as I could which isn’t a great long-term strategy. So this year my readathon participation is going to be passive. By that, I mean that I will still keep up with what is going on in the readathons I like, but I’m not going to be making long tbr’s for them. I will just read whatever I want, and if a book fits into the prompts, then that’s great.
Along with that, my reading goal is set at 24 books. I smashed my goal of 50 last year, but I have a lot more going on this year and again, no pressure!

Read more owned books.

I am sure every bookworm can relate to this one. We have so many books sitting on our shelves waiting to be read, but our eyes always go to the shiny releases we don’t own. I have around 60-80 unread books currently (last count was November 2023), so this year I really want to try and work through them. A good number are outside of the fantasy genre too, so it’ll be interesting to see what I end up picking up.

Read more non-fiction.

I have a goal this year to read one non-fiction book each month. My non-fiction of choice is nature writing, so each month I will select one of my books in this category to read, probably over the course of the whole month. Outside of reading I am an avid environmentalist and professionally a horticulturist so I have no excuse for slacking!

Challenges.

I said already that I am not doing any readathons. Instead I am going to be doing two yearly challenges as I find these much less pressure. The first is the Reddit Fantasy book bingo challenge. I’ve been doing this for years now and it’s one of my favourite ways to find new authors. It runs April-April, so I’ll work on finishing 2023’s until then!

My second challenge is 12 books recommended by friends. I have tried this before, and didn’t do too well, but I think my mistake was asking for recommendations from my general Instagram following. While the books suggested are, I am sure, all amazing, and obviously favourites for some, a number of them really weren’t my thing and I found it hard to convince myself to pick some of them up. This year, a small book group I am a part of is doing it between members, and the recommendations have all come from people who know me well. I am genuinely excited for all of the books on my list.

Anticipated Releases!

I am trying to buy a lot less books this year, so I’m really trying to limit my pre-orders, but there are 8 that I cannot resist! The majority are sequels to some of my absolute favourite series, so of course I’ll be snapping them up!

• The Book That Broke The World by Mark Lawrence (Libraries #2)
• Mirrored Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse (Between Earth & Sky #3)
• The Unrelenting Earth by Kritika H. Rao (Rages #2)
• The Fury of the Gods by John Gwynne (Bloodsworn #3, no cover)
• Stormlight #5 by Brandon Sanderson (no cover)
• Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune
• Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis
• Medea by Eilish Quin

And there we have it! I really hope 2024 is a fantastic reading year for everyone.