Goodreads—you either love it or hate it, but you can’t deny its popularity. The first of many popular book social media sites, Goodreads allows you to log your reading activity, make online friends, and set yearly reading goals. Even if you have switched to Storygraph or some other app, one thing will always remain consistent across platforms: the allure of hitting your Yearly Reading Goal. But why are we so obsessed with quantifying our annual love for literature?
The performative nature of current-day reading is very apparent when we talk about how many books we read in a year. The feeling that we’ve set our reading goals too high or too low is ever prevalent as we reach the end of 2024. Obviously, we all want to make it to the confetti celebration that Goodreads throws for us when we’ve hit our goal, but it may be time to adjust our expectations of ourselves. Whether you read 10 books or 200 books in a year, you’re still a reader! As long as you’re interacting with words on a page and absorbing them as best you can, you belong in the book community.
Despite the critiques of the race to hit a numbered goal of books in a year, we understand how important the number can be to so many. Here is a list of recommendations we can share for those of you just on the precipice of reaching your book goal.
- Graphic Novels: These are super quick reads, since many of them are just full of photos, but are also complex and interesting enough to stand on their own. We love the Heartstopper series by Alice Oseman, so if you pick those up now, you can finish five books before the end of the year!
- Novellas: So many mainstream authors write novellas, either as ways to fill in gaps in series or as standalones! If you’re aiming for a classic, John Steinbeck’s The Pearl or Cannery Row are short and meaningful choices. If you’re more in a romance mood, Ali Hazelwood has a plethora of STEMinist novellas, or you could even find some Christmas novellas—Merry Ever After by Tessa Bailey or Cruel Winter With You by Ali Hazelwood are also great choices!
- Poetry Collections: Not everyone jives with poetry, and that’s okay, but if your 2024 New Year’s Resolution was to become more open-minded, then try out a poetry collection. They are easy to read in one day, if you don’t need several days to absorb the poems, and you might just find a new literary love.
And if you don’t reach your numbered book goal this year, that’s fine too! We just hope you read some books you loved and came out feeling like a reader despite all of the online discourse. Take care of yourselves above all, and just know, the number of books you read doesn’t change a single thing about you!
What's Your Reaction?
