Goals

I'd be lying if I didn't say that fortune cookies are part of the reason that I love Chinese food, so I am especially annoyed when my cookie contains something other than a fortune. They aren't called compliment cookies, people! Luckily, last week my cookie did contain a fortune:

Now, I don't know which of my many, many goals this is referring to, but still, a good fortune, yes?

It could very well be referring to my 2013 Reading Goal. I am currently at 93 books read for the year - so I think that it's pretty safe to assume that I'll hit 100 sometime in the next 2 months. Check the tab at the top of the page for the complete list of what I've been reading this year. Even though it's a little early I'm starting to think about my reading goals for NEXT year. I have no plans to adjust my goal number, but thinking about maybe setting some smaller, more specific goals within that. Next year, I'd like to focus a little more on quality, less on quantity. I don't want to just be an active reader, I want to be well-read (whatever that means...seriously, what does it mean!?!?)

I have no plans to give up my romance, chick lit or detective novels anytime soon,  but I feel like I have plenty of room to include some titles that well make me a more well-read person. I've spent a fair amount of time recently perusing "best of" lists, and while I'd love to be able to say that I've read every work listed in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, I'm not sure I'm ready to commit to a 30 year project just yet. So, while I might slowly check some books off of the list, I'm going to focus more on some smaller goals. Such as:

• I feel like I do a fairly decent job of keeping up with the major pieces of fiction that are coming out, but maybe I should more actively peruse the best sellers list to make sure I'm up to date? 
• I definitely want to increase the number of non-fiction titles I'm reading. I realize that in our modern, up to the minute news world, that reading non-fiction books as a method of keeping up with the world around me might be a bit backwards, but it's still the best way I learn things.
• I'm not sure how I managed to graduate with an English degree without reading so many major works of literature, but I feel sadly under-read in this category. So I want to try working more of these into my reading list. 

I toyed with the idea of putting together a specific list of books designed to meet these goals that will be part of my to-read list for 2014....but I feel like that might be too much structure, even for me. So we'll see how things shake out. In the meantime, I'm feeling pretty good about my results this year, especially after the pretty dismal (for me - I realize that 100 books a year is an unrealistic total for a lot of people, there are some perks to being single and childless, haha) total I put up last year.