A third of 2022 has already passed and I thought I’d do a little chek in and give you an update reading goals update and how I’ve been progressing with my reading goals for the first four months of this year. I’m also doing this to hold myself accountable to the bookish goals I set for myself because I have to admit that there is one particular goal that I’m purposely neglecting.
Of course, books and reading are fun hobbies for me. So I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself about these bookish goals I set for myself. Still I want to challenge myself a bit and I noticed that the reading goal that proves the biggest challenge to me is also the one that I’m avoiding.
If you haven’t read my post about my reading goals for 2022 yet I recommend checking it out before reading this post so that you know which reading goals I set for myself in 2022.
The Numbers: Reading one book a month for fun
Honestly, reading one book a month for fun is going great. The first three months of the year I was reading as much as I hadn’t read in a long time. Now that the summer term started and I have to read a lotof academic texts again my pleasure reading slowed down a lot but I still have no problem with reaching that particular goal.
The World: Reading more geographically diverse
If you’ve been following my reading journey for a while you know that I’m currently doing a Reading The World challenge during which I try to read a book written by a FLINTA* author from every country around the world. This challenge is progressing rather slowly because I’m mixing my international reads with lots of other books that I’m in the mood for. But I still managed to read novels from three new countries this year: Norway, Japan and China. I’m also currently reading another book for this challenge written by a Jamaican author.
*FLINTA is a German acronym for women, lesbians, inter, non-binary, trans and agender people.
The Language: Reading my first book in a Third Language
Well. Now on to the tough part of my reading goals update. Let’s put it nicely and just say that I’m not crushing this goal as much as I’m crushing my other ones. Last year I set the same goal for myself, to read one book in Portuguese, and I didn’t achieve it because I honestly didn’t even try. I have Portuguese books at home, there even are one or two Portuguese books at my library and I follow some amazing Lusophone book bloggers on Bookstagram that constantly share great reading recommendations. So it’s not like I don’t have the access to Lusophone literature. But I don’t feel motivated to start because I know how hard it is.
When I started to blog about books about two years ago I challenged myself to read one chapter from Harry Potter in Portuguese a week. I gave up after a few weeks because I just didn’t have the patience. It took me so long to read a sentence or a page. It was hard not to drift off. It took me about the same amount of time to finish a chapter of Harry Potter as it took me to read the whole novel “Normal People”.
So I’m just reluctant to try again because reading in Portuguese is so challenging and exhausting for me. But I also know that in only four months I’ll be living I Portugal, studying at a Portuguese university and it’ll be hard to do my coursework if I don’t work on my reading skills (and on my Portuguese in general). So I really need to get started on this goal. Maybe I’ll start with a graphic novel or picture book for children and then try to read more advanced books If you have any recommedations for me, please let me know in the comments.
If you want to follow my reading journey and see whether I’ll actually manage to hit all my reading goals this year, you can follow me on Instagram or subscribe to my newsletter so that you never miss another blog post. And if you want to see more insights and updates on my current reads or reading challenges, let’s connect on The StoryGraph.
Have you set any reading goals for yourself this year? If yes, how has it been going with them so far?