I have finally gotten around to completing last year's reading list and analyzing the results. And what a disappointment! Not only did I fail, for the first time in years, to meet my stated goal (36 books in this case), but I compromised on quality and length to even get as far as I did. What a waste of time, and only to meet a self-imposed target? That's just cheating myself.

Something has to change. I have an ever-growing list (on Goodreads) of books to read that is currently 392 titles long. For the last few years I've been choosing what to read haphazardly or worse, passively, because of the book club or because I've been given some book or because of someone else's enthusiasm. Also, the practice of setting some number of books as a challenge for the year has encouraged reading short and often not-very-serious works (although I don't want to suggest that seriousness is necessarily proportional to length). I was already aware of this last observation one year ago but didn't carry out my resulting intention of reading longer books.

So, for 2020, I won't worry too much about the total number. Instead, I'll read the bookclub selections only if I really want to, and I'll read one more book per month and that book will be something very significant and very intentionally selected. By the end of the year I want to have read 12 of the sort of books I've always meant to read and have had in the back of my mind for years. Many of these works are very long indeed, so overall I'll be reading just as much, if not more, as my previous 36 book challenges. Far more importantly, however, I'll be reading what I really want to read, finally.