Reading goals for 2015

So, 2015 is now here and it’s time to make some plans. But before we get into the planning, let’s take a look at some of the numbers of 2014.

In 2014, my Goodreads challenge was to read 50 books – and I read 79 books. According to Goodreads, I read a total of 21,173 pages.
In 2014, I read 19 books out of my 254 TBR, which means I now stand at 75/254.
In 2014, I read 47 books by male authors and 32 books by female authors.
In 2014, I read 48 books in English, 28 books in Finnish, 3 books in German and 1 book in Swedish. Out of these, 15 were translations.
In 2014, I read 26 books from authors from the UK and also 26 books from American authors. I read 22 books written by Finnish authors.
In 2014, I read a good variety of genres. Note that some of the books have been listed under two genres, because for example Maus by Art Spiegelman is both a graphic novel and non-fiction. Hence the reason why these numbers don’t add up to 79.

Statistics is always interesting, and I can tell you that I’ve spent way too many hours procrastinating with these figures. Overall, I’m pretty happy about my reading stats, with the exception of the male/female ratio. Thus my first goal for 2015 is to be more conscious about reading female authors and getting that gender balance closer to 50/50.

My second goal for 2015 is the Goodreads reading challenge, which I again will set to 50 books. Since I almost reached 80 books last year, I could have gone higher, but I don’t want to put too much pressure on reaching a certain number. This also ties into my third goal, which is to read big books. Partly because of blogging, I’ve noticed that I’ve opted for shorter books that I can read within a week, so that I have a review up for every week. However, there are a lot of larger and more time consuming books that I want to read, so I’ve decided to challenge myself to read at least one Dickens novel, one Game of Thrones novel, and two other books that have over 600+ pages.

My fourth goal is one that I barely reached in 2014, and that is to read one book in all of the languages that I know. English and Finnish won’t be a problem, German will most likely come along nicely, but I really need to up my game with Swedish. I want to improve my Swedish, so this is one of the important steps that I need to take.

My fifth reading goal is to read more poetry. Looking at my genre pie chart, I noticed that I didn’t read a single work of poetry in 2014, which is a terrible shame. In 2015, I challenge myself to read 4 poetry collections – and if I can do them in different languages, that would be awesome. I already have plans to read some poetry by Edith Södergran, who is a Finnish-Swedish poet, but I’m in dire need of recommendations as to poetry in English. Please feel free to give recommendations in the comments!

My sixth goal is to complete the Reading England 2015 challenge. I posted about this challenge already in December, but the basic idea of Reading England 2015 is to read classics set in different counties of England. My goal for this reading journey is to visit 7 counties, and if you’re interested to know more, I suggest you visit o‘s master post for Reading England 2015.

My seventh reading goal is to read 15 books by Finnish authors in 2015. I spotted this challenge in one of the Goodreads forums. The year 2015 will be celebrated as “The Year of Book” in Finland, so I thought it apt to focus on Finnish fiction (and non-fiction!) this year. In 2014, I plowed through 22 books by Finnish authors, so I think reading 15 shouldn’t be too challenging. I shall also try to keep an eye out for the books that have been translated into other languages, so that you too could possibly enjoy them. I will do a small master post for the 15 in 2015 later this month.

And lastly, because I already feel that this list is getting too long, my eighth reading goal is to read approximately 20 books from my 254 TBR. Ever since compiling this list, I’ve read around 20 books each year, and I want to keep that pace. Of course it would be nice to knock of 50 books from the list, but that would mean I couldn’t read any of the books published after 2009, which would be a terrible pity.

So there you have it! These are my eight reading goals for 2015. There is of course the possibility that I might participate in some read-alongs and challenges as the year progresses, but these are the long-term goals for my reading year. Let me know in the comments if you have any reading goals for 2015 plus any poetry recommendations (seriously though, I’m out of my depth here).

Happy reading!