I thought it would be interesting to collect everyone’s reading plans/goals/ideas for 2023.
Another thread recently prompted me to actually count my physical 積読 pile (of shame). Which made me realize it had grown to more than 100 books - and don’t get me started on my digital hoarding.
Therefore, my plans for 2023 are as follows:
alternate between digital and physical
only partake in a bookclub, if I already own the book (this will be hard )
alternate between Japanese & English audiobooks
At the end of the year, I hope to have gone through a good chunk of my 児童書 since those are fairly easy and quick reads and will complement the ebooks well, which tend to be on the more difficult side.
I am hoping to read at least 25 books from my 積読 piles plus all available 本好き audiobooks. Anything more and I will be very happy.
(On average, 10k characters a day is doable for me. That’s about 1 hour of reading or about 15 pages. So finishing a book every other week seems realistic and still gives me time to not read or read English if I feel like it. )
Seriously, of course I’ll be happy if I clear my current 積読 pile at least, and hopefully read more books than last year, but basically I just want to read, discover more authors I like, and enjoy myself.
read at least one book in the L34-L40 range (the green levels). For context the hardest book I’ve read is graded as L26??. So this will be difficult
This is a good idea! I won’t be doing this, but I will be limiting myself on how many book clubs I join this year… I have a bad habit of saying I’ll join a club, buying the book, reading along during the first week, and then dropping it
Most likely Swedish. I want a level 1 language which I haven’t already studied to any degree (rules out the romance languages) and which I can easily obtain learning materials for. It also must have good crime fiction, which I’ve been told Swedish does
finish my 積読 pile (currently standing at 16 books)
read more “proper” books (novels, non-fiction) than light novels
Considering I have 14 light novels in my light novel pile (plus, I plan to read future volume of series I enjoy, such as 本好き, as they come out during the year; ah, I also want to read the rest of the Cop craft series), that would imply ~50 books total? I will probably need to rely on the recommendations of everyone again
This woman seems really popular but I don’t seem to overlap with her tastes much (only watched a couple videos though): Belle Book
I used to watch this guy but I stopped and the only reason I can think why is Youtube just stopped putting him in my feed I should watch him again sometime Pekyo
He just likes mystery: Abeshi
I watch him the most but probably the least relevant to you as you are more into other genres so no need for the hyper focus
I had to scroll quite a lot through her video list to find something I had read, but we both enjoyed アリス殺し | L29, so I’ll give a closer look to the other stuff she has.
I quickly checked the video list of the others, but couldn’t find anything I know about (well, there are a bunch of videos like “top 3 something novel”, so it’s hard to know what it’s about )
I guess I’ll just randomly try a few and see how it goes.
I second ほんタメ. The guy likes nonfiction, mystery and manga for the most part. The woman reads more broadly general fiction, romance, contemporary, experimental, … She has a soft spot for short stories.
Belle reads fairly broadly but maybe a tad on the high-brow side. tbh, half the time I have no idea what she is saying. My lack of Japanese is showing.
My goals for this year are simple. I’m not really aiming for a number or anything, and I’m obviously not aiming to finish everything on my wishlist (that would be impossible.) I just want to read and have fun. I have forced myself through too many books I didn’t really care for in the beginning because I prioritized easy books over books I actually felt like reading. I think I’m past that stage and can read the majority of the stuff I actually want to read now. Basically, I just want to read good books.
Let’s see; like everyone else, I guess my goals just boil down to “read more” in general. I want to become more comfortable with different styles of writing and author voices so that it lowers the barrier of entry when I’m trying something completely new. I’ve got a soft goal of 30 books I’d like to read this year (novel and light novel), and while I have a ton of manga piled up beside me, waiting, I haven’t really set any specific goals for that. I guess I’m kind of hoping I’ll pick one up from the pile every now and then if/when I get too tired to work on a current novel and slowly finish them that way? We’ll see.
I’m hoping to listen to more audiobooks as I read this year; my listening’s not good enough to just listen to something solo, but I’m hoping I can reach that point eventually. Right now my plan is to listen to audiobooks for the books I don’t really want to intensively read (e.g. https://learnnatively.com/book/2f20d58780/ or ハリー・ポッターと秘密の部屋 | L32).
Ah, I do like this idea. Trying to moderate bookclubs is one more goal of mine this year; the mystery club is, of course, an automatic ‘yes’ (unless the book really just does not look like my thing), but I need to be careful about what I try to commit to over on WK.
Good luck with the new language!
You’re doing better than I did. Took me forever to make the jump to a novel, light or otherwise.
A few days late, but my simple goal is 2 books a month. Pretty similar to last year’s total of ~26 books plus dozen or so manga. I often read 3 books a month, but sometimes you need to do something else!
I’d like to get into an LN series, but never seem to read more than 1-2 books!
i just want to try to read more consistently. over the last 20 years or so i crashed from 100+ novels per year to basically nothing. last summer was the first time in years that i was able to read consistently and almost daily. it felt very good, and i want to get back to that.
in specifics, i don’t have any goals. i’m enjoying my manga again, and will see where that takes me. i also devoured the Gideon the 9th series (in english), and if i find any recommendations off of that i might pick those up.
if i could manage 1 volume of manga per week that’d already be a success
that was reading in english mostly, some french and german. i started learning japanese during a time when i could hardly concentrate on a book for 10 minutes, so when i wasn’t reading…
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I should watch him again sometime
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well… I am doing good with 本好き so far… 
