I got some good reading in last year, but, like most things last year, my reading fell short of what I’d hoped for. The biggest failure was not succeeding at the 2013 Women in Genre Reading Challenge from World’s Without End. My other big reading fail of 2013 was buying way too many ebooks, digital comics, and audiobooks. My ‘to be read’ pile would probably fill up a couple rooms in our apartment if it were physical instead of digital.

So, reading in 2014 is going to be about addressing the mistakes of reading in 2013. My two big goals are succeeding at my reading challenge this year (a Speculative Fiction by Authors of Color Challenge) and cutting a large swath through my TBR pile.

Seeing as I’m actually starting the challenge at the beginning of the year this time I’m pretty sure reading the 12 books to succeed at it will be very doable. I mean, I certainly hope to read more than 12 books this year in total, but we’ll see.

The other things I’m hoping to do to improve my reading this year are:

1. Making a real effort to stick to one book at a time. I have a terrible tendency to be trying to read several different ebooks, a couple audiobooks and a physical book all at the same time, spread across my various devices and apps. I also get distracted very easily by the desire to try whatever catches my eye next. This year, I’m going to move away from multitasking and aim for focus. When possible I think the Amazon/Audible whisper-sync for voice is going to help with that a lot.

2. Keeping track of what I’m reading here on the blog. I may not write full reviews for everything I read, but will at least mention when I finish or start something and what I like about them. I will be posting full reviews for reading challenge books though, as that’s part of the challenge.

3. I read fairly broadly, but I could read a lot broader. Many people will tell you it’s important for a writer to read widely within their chosen genre. Many others will tell you writers should read widely beyond their genre. I’d like to try to do both. I don’t really have a genre, but my comfort zone is definitely the SFF milieu. To try and widen my reading I’ll be looking for books outside Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, but I’ll also be looking for a wider perspective. The Spec Fic Authors of Color Challenge will certainly help with that, and I’m also going to strive for gender parity in the books I read this year.

So that’s the broad stroke of a reading plan for the year. I haven’t read as fast as I might like in the early part of the year, but I have finished Stephen King’s IT (audiobook, started last year) Chuck Wendig’s Mockingbird (see how far behind I am!) and Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death (fantastic! Review coming).  Next I’m going to read Finnish author Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen’s The Rabbit Back Literature Society. There is no audiobook version of that on audible though, so I will do a small bit of multitasking and also start John Grisham’s The Firm, which I have as an audiobook and which isn’t part of the whisper-sync-for-voice program.

How about you? What are your reading plans for 2014?