Way back in December 2018, I developed a reading challenge for 2019. I set a goal to read, every month, two unread books from my shelves, two works in translation, one book of poetry, and one book from Clifton Fadiman’s The New Lifetime Reading Plan. Easy peasy, or so I thought back then.

For the most part, it has been a pretty straightforward reading plan, but I’ve decided to do away with it for the rest of 2019 for a couple of reasons.

1.  I have four ARCs to read in August, and while I’m looking forward to all of them, they aren’t the shortest books and I don’t want to feel like I need to rush through them or any other books I’ll read in August, just because of a self-imposed reading challenge.
2. I’m traveling to Iceland in September. I’ll be gone for a week, and then the following week or so I’ll be dealing with the inevitable jet lag that knocks me flat for several days. I don’t want to force myself to read books that I will fall asleep in the middle of and then forget about.
3. There are so many science fiction and fantasy novels that I want to read, and they often don’t go along with the prescribed reading goal. Fantasy and science fiction are my two favorite genres, and I feel like I’m missing out on a lot of books I will love because I’m pushing them aside in favor of an arbitrary goal.
4. The closer we get to the winter holidays, the busier I get at work, right up until New Year’s Eve. I want my reading to be relaxing, not feel like a homework assignment.

I’m going to try to finish off my current list of The New Reading Plan books, since a few of the titles are quite short, and I’ve been wanting to read Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence for a long time.

So that’s the end of my 2019 Reading Plan. It was interesting while it lasted but ultimately didn’t line up with the way the last half of 2019 is shaping up. That’s okay. This wasn’t for a class, so there’s no harm in letting it go. Life doesn’t always go according to plan.

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