Last week I talked about my new way of setting goals and my personal goals for 2016. Today I wanted to share my reading goals/plan for 2016!

1. Like last year, I am taking the Book Riot Read Harder challenge. The challenge gets you to read outside of your comfort zone by asking you to read books in different categories. This year’s list includes some fun ones like “Read a book that is by an author from Southeast Asia” and “Read a food memoir.” I’m excited to complete the challenge this year, since I missed out by two books in 2015!
2. For the Goodreads challenge, I am trying to read 110 books this year. For the past few years I’ve been averaging 100 books so I want to push myself a little further.  Setting a number of books to read is a funny thing because it’s easy to fall into the “this book will take too long” trap. However, I’m pretty psyched about giving the increased reading goal a shot!
   
3. Nancy Ray Book Club. This might be biting off more than I can chew but I want to read a least some of the books for Nancy Ray’s book club! Nancy Ray is a photographer in Raleigh, and friend of Emily Ley and Lara Casey. Her blog is always a great inspiration to read and I want to hear her thoughts on these books as well!
   
4. Push my book clubs to read more diversely. This was a goal last year as well, and while I think all the groups did a good job, I could do a better job highlighting the reasons why reading diversely is important. (Just as a reminder, I lead two student book clubs at work, am a part of a book club at work for Faculty/Staff, and am a part of a book club in Hagerstown). Especially with the student book clubs, I think it is so important that the members (my students) are exposed to a range of ideas and viewpoints. If you have any books that qualify as diverse that teens might like, send them my way!
   
5. Read 30% authors of color/diverse authors this year. I did a pretty decent job of reading more diversely myself last year, with 18% of my books coming from authors of color. In 2016, I would like to push myself even further to make my reading life look more like the population of the United States.