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What a weird year 2020 has been so far. I’m sure no one will be surprised when I say that January feels a very long time ago, and that my memory of what I read at the beginning of the year is more than a bit hazy. All the more reason to do a little checkin, even though it is a little bit late (though not terribly so).

To everyone’s surprise – especially my own – I’m not even that far off when it comes to the goals I set myself at the beginning of the year. Here’s a quick reminder and evaluation of what I wanted to do:

  • Read 50 books: I’m currently at 30 books read and one book DNFed, some of which were non-fiction for work but which I’m counting anyway. I don’t think getting to 50 by the end of the year will be a huge problem, even if most of my TBR is longer books now.
  • Decide about readathons on the spot/skip the more structured ones: I’m doing ok with this goal. I did the O.W.L.s Readathon in April (… when most of us were stuck at home anyway) and am currently in the middle of 20 Books of Summer. That one is rather low-key, but even so I don’t think I want to do any other readathons until Victober in October. I have found (once again) that working towards a goal helps me make time for my reading (especially during lockdown when every day was more or less the same), but that I also need to balance my reading with my other commitments, which doesn’t always happen with very ambitious readathons.
  • Reduce my physical TBR to under 100 books: I’m working on this one, but it’s not going terribly well. I have been buying quite a lot of books both for fun and for work, and especially during lockdown, but while I’ve been good at reading them pretty much immediately, that also means that my TBR is not shrinking as fast as it should. In terms of what I’m buying, my assumption that I would be buying and reading mostly contemporary, non-fiction and poetry was indeed correct, which probably also explains why I’m going through the books I buy as fast as I do. Nevertheless, I’m currently at around 130 unread books, which is more than what I started out with. Let’s hope that the long-distance train travel that I (hopefully) have coming up in the second half of the year will help with this one. (I’m moving to start a scholarship in September.)
  • German and Spanish books: I haven’t had the energy to pick up anything in Spanish that wasn’t research and sources, but I have been reading – and buying – German books occasionally, and usually without much thought, which is really what I wanted to go for.
  • Add all unread books to Goodreads: I haven’t specifically made time for this goal; it didn’t seem important among all the madness and the struggle of getting work done during a global pandemic. I have, however, added books as I go along and as I buy them, which at least means I’m not falling behind with my TBR on there. (I’ve also started using The StoryGraph, but I’m not enthusiastic about it while it can’t properly import non-English language books yet.)
  • No monthly TBRs (but maybe seasonal ones): This is working very well for me. I made a TBR for the O.W.L.s Readathon and a post with some options for 20 Books of Summer, but other than that I’ve been reading TBR-free. I think that was – and is – a good idea; it’s one less thing to stress me out when life is busy and energy levels are low.
  • Keep using the ‘sooner rather than later’-list: This is also working very well for me, even though I keep adding to the list.

 

The blogging itself hasn’t been going terribly well. I fell off the bandwagon early on in the year thanks to bad health, and I’ve been strugging to get back on ever since. I’m behind with reviews – though I’m slowly catching up – and I’ve frankly lacked the headspace to do much creative or otherwise reflective writing. Let’s hope that the second half of the year will be better for that.

Quality-wise, 2020 has been kind to me, though. I’ve discovered at least one favourite new author (Robert Macfarlane, possibly also Seamus Heaney and Joseph O’Connor), and re-discovered how much I love several others (Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, JRR Tolkien). At this point, my 2020 favourites are:

      • Seamus Heaney – Death of a Naturalist
      • Robert Macfarlane – Mountains of the Mind
      • Patrick Süskind – Das Parfum (Perfume)
      • Virginia Woolf – To the Lighthouse
      • Anna Burns – Milkman
      • Joseph O’Connor – Star of the Sea
      • JRR Tolkien – The Two Towers (reread)

Here’s to an even better second half of the year!