OPINION: A slow first half

This reader has been struggling in 2025. As you all know, every year I like to set reading goals for myself. One is the amount of books I want to read this year.

In 2023, I set a goal of 150 books for the year, which I heavily surpassed. I finished the year with 194 books, though that last one was finished very close to the midnight deadline.

In 2024, I set a goal of 200 books for the year. A lofty goal, but I figured since I had gotten so close to the 200 mark last year, I could definitely do it in 2024. I managed to reach this goal by the skin of my teeth, finishing my 200th book on Dec. 30.

I figured I should give myself some extra wiggle room for 2025 so I wouldn’t feel as much pressure at the end of the year. I set myself a goal for 175 books. Unfortunately, that’s not going so well.

This time last year, I had finished 95 books. To be on pace with my goal, I didn’t need to be at quite so high a number, but I should be in the 80s. Unfortunately, I’m at 47 books right now.

For many people, this is an amazing number, but as you can see from my previous stats, this is pretty low for me. The way I see the rest of the year going, I’ve decided to change my reading goal to 100 books for the year.

The annual total of books completed isn’t my only reading goal for the year. Another one involved bringing down the number of books on my physical to be read list. As someone who seemingly hoards books as well as reads them, I decided to count how many books I owned and hadn’t yet read at the beginning of the year. On Jan. 1, those books totaled 189. Yikes. My goal was to take that down by 25%, or 142 books.

To make myself look slightly better, I will say at least half of these books are ones I have grabbed at various library sales, both from Creston’s and the one back home in Wisconsin.

Since January, I have gone through the various stacks and boxes of unread books and sorted out some I didn’t think I would read. Most of these were mass market paperback romances I snatched at the Wisconsin library sale five-plus years ago. I still kept a dozen or two that sounded interesting, but I brought a big box of them to the Creston Friends in the CNA’s backroom.

Between getting rid of books I don’t think I’ll read and actually reading books off my TBR, I’m down to 143 books. Only one away from my goal! To be honest, a big help in completing this goal has been actually sticking to my book budget for the year.

I told myself I would not buy more than 50 new books this year. Again, I know this sounds like a crazy number, but this is pretty much the only thing I spend my “fun” money on. Fifty books for the year brings me to about four books a month, which Bess at the bookstore would tell you I’m doing a spectacular job at following. Plus, I’ve since finished almost all the books I’ve bought so far. Only two of my new books this year remain on my physical TBR.

This was not the case last year. With Cheyenne and I completing the Iowa Indie Bookstore Tour, I likely bought about 50 books just in a matter of three months. Many of those books are still sitting on my shelf, waiting to be read, because I simply haven’t had the time.

So far, I’m miserably failing one of my goals, but doing great at two of my goals. I have one more reading goal for the year, and I’m not sure where I land on that. At 24 years old, I’ve owned numerous Bibles and have taken many, many notes and tests thanks to my religious schools. However, I’ve never sat down and read the entire Bible from front to back. Last December, this is what I decided my fourth goal for 2025 should be.

The Bible I’ve been using for this is the Concordia Self-Study Bible, the one we had to buy in high school. What’s nice about this copy is there’s probably just as many annotations at the bottom of the page explaining historical context as there are actual Bible verses.

My problem is, because of these annotations, it takes me at least twice as long to read. With about 2,200 pages in this edition, I figured I could read 10 pages a day and be done before September, aka in about 220 days. Well, today is day 162 of year year and I’m on page 796, at the beginning of Psalms.

This is the furthest I’ve ever made it in any attempts to read the whole Bible, but I’m nervous about my timing. With about 1,400 pages left, I’ll need to read an average of seven pages a day. This is less than my previous plan, but obviously that hasn’t worked out so far. We’ll see! Plus, if I finish the Bible before the end of the year, that’s one more to my yearly goal!