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Hooray! As of this morning, I’m officially on the 100 books read status for 2020.
I’ve been on goodreads, tracking my annual goals for four years, and this year is actually the first ever year I’ve been able to hit my 100 books mark. Every year I set the same goal of 100 books to be read for the year. I’m either really into reading books or completely off the horse and not reading for long stretches of time.

2020 has been a weird year so far.
I hadn’t started it out as a special year, to be honest I didn’t have a lot of practical goals set up for the year. I think somewhere along the way, before the virus outbreak, I watched a PewDiePie video with a very intriguing title.

To spoil the video, no he didn’t really read 721 books, it was a clickbait title. But one takeaway I had from the video was how he had set out to ‘finish things he had started’ for the new year. I’m on the same boat as him. I love starting things, and as soon as I have a slip-up or any sort of adversary, I tend to drop whatever I’m doing and move on to the next fun thing to start. So, I decided to borrow PewDiePie’s resolution and also try to finish some things I’ve left unattended in 2020.

I’ve poked around in the areas of my lifestyle where I’ve started and left things hanging, and one of the easier (more straight forward) areas was books. I looked at my Goodreads feed and I had a ton of mid-read books I had never finished, and apparently zero books I had started for the year. Long story short, I eventually started to read in early April, and as of December 7th, I have finished 100 books.

How I did it:

A. Create a goodreads account or download an app or tracker that can keep you on track.
This works for me. I like keeping track of things and visually see progress. At a point when I started

B. 2020 was a bit of an anomaly for me (and I’m sure for a lot of people!).
My workplace started WFH on March 10th. I still remember how abrupt it was to announce that everyone had to work remotely. For me, it was a godsend opportunity. I live pretty far from where I work and usually sit in traffic to go to and from work. On a typical day, I would waste about 3 hours on the road. It took me about 3 weeks to enjoy and settle into the homebody routine, and in early April, I decided to set aside my commute hours and read books. These three hours a day will act as a foundational time, and if I wanted to read more, I could most definitely read more.

I’ve always read when I pleased and didn’t have a structured time for reading, and maybe that’s why I was never able to read as much as I thought I should.

C. Take advantage of all your resources.
I love my kindle. It’s by far the most cherished electronic device I own. I love the feeling of carrying a library in my hand. The only downside of converting to ebooks is that it could get costly. A lot of times it seems to make more sense to own a physical book than to pay more for an ebook. But another one of my resolutions this year was to not mindlessly buy paper books. I hate the idea of trees getting knocked down for books that’ll never be fully utilized. I have made a pack with myself to only buy second hand books if I REALLY enjoyed the book on ebook first and deamed it necessary to own.

Anyway, back to resources. One of the best resources I’ve found this year is OverDrive. It’s a free app that connects you to your local library, and you can borrow both ebooks and audiobooks from it. I’ve been able to borrow pretty much all the books I’ve read. There’s a 21day limit to each title you borrow, so it really gets you going with your reading. Some popular books have a long line to wait, but since you can borrow multiple books at once, it also gives you a chance to browse and borrow some books that look interesting to you. I’ve run into some interesting books by browsing here.

D. Mixing things up
My biggest problem is that I get bored too easily. I had to use some tricks on my mind along the way to keep my interest in reading. Typically, I like historical novels or mystery thrillers. Non-fiction and anything with a religious flare in it are the hardest for me to get through. I’m also not into series, since I feel like the story is drawn out too much. But, a lot of these are excuses that trap me in a narrow range of readable books while also lowering my tolerance for a wide spectrum of knowledge. I’ve intentionally mixed up genres to keep me going with the reading. Since the basis of the year is ‘to finish whatever has been started,’ I would tell myself that I could get rewarded with a genre I like if I finished the current one I were reading. You’re playing games with yourself, but at the same time, yourself plays along with you.

Anyway, it’s been an enjoyable 100 books journey for me. We still have a full 24 days left in this month and I think I can get a few more books onto the list, so I’ll do a separate 2020 reading list wrap up when the year is officially over. I have a lot of books I’d like to review/recommend!

Hope everyone is doing well during the hard times!

Catalina