My previous post reflected on my 2023 reading year. Today’s post goes hand in hand with my end of the year content. I’m sharing my reading life plans and goals for 2024!

First off, here’s what I’m continuing in my 2024 reading life:

• Keeping a reading notebook
• Continuing A Dose of Romance Book Club on Fable
• My monthly in-depth nonfiction book reviews
• Creating Seasonal TBRs
• My Kindle Unlimited reading goal of averaging at least 3 books a month

Otherwise my 2024 reading plans are a bit different than anything I’ve attempted before.

Going Deeper

While I am motivated by numbers goals, this upcoming year I’m not planning to set a total books read goal. Instead I’m focusing on a phrase and theming my reading year off of that.

My phrase for 2024 is “Go Deeper”.

This was one of my hopes for my 2023 reading life but without solid strategies for how to create this principle in my reading life, it was hard to keep it in focus.

In some ways the opposite occurred. 2023 became a year that was a lot about pushing myself to hit new highs in terms of numbers. It was still a great reading year overall – my best yet even.

But in 2024 I want be sure I’m making room to go deeper into my reading life.

For me this means taking my time, getting comfortable with reading slower, and interacting with what I’m reading.

Below I share ideas for how I’ll meet this overall theme for 2024.

2024 Reading Life Plans: A Year of Reading Deeper

This will likely be an ongoing process of experimenting with my reading life over the year.

I hope to take time once a quarter to reflect on how reading deeper is going in my reading life – what is working, what isn’t, and what new things to try. If not as a blog post, at least as a journal entry in my reading notebook.

In general to focus on reading deeper in my 2024 reading life, I plan to make space for reading slower.

As I shared above this means not setting total numbers goals. This will be my first time ever approaching my reading life this way since I started tracking it.

I also have noticed I consume my audiobooks differently than my ebooks. In my mind, there is no room for debate – both of these formats count as reading!

However I tend to binge read my audiobooks because my daily life allows for that. I love having a story keep me company as I go about chores, cooking, or whatever else I’m doing that the day.

Though I make notes as I listen and have tried annotating audiobooks, the speed at which I consume them doesn’t lend itself to a ton of interaction with the text or reflection.

I already interact with my reading by keeping notes as I go for my book reviews. Next year I’d like to take this further with annotating.

Ebooks are better for me with that and I’ve started a digital annotation system that I hope continues to grow this year.

Going into 2024, I plan to continue my audiobook experiences for the fun, comfort, and momentum they provide my reading life and keep my more interactive reading to ebooks.

What does reading deeper look like for nonfiction?

In 2023, I moderated two book clubs over on Fable for the entire year – one nonfiction, Pearls of Wisdom, and one romance, A Dose of Romance.

As I shared in my 2023 reading reflections, my nonfiction book club Pearls of Wisdom didn’t really grow together as I hoped and I plan to take a break from it in 2024.

There are a lot of members joining but virtually no interaction. I don’t know if that’s my fault as a moderator or the nature of the nonfiction reading experience there.

Regardless it makes it a little hard to be vulnerable about your self improvement journey with 90+ strangers lurking in the background.

Since I plan to journal more regularly in 2024 as a personal goal, I want to reflect on the questions and thoughts that come up from my current nonfiction read there too. I hope this will be a way of going deeper into my actual life thanks to my reading life.

Recently I decided I’d rather share my growth and reflections here in my monthly nonfiction book reviews than on a public book club. I’m more comfortable continuing to share my personal takeaways in this space.

Last week I shared a nonfiction roundup collecting my most memorable takeaway from every nonfiction book I read in 2023. That’s a practice I’d like to continue.

Lately I’ve been thinking about my nonfiction reading as gathering ideas, tips, or strategies to add to my personal toolkit for making the most of life. Or sometimes just getting through a difficult time.

I hope going deeper with this practice can help me recognize what comes up for me personally while reading and then solidify how I can move forward with these tools or strategies I’m reading about in my real life.

What does reading deeper look like for A Dose of Romance?

I’m planning to continue with A Dose of Romance similar to how it’s been in 2023.

Some people naturally come and go but I’ve loved sharing this reading experience with those who participate most months like my friend Nicole.

Lately we’ve been reading a lot of books that are available on Kindle Unlimited. I’m still enjoying that and hope to continue it. It helps me try new authors, stay on track with my KU reading goal, and also have a book that’s readily available at the beginning of the month.

However I am planning to try a few new things in hopes more readers will engage with the club while they’re reading the book.

One of those new things is putting our next month’s book club pick to a vote. I just started a thread where club members can leave suggestions for titles at the top of their TBR. So far there haven’t been many KU recs so we’ll see how that goes. All of this can be played with and adjusted as the year goes.

I’ve also added a welcome thread with a guideline to Fable and the club. There members can ask questions or get ideas for where to begin if they are new to the app.

One area that I don’t think Fable makes very easy is getting to know other members so I started an introduction thread in hopes we can meet our fellow readers.

Fable does allow photos to be shared so I think it would be fun to do prompts like share a photo of your bookshelf or your favorite reading spot. We can also do bookish games with that feature like a reading themed “This or That”.

I think I’ve been underutilizing Fable’s poll feature. In addition to the what to read next poll, I’m excited to do reading life polls and fun quizzes too.

Recently Fable has been adding fun new features all the time so I’m looking forward to experimenting with those this year in a way that hopefully encourages club interaction.

What does reading deeper look like in terms of community?

Basically this is my reminder to go deeper into a community before expanding outward.

I want to do my part to go beyond surface level interactions before I jump into trying something new with another community.

This could apply to any book community but for my current reading life, it’s mostly recommendation sources, content creators I support, Patreon memberships, and book clubs.

One caveat for this is a couple Patreon romance communities I’ve been tempted to try. I may go ahead and give these a go this year as I’ve moved away from other communities that don’t mesh as well with my current reading tastes.

My reading life items from my 24 for 2024 list

Instead of having a large bucket list with all kinds of reading goals and bookish new experiences like I had in 2023, I made room on our family’s 24 for 2024 for a few book related activities that I hope will help me add to my reading community. Both in person and online.

Here they are:

• Participate in team-based readathons (I have my eye on two but wouldn’t mind finding more. The first one is the Icelands Readathon in January!)
• Try someone else’s Fable book club.
• Participate in a Booktube event (like a reading sprint or book club).
• Join Friends of the Library (Sadly, my local library continues to be enveloped in scandal. I plan to investigate more but I may join the Friends of the Library of a library we enjoy 2 towns over).
• Go to a library event (There are so many to choose from – story time to book clubs to art shows to documentary screenings and more).

Ideas I may play with over 2024

I always have more ideas than I have the time or energy for.

Part of going deeper this year is giving the projects I’m already doing the attention and work they deserve before taking on more.

On the other hand trying new things and continuing to have new ideas can help keep both creativity and energy going.

I’m purposely keeping my goals and plans somewhat open for new things. So if any of these seem right when I’m taking that time to reflect each quarter, I might give them a go.

Let me know if any of them sound like something you’d enjoy too!

They are:

• Series Read Along Book Clubs
• Studying the Romance Genre
• Sharing Book Annotations as Blog Posts
• Making room for rereading my favorite books in December

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I wish you and yours a happy and healthy new year! What are some of your plans or goals for your reading life in 2024? If you pick a word or phrase to focus on for the year, I’d love to hear what it is.