I do not typically believe in New Year’s resolutions. I don’t like making them and I don’t like keeping them. Apparently, I’m not the only one that feels that way. According to U.S. News & World Report, 80% of people who make New Year’s resolutions fail by February. However, at the beginning of last year, inspired by a friend who is a voracious reader, I quelled my resolution doubts and took the plunge to read 50 books in 2018.
To some, 50 books might sound like a lot. To others, that number pales in comparison to the many books they consume. I also realize that in my profession, 50 books a year sounds like pretty small potatoes. A library blog recently posed this question on their Facebook page: “How many books have you read this year? What are your goals for 2019?”
One librarian claimed to have read 300 books, with a goal of 365 for 2019! I’m probably not ever going to be able to read 300 books a year, but 50 is the perfect challenge for a moderately social butterfly and Netflix binge-watcher such as myself. As of writing this, I’ve read 42 books this year with the help of goodreads.com.
Goodreads is a free website that allows the user to see what friends are reading; track books the user is reading, has read, and wants to read; receive personalized book recommendations tailored to the user’s literary tastes; and access book reviews. There are 80 million members and just as many book reviews so it’s quite a rich community of readers. I log in to my account almost every day to update my progress and see what my friends recommend.
Though Goodreads has many great book reviews, NPR’s Book Concierge is a Patagonia Library favorite. There you can access NPR’s recommendations for over 300 of the best books of the year. Visually, the concierge is brilliant. It’s modern-looking and user-friendly, with the covers of the books prominently displayed (because, unlike the popular idiom, many people do judge books by their covers) instead of lists. The covers can then be clicked on to access their reviews. Not only that, but there is a column of filters on the left-hand side to help you narrow down the results even further to find exactly what you’re looking for.
The library has many of these books in the collection, so if you find something you’re curious about, stop by or call us to see if we have it. I plan on making this same challenge this year. If anyone else chooses to do the same, now you’ve got a couple of resources to help you get started!