Last January I set a reading goal for myself: 104 books before the end of the year. I had only read that many books one year before, when I was a sophomore in high school. The personal challenge happened softly towards the end of January 2018. I had just discovered the convenience of Libby, Wisconsin Public Library Consortium’s app for accessing ebooks and audio books. I found the function within the app to speed up the narration double time while listening to audiobooks. Using that function, I listened to Anne Sewell’s Black Beauty while running on the treadmill. Then, for the first time, I logged the books in my Goodreads account while cooling off from my run. While recording the title of the book, I wondered if I could read 104 books this year, averaging two books a week, using Goodreads to keep track.

I didn’t even make it an official goal. It was just something I wondered if I could do while working full time, taking full-time graduate school classes, volunteering in our community, and being a mom to my two sons. I decided to not tell anyone about my goal, and instead keep track all year of which books I finished to see how far I would get.

What began as a soft pondering turned into a full-fledged promise when I became a school librarian and 6^th grade reading teacher this fall. I challenged my students to read 40 books this year, after a similar challenge presented by Donalyn Miller in her book, The Book Whisperer, and helped my students create reading notebooks to keep track of the books they read, their own version of the Goodreads logging activity. I created my own Reading Notebook, and began to keep track of my reading with my students, showing them I was not asking them to do anything that I was not willing to do myself while also sharing stories of how I find time to read, even with my committed schedule. Each week when I finished a book or two I would give a short book talk on the books I just read for my students, and then ask who wanted to read those books next. The titles were always quickly snatched up. The children we serve notice if we believe in the power of reading ourselves. We may be their biggest, or only, reading role model. We can not let our moments with them slip away without inspiring to believe that there are books out there they will love.

Now that the year is over…yes…I did it. I read 109 books in 2018. While it was time consuming, it was doable. I found that the best way to read was to fit it in between other activities, making reading not something I chose over other activities or commitments, but something I did while working on other activities or in moments of waiting. I was not interested in every book I read. Instead, I chose titles that I wanted to be familiar with so I could recommend them to my students. In so doing, my reading became as much for my students as it was for me.

Here are some tips that I picked up over the year reading. If you would like to check out what I read in 2018, here is my Goodreads page. I already started another page for 2019!

1. Use the Libby app, available from Overdrive. Here in Wisconsin Libby is connected to our Wisconsin Public Library Consortium. If you are in another state, you may have the same access, or another service that is similar. All you need is a public library card. From a user’s perspective Libby is beautifully designed and makes placing holds on ebook or audiobooks very easy. And, the holds automatically are returned to the library as soon as your lending period is up, so you never, ever, have to worry about fines! Also, you can link multiple public library cards to your Libby account. I linked my husband’s and sons’ library cards, and can place 10 books on hold for each card. If I have a few books already checked out, I suspend some of my holds so that I move to the first person in line, but the hold does not come to me until I make it active. This ensures that I always have a new book ready for me.

Tip: Libby defaults to allowing you two weeks to borrow an ebook, and one week for an audio book. If you want more time, you need to log into the Wisconsin Public Library Consortium webpage using your library card number and your PIN (if you are not sure what your PIN is, call your local public library). Navigate to your account, then settings, and change your lending period to up to four weeks for ebooks and two weeks for audio books.

• Utilize audiobooks. Find opportunities to listen to audiobooks while doing other tasks. Instead of listening to music while running or bicycling, I instead listened to audiobooks through Libby. I turned the narration speed to double which meant that the words were going about as fast as I was running. It took some getting used to, but now I love it. If double-speed is not for you, consider just listening to audio books while you prepare dinner, clean your house, or work on other chores. I began doing that, and it made household “chore-time” into “me” time. I was transported into the story I was hearing, and it made me feel that I was taking time for myself, while doing tasks that needed to be done.
• Consider purchasing a Kindle Paperwhite. This changed my reading life. You can read all about Paperwhites on Amazon, so I will not repeat that information here. Yes, they are expensive, but there are sales throughout the year. I will say that the Paperwhite allowed me to always have a book with me, and that made a huge difference. I would take out my Paperwhite and sneak 5-15 minutes of reading in while waiting for my husband or sons at various moments. Those minutes added up! The Paperwhite is very light and has a long battery life, which makes having it with me and ready to go easy.

I would love to hear about your reading goal for 2019! Let’s inspire one another through books!