It’s time for a check-in with my 2018 reading goals! I think I’ve been doing a good job so far this year keeping my goals in the front of my mind, but let’s go ahead and see if I’m actually sticking to them or not.

My most important goal of this year has been to read my books within three months of purchase. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been going as well as I envisioned because I accidentally wound up buying way more books than I can read in a short period of time, at least not when I have other constraints on my reading.

However, I realized in February that I had purchased too many books, and I’ve been doing a pretty good job since then cutting back drastically on my book buying. So while I’m not currently sticking to my goal, my 2018 TBR shelf isn’t getting much bigger, and I’m planning to keep my buying under wraps until I get everything off of my 2018 shelf and back on track with my goal.

Another one of my goals has been to work on reading all of the books that I purchased in 2017 by the end of 2018. This goal was actually going pretty well until this month, as I’ve been reading at least four books a month from my 2017 shelves in order to work towards that goal. Unfortunately I’m falling behind in April, but again, I’m limiting my intake of new books, and I’m planning to get back on track in the next few months. Besides, there are a lot of books on my 2017 shelf that I’m really excited to read!

In keeping with the spirit of reading books that have been on my shelves for way too long, I made it my goal to read Wuthering Heights and Buddenbrooks, since they’re both pre-2017 books. As it happens, I did not wind up reading them, but I did unhaul them, so they’re not taking up space on my shelves anymore.

And while I’m pretty focused on shrinking my TBR, I want to do a better job getting around to the long list of books I want to reread, so I made it a goal this year to reread a book a month. This one I’ve actually been doing pretty well with! Sometimes I don’t read my reread until the end of the month, but in March I binged the A Court of Thorns and Roses trilogy, so I have a few rereads saved up. While I sometimes struggle to make myself pick up a reread, I haven’t regretted a single one and am glad this is one of my goals for 2018.

I also made it a goal to have at least 30 percent of the books I read be written by authors of color. Including the two books I’m currently reading, I’m at about 40 percent, so I’m definitely on track to complete this goal!

Finally, I made myself a checklist of 36 items I’d ideally like to complete, with an emphasis on 14 starred items and a goal of completing at least 20. This hasn’t been one of my priorities in 2018, and to be honest, I’m not sure I’ll complete this list as planned. There are just too many books I’ve already purchased that I need to read, plus there are a lot of other books I’m generally more excited to pick up when I’m not working on my TBR shelves.

That said, I’m not completely writing this list off yet. I’ve completed about four of the starred tasks, including reading a presidential biography, reading a banned book, and reading books set in and by authors from Africa and the Middle East, and I have books picked out that I’m interested in reading for the other starred items on my list. Plus I’ve completed maybe two other tasks from this list, and I have a bunch of books on my TBR shelves or 18 in 2018 list that will also complete a number of these challenges. I’m worried about the number of nonfiction and history books I’m hoping to read to complete this list, but I do still have a lot of time left to make progress on it, and I know I’ll complete a number of tasks without even trying.

And while I didn’t technically make it a goal to complete the 2018 Read Harder Challenge because I didn’t want to pressure myself to complete it like I did last year, I have been working on it, and I’m pleased to say I’ve finished 15 out of the 24 tasks for far! I’ll actually be doubling up on a number of these tasks because I found so many books I’m interested in when I was researching books for my 2018 Read Harder Challenge Ideas post, and I have some that I’m pretty excited about but haven’t had a chance to read just yet. So I’m pretty sure I’ll wind up completing this challenge again this year!

Some of my goals are definitely going better than others, but I think I’ve been doing a pretty good job keeping my goals in the front of my mind this year and working towards achieving them. Hopefully by the time I do another check-in post (likely in August), I’ll be back on track with reading from my TBR shelves!

How have you been doing so far this year on your 2018 reading goals? Let me know in the comments!