My 2018 Summer Reading Goals

There are less than five days before my college classes wrap up for the semester and I am so ready to tackle some of the non-textbook books on my shelves. As much as I’ve enjoyed most of what I’ve read for college lately, it’s just not the same as getting to indulge in a good sci-fi story or binge read a manga series. There are a few books that I’ve either really been wanting to read or series I’ve wanted to finish, so I went ahead and set some summer reading goals for myself- here they are!

Read Anna Karenina

In one of my college courses this semester I read some of Leo Tolstoy’s short stories; this was the first time I’ve done any in-depth reading of Tolstoy’s work and I enjoyed it immensely. My professor for that class suggested reading Anna Karenina to anyone who wanted to further explore Tolstoy’s writing so I’ll be picking this monstrously sized book. It will probably take me a decent amount of time to read but I’m really looking forwards to the experience!

Catch up on Laurie R. King’s “Russell and Holmes” series

The latest installment of this fantastic mystery series comes out June 12th and I’d like to be able to dive into it right away! I need to read the two preceding titles, Dreaming Spies and The Murder of Mary Russell to be ready to go, so these titles will be read early on during my summer. This is a series I really enjoy so my expectations are quite high, but King has never disapointed me in the past. If you enjoy Sherlock Holmes stories, history, and world travel, then I highly recommend this series.

Read more Victorian stories

This past February I finally got around to watching North and South with Richard Armitage, and was thrilled to find out it’s a screen adaption of a book by Elizabeth Gaskell. Just watching this Victorian drama unfold made me miss reading books like that, and I’d love to read some this summer. I’m considering a Bleak House re-read (my fave Dickens novel) but will also be choosing some new Victorian titles as well. If you have any suggestions let me know!

Read at least 5 of the oldest titles on my Goodreads TBR

Currently there are 330 books (and counting) marked as “Want to Read” on my Goodreads account; some of them have been sitting there since I first joined Goodreads in 2014. I’m determined to read at least 5 of the 20 oldest books on that list this summer A couple that stand out to me right away are Watership Down by Richard Adams, I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai, and Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. I don’t take any issue with having a huge (or never-ending) TBR list, but I do want to get to some of these titles that I’ve had on there for a while.

Finish some unfinished trilogies

The two series that come to to mind are Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking trilogy and Marie  Lu’s Legends trilogy. I’ve read the first two book in both of these series and just need to commit myself to finishing them! It’s not that I didn’t like them, either; I just get so excited to read other books that I tend to leave behind series sometimes…oops…I’m sure there are a few other finales I can polish off over the next couple months, too- it’s gonna be a series-completing kinda summer. 🙂

Read BEA/Book Con ARCS

Last year I ended up with dozens upon dozens of advanced copies of books from BEA and Book Con that I didn’t read before the finished copies released. To be perfectly honest, there are several 2017 ARCS I haven’t even touched since last May. So this year I’m making it a point to dive into some 2018 ARCS right after BEA and Book Con are over and do some more timely reviews for them!

And that’s it! I’ll undoubtedly be reading plenty of other books this summer but these are my goals that I’m aiming to achieve. Do any of you have summer reading goals? I’d love to hear them- drop me a comment down below!

Until next time,

Deborah xx