How To Audit Your Personal Reading via Book Riot

We are coming up on the end of the year, and regular readers to this blog know that after the calendar turns and I take a short blogging break, I always begin the new year with an assessment of the previous year's reading resolutions.

Here is a link to my assessment of my 2020 Resolutions and here is the link to my 2021 Resolutions I created AFTER doing the assessment.

I also have many library workers who have not only taken my example to heart, but they shared their own assessments with everyone here on the blog. Use the "assessment" tag to read all of these posts.

I always encourage you to do the same before making any new resolutions for yourselves. And this year, I have another example of a way to audit your reading all year long. This one is from Kelly Jensen over on Book Riot. 

From her article, "How to Audit Your Reading Life":

Much like a financial audit, auditing your reading life means taking stock of the highs and lows of your reading within a given time frame. In this instance, we’ll look at the year as a whole. Auditing can be as simple or as complex as you’d prefer, and it can be done by journaling or opening up a couple of Google Docs and Sheets and going to town digitally. The process can be as analytics-driven as you’d prefer, as much as it can be as emotional and feelings-driven as you prefer (and it may be beneficial to even dig around in these book journaling prompts to go deeper into the best reading experiences you’ve had to find fodder for the audit). 

This guide for how to audit your reading life will offer ideas for diving into your reading world, with notes for where there are opportunities to journal or rate your book life over the past year with the idea this is an adaptable framework, suitable for using any time of year or in any way that best serves you. There are no one-size-fits-all guidelines here, just as there’s no one-size reading life. Consider this a jumping off point, wherein you can delve into making your reading life not just reflective of you now, but a helpful tool for navigating your bookish future.

Please click through to read her excellent guide. Kelly published this back at the end of November, but I have been saving it as my final post of the year, well final before my end of the year personal best.

I will be taking the rest of this week off but I will return on Monday [12/27], with my annual category based, "Best Books I Read" list. Then a blogging break to recharge and spend time with my family from 12/28 thru 1/5. 

I will return 1/6 and 1/7 with my posts assessing my 2021 Reading Resolutions and setting my 2022 Goals, as referred to at the top of this post, before we settle back in to more regular programming here at RA for All HQ, including a very busy January of training programs. 

In the meantime, I highly encourage you to bookmark today's post and think about how you audit your reading life. I will be using this article to help me do my annual assessment as well. 

While I am taking time off, I want to encourage you to use the links here today to spend some time thinking about yourself. With so many examples, from different people, you can use what works for you from all of our examples. 

Or use none of it. All I am asking is that you consider being introspective about what you have read, if it is working for you, and why you chose it. I promise you, just spending some time contemplating this will improve you personal reading life and your work with readers.