hi my name is Morgan welcome to my channel and
in this video I'm going to be going through my 2024 intentions for the year. now it is February
so I am a little late but it's also Lunar New Year today so you know New Year can start at any
point. so I've separated these into what I'm calling my reading goals, my community goals, and I
also have a very, very loose 24 and 24 TBR. I guess I'll start with the community goals because this
is the big different thing in that I am here doing this tal
king to the camera thing. so my first
goal or intention for 2024 is to give this a proper go, whatever that means. I was thinking of
putting a number on it like make 12 videos in a year or something like that but I think I'd
rather just go by feeling, like if at the end of the year I feel like I gave this a proper go so
I can finally either continue with it because I enjoy it, or write it off as this thing that kind
of lurks around in my brain rent-free. basically find out if I actually enj
oy this long term. I
actually started this channel at the beginning of 2023 with the same kind of intention and then
2023 was was not the one, so we're going to try again this year and hopefully it will be a bit
more successful in general and in booktube. my other big goal or intention with starting this channel
is just to comment more. I have lurked on booktube for probably over a decade, yeah. I often have a
thought of something to comment but do I often post it? no. so I need to get over
that, I don't
know why I do that even the comments that I see often like just 'love this video especially I watch a lot of smaller booktubers
and I don't often comment and I feel like a bit of a hypocrite at this point because I would
love people to comment on these videos and I'm not doing it for the small booktubers I watch
so maybe we're all just scared of commenting, I don't know. and then my last community intention
is to carry on my buddy reads and book clubs in real life. I think i
n general a theme for 2024 is
to take solitary hobbies like reading and try to find more of a community around them. now for the
main event I guess which is the reading goals. so number one is to read my own books. so original,
I know. last year only 19% of what I read was from books I already owned and 58% was from the
library so I know where my problem is. again I'm like should I put a number on it? I would love
to read 50/50, if I could read 50% my own stuff, 50% library... honestly I wo
uld take a third, 33%. I think
if I manage one in three books being from my own shelves that would be quite impressive. and
the general goal behind that is to reduce my own physical TBR like most of us. I might make
a whole video about how long some of the books have been there cuz sometimes I see people say 'oh
I've had a book for three years and feel bad' and I'm like buddy I've had some for 15 [years], you're doing
fine. and I need to keep reminding myself I'm not just doing it for the s
ake of it but because I'm
excited to read those books and also I now have my book collection in my living room so whenever
we have people around people will talk to me about the books and it's really annoying when
people are like 'oh what's that one like?' and I actually haven't read that one... so I would love
to actually have a collection that I have read and I can talk to people about and lend out to people
that is the big why. so obviously if I'm trying to reduce my overall physical boo
kshelf then buying
no books is a thing I think I'm going to try to do this year. I did buy two in January but... I have
a few exceptions to the rule that are allowed so those two I bought were for one of my book
clubs in real life, one of the buddy reads I do, so they will definitely get read in 2024 so
I'm not worried about those. I've also written down properly essential university books so that
means I can't get it from the library, I actually need to scribble all over it and I can't fin
d a
PDF or something like that. and this one I don't know if I should get rid of but I have written
I'm allowed to buy books as a souvenir and one at a time, so not what I did when I went on
holiday last year and bought like 10 books on holiday, but maybe one book from a place if
I end up going somewhere. I don't even think I'm going on holiday this year so. my next goal
might just be a me problem but that is to not rush audiobooks I listen to a lot of audio books
on Libby the library app
and I am notoriously bad at having about 12 books out on Libby and they
all are due around the same time and I end up speed listening to an audiobook in like 3 days
so I'd really like to just if a book is going to get returned just let it be returned I can get
it out later and just listen to it a normal more pace. I'm generally not too bad with the actual
speed of the book like I won't put it on 3x speed or something to get through it but I
will just find excuses to just clean and do DIY an
d go for walks spend my whole day listening to
an audiobook and this is part of the reason that my physical shelf gets neglected again because
I always have an audiobook that is due. but this is actually going quite well so far I have let an
audiobook get returned and it has come back to me and I'm just carrying on with it at a normal speed
I don't need to dedicate my days to it or anything that's the aim and my final reading goal is to
reread some books again. last year I reread for the fi
rst time in I don't know how long, maybe a
decade, and it was great, like they're already your favorite books and you get to experience them
again so I don't know why I don't do this more. some potential favorites that have been calling
to me lately to reread are Our Wives Under the Sea, Lord of the Rings, maybe Narnia (I haven't
read that since I was a kid), so yeah there's lots of things I don't want to put a specific one
just make sure I reread something again this year. so yeah those ar
e all my intentions for the year
we will see how they go. now I do read mostly by whim so I wasn't sure whether to make a TBR [To Be Read] or
not for the year but I thought you know a year's a long time there's plenty of time for the whim
to strike within that so these are 12 books from my own shelves that I think I definitely want to
get to this year. (famous last words.) starting with some non-fiction the first one is Greater than
the Sum of our Parts: Feminism, Internationalism and Pales
tine by Nada Elia and this is quite an
academic looking book about the interconnectedness of settler colonialism around the world but
especially obviously looking at Palestine and yeah for obvious reasons I want to read this soon
and be more informed and just continue reading about Palestine and other places throughout the
year so definitely putting this one, I only got this in December I think. this next book I've been
excited to read for so long that I think I've now become kind of intimi
dated by how excited I am
and have I bigged it up too much so I think I should just actually read the thing and that
is See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love by Valarie Kaur and I picked
up this book because I read The Care Manifesto a couple of years ago and in a review of that on
Storygraph someone mentioned this book. The Care Manifesto I would recommend if you don't know
much about care and the politics of care but I wanted something a little bit deeper and more
about radical compassion which I believe this is. it says on the back it's about 'revolutionary love,
a radical joyful practice that extends to others, our opponents, and ourselves' I have a feeling it's
going to be kind of The Care Manifesto slash The Art of Asking, something like that - that's what I
hoping for and maybe have built it up too much but I've heard great things. the next non-fiction
book is called Abolition Revolution by Aviah Sarah Day and Shanice Octavia McBean and I picked
this up
after going to a panel event that the authors did and they were both such great speakers and
the thing that drew me to this particularly is that it's about abolition of the prison system
in the UK which I feel like books on that are quite hard to find and this kind of feels like
a good starting place, really thorough, everything they said was so well researched searched and yeah, they were really impressive speakers and I'd like to dive into their full book. this is
Saving Time: Di
scovering Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell, author of How to do Nothing which I
read a couple of years ago and loved. I bought this hardback maybe in the week it came out or the
month it came out and I still haven't read it so I really need to get around this one and I don't
know too much about what it's actually talking about apart from time and productivity maybe? my
last non-fiction book is a bit of a random one and that is Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale by
Russell T Davies and Benjam
in Cook. and this is one of those quite chunky, maybe coffee table books
almost, it's got kind of scripts and notes and it's Russell T Davies looking back on the filming of
Doctor Who - so the four series that were kind of my series of Christopher Eccleston, David Tenant,
with Rose, Martha, Donna. I think I'm kind of hyped for Russell T Davies to be back writing Doctor
Who again, and I kind of fell off after Matt Smith really, so I'd like to reignite my love
for Doctor Who this year I think
. It has emails and texts between the writers about making different
decisions and things, so I think it will just be really interesting and I've owned it this
since it came out because I was bought every single Doctor Who related thing ever as a kid so I
think I've had this for 16 years or something like that, yeah. next I have some fiction from my shelves
that I definitely want to get around to this year and the first one is it's sort of cheating because
it is that book that I bought in J
anuary that I'm buddy reading with my friend and that is Babel by
R F Kuang I have tried to avoid spoilers for this so all I know is it's about Oxford and translation
and language and maybe there's some kind of magic, that's all I need to know so yeah I'm very
excited for this. the next book I really want to read is Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I have read Signal to Noise by this author and that's it but this is the one that's kind
of called to me the most and I bought this i
n Edinburgh last year. and again this is why I don't
do TBRs because I like not knowing anything so I can't really tell you anything, so all I know
is it's Mexico City, there are vampires, that's all I need to know. next I have a couple of horror-adjacent books which is quite unusual for me but these are two I really want to read. the first one
is White Is For Witching by Helen Oyeyemi. this is about a house that is haunting the people living in it
which just sounds great. I read What Is Not
Yours, Is Not Yours - is that what it's called? [yes] - by this author
years ago and loved it so I really need to get around to this but again I don't really read blurbs
so you'll just have to look them up *laughs* what a great booktuber I am. and the next horror is Devil House
by John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, he's the main singer/songwriter, and The Mountain Goats are like
my favorite band, as well as The Killers... just so you know. but again I don't know if I've just
paired these
accidentally and this is also about a house that is haunting people or in some other way
kind of spooky but haunted houses apparently on the TBR this year. I also just noticed on the back
it's fled by Kazuo Ishiguro and Carmen Maria Machado so it's going to be great. I love the way he uses
words in songs, I'm sure I'm going to love it in books. next up is a historical fiction and that
is Nettleblack by Natt Reeve and this I think is about a non-binary character in like the Victorian
era? y
es, Victorian. and obviously I don't think they use the term non-binary but some kind of gender
thing is again all I need to know, I'm intrigued. I also love this cover so yes the only problem
is the font is tiny but we will get through that, at least it is floppy. the next one I really need
to get around to is Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden. again I don't really know what this is about
apart from Death is a character and it's in London maybe but it is blurbed by so many people on t
he back
that I'm just like sure, yes, and I've heard so many booktubers that I trust talk about it, I love the
cover, it's all going to work out - it feels like a five star, you know when you just kind of know? this
is the last of the 12 books I physically own that I've chosen and that is Lodore, Lodoré? I'm not how sure
how I meant to say it but this is by Mary Shelley. I've read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley multiple
times, it's maybe my favorite classic along with Dorian Gray, and I reall
y should read more by her
then obviously. and the thing that really got me about this one is - well, the cover - but then besides
that it does say on the back that it's the most Jane Austen-like of Mary Shelley's novels which
intrigues me. I think it's kind of a satirical romance so yeah we will see. so if you've been
paying attention I did say I was doing a 24 in '24 TBR and I have just showed you 12 books so yeah
I do I know myself and I know that I will go to the library a lot so I've al
so picked out 12 books
that I think I would like to get from the library in this year. I'm going to cheat with this TBR
slightly because I want to feel good about myself and show one I've already read so this is Shark
Heart by Emily Habeck and this was the book I was most excited about at the start of the year that
I nearly bought and stuff, if I was still buying books I probably would have bought it and yeah I
have already read this and liked it, but probably not enough to own it so thank
you library. the blurb
starts with 'for Lewis and Wren their first year of marriage will be their last' and that is because
Lewis is turning into a great white shark. that's what the blurb says at least, that it's about
marriage but I would say this is is also about found family, growing up too fast, and motherhood
but I will talk about it more in my wrap up at some point. the other 11 books I might like to get
from the library this year I'll just run through really really quickly. another
shark themed one I
would love to read Julia and the Shark by Kiran Milwood Hargrave. this is a children's book I think
about kind of grief and a Greenland shark maybe? and it looks gorgeous so I would love to find that.
I tend to use the library a lot for graphic novels and graphic memoir so I would love to read Run: Book One by Andrew Aydin. this is the follow-up trilogy I think, it's going to be, to March, the
series that followed the life of John Lewis, the congressman. and those graphic
memoirs are amazing,
I would recommend them to anyone so I'm really looking forward to finding this one eventually.
I've also wanted to read Maus by Art Speigelman for years and years and I just need to find it
in the library. annoyingly my library had part one but not part two so I need to track down the
other one. and then in other non-fiction I would love to read Who Will Pay Reparations On My Soul?
by Jesse McCarthy. I don't really know what this is about massively apart from it's an essa
y collection
with a great title, which is sometimes all you need, that's the kind of whim that I can commit to with
library books. and lastly for nonfiction, I'd love to read First Comes Love by Tom Rasmussen which I
believe is a queer look at the history of marriage and future of marriage maybe. and these are just
a complete spread of different fiction books that are calling to me at the moment so maybe I will
get to them in the year. the first one is Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton which I t
hink is about land rights
in New Zealand and Macbeth maybe? or maybe I'm just thinking that because of the title. making this
TBRvideo is really exposing how little I know about books going into them but it's the way I
like it so. another classic that I've had my eye on is The Hopkins Manuscript by R C Sherriff which
is about the moon colliding with the Earth. I think it's very loosely what the film Don't Look Up was
based on. to finish a trilogy I would love to read A Power Unbound by Frey
a Marske which is the last
book in The [Last] Binding Trilogy, I think that's what it's called, which is magical Edwardian queer
romance. they're very easy reading to me, they're quite fun and fast-paced, so yeah would like to
wrap up that series. this next one I think is a straight up romance which I don't really read
without kind of magical or fantasy elements but I trust the author completely so that is You Made
A Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi. I think this is about a c
haracter who has lost their
husband maybe and then finding romance after a a big loss basically. another contemporary book I'd
like to read is Young Mungo by Douglas Stewart and I'm sort of cheating because I am already halfway
through this, which is following a 15-year-old boy called Mungo and his sister and his brother
in life in Glasgow, and Mungo who is Protestant finding a friendship or maybe more with a boy who
is Catholic, and all that that entails. And last on my list for from the l
ibrary is just James Baldwin,
anything by James Baldwin. I don't how I haven't read anything by him and I'm nearly 30 so I need
to correct that. so yeah that was my very loose 24 in '24 TBR hopefully I get to at least some of
those this year and remember to keep checking in with these goals and intentions. if you have any
goals or intentions or whatever you're calling them for the year please do let me know below or
link your videos below I would love to see them. hope you're having a good
day, thank you so much
for watching and I will see you next time, bye
Comments
Hi Morgan, These are great goals.👍 Hope you have a nice reading year.😊 I look forward to seeing more content from you. ☺