Adding to my Reading Plan this Year - Part 1

I am a collector of books and it presents a problem. My stack of books to be read grows larger and the amount of reading to reduce the pile can become overwhelming. I personally find when I'm overwhelmed I need to create a plan. Realizing this I began pondering the action steps shared yesterday and wondered if there are more action steps I can take that would work towards my reading challenge goal and decrease my To Be Read (TBR) stack.

First I identified the biggest genre of my stack and it's informational. Then I identified the biggest topic within the informational stack and it's professional reading - I have a passion; a love for reading about teaching. Each time I switch grade levels my first response is to collect the latest and greatest to help me have options for being more prepared. 

When I reorganized my collection with this last switch, I actually put a post it note on the inside title page to indicate it's not read. It was actually a trick to reduce the TBR pile on the floor and reduce the overwhelming feeling. I use to be able to keep up with my TBR pile and then a few personal things came up in my life and my reading took a turn. I want to return to professionally reading and want to reduce my TBR pile.

I've decided to add two things this year to my reading plan and both are things I encourage my third graders to do. The first thing is to pick two professional books from my TBR stack and make them part of my reading stack each month. If I read two a month that would be twenty-four for the year - one fourth-ish of my Goodreads goal. I'm also going to share my picks at the beginning of the month here and on Instagram with the hope by going public it will help me be accountable. Goals are easier to obtain when we have cheerleaders on our side. I thought about picking three or four and realized I wanted to set space for reading other books.

This month my two books are ones I just added to my TBR stack. A newly published book and one I missed when it was published and wish I hadn't. I'll be back tomorrow with my other reading plan addition.