The NYT recently headlined a column with “What Are Your Reading Goals for 2023?” and I thought, “People have reading goals?” I mean, sure the kind of goal that says, “I want to read the next Murderbot sequel,” or “When the next Rivers of London novel comes out, I think I’ll reread the whole series,” or “Whatever Loretta Chase publishes next, I’m in.” But the kind of reading goals where you say, “I want to read X books in 2023,” I don’t get. First of all, I don’t want to know how many books I’ve read because it shows how much time I spend sitting on my ass swiping through Kindle. I got a message from my laptop telling me that my screen time was down last week: Only nine hours a day. Yeah, the last thing I need to know is how many books I read, too. At that point, people could legitimately ask if I ever move.

Still it’s an interesting questions. Anybody here have reading goals, or are you just ripping through libraries and BookBub as fast as you can?

Oh, this week I liked Mhairi MacFarlane’s Mad About You. It’s closer to women’s fiction than romance, although it has a romance in it, but MacFarlane is just good, so she’s another one like Loretta Chase: If she publishes, I must take a bite.

What did you read this week? Was it part of a goal? Or did you just want to read a Good Book?