When I joined the GoodReads book community a few years back, I discovered the website’s Reading Challenge app at one point, and decided when the new year rolled around, I would hop in and set a goal.

Basically, GoodReads lets you set a goal of how many books you are going to read within a year, lets your record and count the number of books you actually read within that particular year, and then lets you know on the website how you are progressing during the year to meeting your Challenge goal.

In 2015, the first time I joined the Challenge, I set a goal to read 15 books that year, and I accomplished it.

In 2016, I set my goal to read to read 25 books during the year, and I sputtered out on that goal, reading only 17 during the year after a late charge in December- which left me way short of my distant objective.

For this year’s Reading Challenge, it made sense that I reeled myself in a bit.

If I read 15 books in year one and 17 in year two, I was trending to read 20 books this year, if I pushed myself- if my two reading totals from those first two years didn’t actually average out at 16 books a year.

So, for 2017, I set my goal to read 20 books.

And by the time I entered this March, with 1/6th of the year passed, 16% of it behind me, I had read… no books.

It’s not because I didn’t try. I read almost wholly in that de Anza history for the first two months. I just didn’t finish that book, or any others, because I was concentrating there. I had also started a second Southwest history in January that was put aside for the de Anza book. And I read a few more short stories in a collection by Donald Barthelme that I began reading a year ago.

So at least I’ve been reading a little.

I think for me, part of my problem is that I pick longer books to read, and I am not a speed reader.

Well, tonight I had about 80 pages left in Langston Hughes’ “The Short Stories” to finish reading it, and I had the time, so I dedicated the evening to powering through them, if only to finish the book.

But don’t get me wrong- reading this collection was most enjoyable. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in some good short stories.

For my GoodReads review of the volume, I wrote this: “With simple, exact language, Hughes uncovers the black experience of the America of his day through a strand of rich and riveting tales about poverty, prejudices, patronage, religion, racial divide and loneliness as seen from a black perspective. This volume was an amazing revelation to me of the immense talent of a master storyteller and social critic at work.” Hughes can drop you into an experience with vividness and ease, his writing clearly offering an opportunity for one to see and feel the heaviness faced by those marginalized by race, poverty, and social status.

I was glad to finally finish a book two months into 2017.

At least of the 20 I said I would read, I have my first one down in the GoodReads Reading Challenge.

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How did I decide to read these short stories in the first place? Part of the reason is here.