Here at Back Shelf Books, I’m christening 2024 as “The Year of the Novella.” My goal is pretty simple – I want to read as many SFF novellas as possible in 2024.

When I first started Back Shelf Books, I joked that I was on a mission to read every speculative novella in existence. Now, I’m putting my money where my mouth is.

While I can’t read every single SFF novella in 2024, I intend to read a lot of them. My goal is 50 to start, though *fingers crossed* I hope I can up that number later in the year.

I’ve compiled a pretty huge Goodreads list of sci-fi, horror, fantasy, and speculative novellas (it’s currently at 180 books!). My list has most of the Hugo and Nebula nominees from the past ten years, as well as those from the top novellas list voted on by the r/fantasy group. In addition, I’ve added other prominent novellas from the past few years, some winners and nominees from other awards, and some from my favorite authors.

At the same time I’m posting these goals, I’m also posting My Top 25 SFF Novellas, if you want to see my current favorites. I’m hoping to update this list throughout the year as I read more books and as this list changes.

I’m extremely excited about this challenge! I’ve longed to up my novella game for a while now, and I’m finally pushing myself to do it. If you have a favorite SFF novella, please let me know! I’ll make sure to add it to my Goodreads list and TBR!

In addition to my Year of the Novella challenge, I’ll be participating in a few other challenges from around the blogosphere!

Backlist Reading

Outside of my ARC reviews, I will be reading a whole lot of backlist books. The Backlist Reader Challenge is hosted by The Bookwyrm’s Hoard and fits perfectly with my other goals this year. The main goal of the challenge is to read those older books that have been piling up on your TBR for years. To count for the challenge, books have to be published before 2023 and they must have already been on your TBR list. 

In addition to SFF novellas, I also plan on reading at least 5 books recommended in Monster, She Wrote. I have another Goodreads list of books and authors referenced in that book, and you can see more about why I’m reading these books in my review of that book. All these books will definitely be backlist titles.

I know it sounds WILD, but I’m hoping for a total of 50 backlist titles (including all the novellas).

Audiobooks

I also plan on participating in the 2024 Audiobook Challenge, hosted by Caffeinated Reviewer and That’s What I’m Talking About. The goal is to find a new love for audiobooks or to outdo yourself by listening to more audiobooks in 2024 than you did in 2023. I’ll be going for the Stenographer level and shooting for 10-15 audiobooks in 2024.

I will almost definitely hit this level, but I want to aim for a level I know I will reach. I’ve been mostly reading by ebook lately, but I have been reviewing quite a few audio ARCs. I think 15 audiobooks is totally manageable in 2024!

SFF Title Challenge

In addition to the above challenges, I’ll also be *trying* to do A Dance with Book‘s 2024 SFF Title Challenge.

The general rules are:

• Read an SFF Book which has one of the words from the board in the title. It can be apart of a bigger word or be spelled differently. Like wild can be spelled wyld as well. Just the one letter and only once across the board.
• Only Science Fiction and Fantasy books. Any subgenre that fits into those two counts.
• 1 Double up is allowed
• Series titles can count but you must read 2 book in the series then to get it to count

These are my main challenges for 2024! I think these will keep me PLENTY busy.

All in all, I’m shooting for 250 books this year. I read over 200 in 2023 according to Goodreads, which I’ll take.

Do you set any big yearly reading goals or participate in reading challenges? Let me know which challenges you’ll be doing or if you host any!