My main goal for this year is not only to read more, but to read more of the kind of books I enjoy. That is: fun, adventurous fantasy. On top of that, I’d also like to broaden my horizon and read from a diverse array of authors.

To assemble my own list, I rifled through the 2015 year-end best of lists for fantasy and diverse authors, tacked on a few I’d been interested in from earlier years, and came up with the following 21 definitely-gonna-read books (in no particular order):

• Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard (YA)
• Uprooted by Naomi Novik
• The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson
• A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab
• Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (YA)
• Gates of Thread and Stone by Lori M Lee
• The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
• The Accidental Terrorist by William Shunn
• The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin
• Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor
• The Sons of Thesian by ME Vaughan
• Too Like the Lightning Ada Palmer
• The Shadowed Sun by NK Jemisin
• Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (YA)
• The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen
• Twelve Kings in Sharakhai by Bradley P. Beaulieu
• The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi
• Prophecy by Ellen Oh
• The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo
• Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz
• On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyviss (YA – 2016)

My total book goal for the year is 50, so this gives me some wiggle room. I have a tendency to just pick books up randomly and on a whim as I come across them online or in the world. This way, I have the ability to still do that, but also a core reading list that will help me a) stay up to date with recent fantasy, b) diversify my reading, and c) be a ton of fun to read through.

Do you have a reading goal for 2016?