sprite writes
broodings from the burrow

January 17, 2018


top ten tuesday: bookish goals/resolutions
posted by soe 1:23 am

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday (now hosted at That Artsy Reader Girl) asks us about our bookish resolutions. As I mentioned last week, I do have some aspirations for this year’s reading:

  1. Continue to read books by diverse authors representing different backgrounds. I did better with this plan last year, in part because I started actively keeping track and holding myself accountable.
  2. Read more books that I already own. I own a lot of books. Like A LOT a lot. But I’d say that my reading is probably 90% library books. I’d like to scale it back to 75% if possible.
  3. Choose more nonfiction, more poetry, and more classics. I read a lot of current fiction with a smattering of celebrity memoir on audio. I’d like to get back to reading more broadly, so I’d like at least 10% of my reading to fall outside my comfort zone.
  4. Read more books in translation or, at least, more books by authors from more countries. The past couple years I managed two books in translation each year. I’d like to up this category to five, which doesn’t seem unreasonable.
  5. Hit up older titles. This has been a problem since I did the Cybils, when I decided that if I were going to participate again that I ought to stay on top of current publications so it was less overwhelming. I don’t plan on throwing my name into the judging ring again at this time, so it’s okay to pause and take a look behind me.
  6. Cook out of my cookbooks and knit out of my knitting books. I have a weakness for pretty pictures of finished objects, be they sweets or hats, paired with instructions on how to make my own version. (I even got a new cookbook for Christmas!) But I own a lot of cookbooks and knitting books I’ve never even made one recipe or handknit from, and I shouldn’t keep them if I’m not going to use them.
  7. Keep track of how many pages I read in books I abandon. If I make it far enough into a book, it usually ends up in Goodreads, but if I abandon a book in its first 50 pages, that’s less of a certainty. But I have a suspicion of approximately how many pages I read in books I don’t finish and I’d like to know if I’m right or not.
  8. Attend more author events. I wasn’t great about this last year, only making it to the National Book Festival. What’s the point of having some many literary venues if I don’t do a better job of taking advantage of them?
  9. Purge books from my house that don’t bring me joy for one reason or another. (That joy might be being reminded of the person who gave it to me or the memory of the class I read the book in, not just that I loved the book itself. I’m not Marie Kondo; I get to make my own rules!) Just before our Christmas party, I pulled a whole bag from one of my shelves. I need to repeat that with the others and take them all to Little Free Libraries or Goodwill or a library book sale.
  10. Review the damn books I read on my blog in a timely fashion!

How about you? Any reading goals for 2018?

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