Top Ten Tuesdays: bookish goals for 2015!

toptentuesday

Thanks once more to The Broke and the Bookish for facilitating Top Ten Tuesday!  I can’t believe we’re at the end of 2015.  Without further ado, here are my bookish resolutions for 2015.

  1. Read at least 84 books, 63 of those being paper books – this might seem oddly specific, but it’s for a reason.  As you know, the purpose of this blog is to clear out some of the paper books that occupy my collection.  I currently have 162 unread  books overall, 142 of those being fiction.  My ideal scenario would be to cut that down to under 100 this year.  I read 110 books this year, but a goodly percentage of those were on my Kindle Paperwhite, which I got for my birthday.  However, I start my first “real” post-university job at the end of July, so if I’m being realistic, I know there’s a decent chance my reading will fall off a cliff around then.  Therefore, a lower goal than last year seemed like a good idea.  I want to try to concentrate on making sure a decent percentage of my read books are physical, and give myself a chance of clearing the 100 mark, while allowing for the fact that I will read on my Kindle while out and about because it’s just more convenient.  Here’s hoping…
  2. Read at least 30,000 pages – this is mainly to ensure that I read a mixture of longer and shorter material.  Again, I aimed for 40k this year, and am very close to that mark depending on how much reading I do tonight and tomorrow.   However, with my “real” job starting,  I feel like a lower goal is safer (and allows for more reading of “easier”,  shorter books, if that’s what I need when I’m working.)
  3. Complete all challenges I sign up for – I’m currently scoping out some of the challenges that are floating about in the book blogging network – I’ve found Novel Challenges really useful in that respect. I aim to complete the challenges I sign up for this year instead of floundering like last year – with that in mind, I’m only signing up for things that I feel I can complete out of my existing library and not things that I feel are going to push me to find titles/buy new things.  I’ll make a page for these called “Other Challenges” above so you can see what I’ve been up to.  Also part of this resolution is to engage with other book bloggers more as the more the merrier when talking about books!
  4. Read at least half an hour per day – an hour a day last year was frankly unrealistic.  Some days are just hectic.  I probably averaged at least that with a few day long readathons, but if we’re just counting each day separately I think I was closer to 2/3 days being hour reading days.  With that in mind, a little, and often, seems more appropriate.
  5. Blog at least three times weekly, but aim for five – self explanatory – I’m planning to have some regular features, some facilitated by others, and some created by myself.  Hopefully that should be of interest to my readers!
  6. Review what I read – this has been a bad year for reviews – apart from a spree I went on in about April, I’ve reviewed very little of what I’ve read.  This is a shame as I have had things I’ve wanted to talk about.  I’ve got quite good at keeping a reading diary in the physical world, so I’m hoping this habit should help with reviewing my reads for the coming year.
  7. Keep up with Librarything AND Goodreads – I like both websites for different reasons, so keeping my catalogues up to date is important.  My LT still needs tidying, despite the epic tagging spree I went on this month, and I definitely have some duplicates, as the numbers don’t match up with my GR, but I’m hoping that should even out, particularly as I decrease my TBR.
  8. Give away what I don’t want – I have a habit of fetishising books as objects and finding them difficult to part with even when I didn’t really like them very much.  I have to give away what I don’t like, want, or need.  It’s the only way I’ll ever have room for any more…
  9. Stop starting series – I get anxious about unfinished series, even ones I was only lukewarm on.  So I need to stop starting them until I have enough breathing space to remember which ones I still have unread books in.  With this in mind, no more starting series I don’t own all the books in until further notice (note: this doesn’t have to last all year but best foot forward).
  10. Stop buying books – like I said above: 162 unread books.  That’s not counting Kindle books (upwards of 100 of those also unread).  I clearly need to stop buying books as I obviously don’t need any more! Being realistic, I know I won’t stick to a complete book buying ban, especially once I’m on a graduate wage.  But I just want to think much more carefully about my purchases and whether they’re necessary before I make them, at least for the next year or two.

What will your bookish resolutions be?

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7 thoughts on “Top Ten Tuesdays: bookish goals for 2015!

    • Yeah, it’s a problem! I get these compulsions to buy books regardless of whether I need them or how long I think I’m going to take to get to them. I don’t know how long I’ll manage a complete book-buying-ban, but I suspect it could be a struggle. Thanks though 🙂 all the best for your reading in 2015!

      Like

  1. 6, 8 and 10 (with their caveats) all chime in with my intentions for 2015 (though they’ll be a carry-over from my 2014 plans).

    GR and LT? Sadly those have taken a back seat since I started blogging, and I don’t see them being anything more than peripheral in the future.

    But, as I’ve recently posted, I’m allergic to challenges and/or resolutions, so will be sticking to short-term manageable goals only a little more demanding than getting up in the morning!

    Like

    • Yeah, I’m not too fussed about rating/reviewing on Goodreads but I’m a bit of an obsessive listmaker so I find it really comforting to have a catalogue of everything I own and haven’t read, plus a lot of things that I want to read. Plus I like GR for counting how many books I have read per year and showing up page numbers and the like. Definitely less interested in using them in a social sense though as I find them very hard to keep up with (I’m a sporadic enough blogger).

      In past years I’ve definitely been a bit rubbish at keeping up with challenges and so on. This year I purposely picked ones that fit in with what I wanted to do anyway (reduce my TBR; read diversely) so that I could have some structure without pushing myself into doing things I don’t want to. Last year I took on some genre challenges and failed spectacularly as I didn’t think about how they’d fit into my existing TBR list or my plans for the year.

      Anyway, this comment almost turned into a blog post by itself!

      Liked by 1 person

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