Bookish Resolutions/Goals
Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review.
I already posted about my resolutions because I was trying to get ahead of the game, but here’s a very quick recap. (I’m also only including book and blogging resolutions; the post has more personal ones as well.) I’ll be using this post to share some other small bookish goals that I plan to conquer in 2018, which also includes a little bit of spinning off from the resolutions/challenges I signed up for.
Official Reading Resolutions
Read more here!
- Continue to not feel pressured to read and enjoy other hobbies
- Read 50% or less contemporary novels
- Read books from my shelves – at least one each month but a total 20+ in 2018
- Start and complete 3 series next year – at least one reread
- Develop a blog schedule for each week that mixes in bookish and personal
- Develop a review system
Other General and Challenge-Related Goals
Get my Netgalley ratio to 80% and master Edelweiss. I signed up for the Netgalley & Edelweiss Challenge to meet this specific goal. I want to focus on reading review books, even trying the ones I’m not as interested in reading anymore. Even if it leads to a DNF, I want to give them a shot instead of dragging my feet. There are some levels to aspire to for the challenge based on number of books read, but I’m mostly focusing on the percentage.
Read widely across genres, time periods, etc. The Popsugar and Modern Mrs. Darcy reading challenges that I signed up for will allow me to do this specific goal. They both have basic prompts, similar to (but a little more specific than) the Bingo cards I do each season. My goals are to finish the Darcy one (12 prompts – at least one each month) and get 40/50 Popsugar ones, including the “advanced” section of prompts.
Start strong with my Goodreads challenge in the first few months of the year. My life is going to get really busy starting in May. I have bachelorette weekends (2), weddings that I’m in (2), weddings I’m going to (2), moving, and other travel plans this year. The first few months of the year will be a nice time to get ahead on my reading goals in case things nose-dive in the middle portion of the year.
Read at least 20 books from my “jazzed up for this” shelf. I created this shelf as a way of tracking books I’m SUPER excited to read, in case I need to be reminded. It has a million books on it right now and I would love to keep bringing the number down. It’d be great to eventually have zero published books on the list, because then I can just track unreleased books I’m excited for.
Use the Serial Reader app to read at least two “classics.” I’ve been meaning to beef up some of that “required reading” stuff each year. I’ve read minimal Jane Austen and feel like I should change that. However, the best way for me to read these older books is to break it up a bit. I downloaded the Serial Reader app to read Alice in Wonderland last year and really enjoyed it. They break it up into bite-sized sections to read every day, instead of forcing yourself to continue if you’re not in the mood to read fancy language.
Spend no more than $250 on books this year, and less than half of that can be physical books. I’m trying to curate a real library sometime in the near future when I have a house. In the meantime, I need to not buy any books (physical at least) that I’m not super excited about. I have very few preorders coming and there are only a few authors that I do that for. As of right now, I have the next WIRES & NERVE coming this month, the new ACOTAR book in May, and LEGENDARY (second CARAVAL book) coming. That’s it. I’ll buy a few more books from favorite authors later on, but I won’t be roped in to sales at Books-a-Million. So, on the flipside, I don’t mind buying Kindle books if they’re on sale. That’s why more than half of that book buying budget should to go ebooks only.
Use my book planner all year. I’m really glad I bought my book planner this year. It has been really fun to use so far and I’m just getting started. I love being able to plan my TBR, new releases, etc. throughout every section. I’m curious to see how it impacts my wrap-up posts and statistics because I think it’ll help me streamline even better.
Cross-post reviews to Amazon. I’m sorry to admit that I’m terrible about doing this. I hope to post my book reviews on Amazon throughout the year, starting with books as I finish them. I also want to go back and upload my 2017 reviews AT LEAST. I’ll try to focus on other years afterwards but I definitely just need to be better about this. It’s daunting but necessary.
Purge and organize my Goodreads shelves. I did this thing where I made a “consideration” shelf and moved a bunch of books over there. It was a great idea in theory but obviously I never look at that shelf now. It’s really a way for me to track books I keep seeing in my feed and get intrigued by, only to realize I already saw it and don’t think I want to read it. I want to go through and purge books off some shelves and move more over to the “consideration” shelf if reading it isn’t a priority.
Great resolutions! I really need to get back to cross-posting reviews to Amazon. I m so excited about the book planner and hope to use it all year too! Good luck!
Thank you – you too!
Great list! I actually just went through and cross posted some of my older reviews on Amazon and BN. I’m so bad at doing it. I don’t even want to look at my GR tbr list. That’s way out of control. LoL
I’m trying to curate my own personal library, too! It’s been tough seeing that I do still live with three roommates, but the books have been crowding my Goodreads shelf and need to become mine soon! I wish I had some sense of practicality in terms of spending money on books, because all my money goes towards ’em, but I really do end up just buying every one I see.