Top 10 Tuesday is, as always, brought to you by The Broke and The Bookish. This week: Resolutions!
This is pretty self-explanatory, so let's jump right in!
#1: Read 75 Books
Somehow in the last two years I've hit 50 books by June. I actually did manage to read 100 books last year, but it became really stressful in December as I powered through to make it happen. So I'm probably going to start my Goodreads reading goal at 50 again, just to lessen the pressure. But I'll be aiming for 75. I suspect I'll surpass that with (relative) ease, but I'm not going for 100 again. Not yet anyway.
#2: Buy fewer books
My book buying has become a little bit ridiculous in the last few years. I'm not really sorry, because as my dad says, having too many books is a good problem to have. But I need to tone it down a bit because my bookshelves are in danger of overflowing at the rate I'm going.
I'm going to make an effort to use the library more for books I know they have, instead of just snapping everything up on Book Outlet. And I'll try to keep the buying to things I'm going to read immediately, things I've already read and loved or anticipated releases by favourite authors.
#3: Reduce the TBR pile
This goes hand-in-hand with #2. My shelves are getting full. They're not full yet, and with some more creative rearranging I could fit a lot more. Or I could buy more shelves. But that is exactly the opposite of the point here.
I own something like 100 unread books. That's kind of ridiculous as far as I'm concerned. I like having a variety to pick from, but I really want to knock that number down significantly this year. I'm considering a Read 5 Before You Buy kind of challenge as well. We'll see how that goes.
#4: Read more short story collections
I sort of tried to do this mid-year this year, but it fell by the wayside. I have a handful of short story anthologies on my shelves that I'd really like to read. The problem always is, once I finish a few stories I tend to put the collection down and forget it existed. It's not like a novel, where I want to read on and find out what happens.
I'm going to try to pick up what I started in May/June of last year and read one short story or so each night before bed. That way, I can leisurely work my way through collections and not worry about staying up too late reading!
#5: Read 12 eBooks
This averages to one a month, which is pretty much my goal. Listen, my iPad is great. I have the apps for Kobo, Kindle and iBooks. I have a decent eBook collection. And my public library has a few titles I'm interested in only available on eBook. I just really want to get around to some of them this year.
There are probably more resolutions knocking around in my head, but I can't think of any to write down. And five is a reasonable number anyway... too many more and I'd probably get overwhelmed! I still have a few other challenges I want to do this year (Alphabet, Series, etc.) but I don't think they need to be on this list necessarily.
So that's it, I guess! What are your reading resolutions for 2016? Let's chat in the comments.
