Hello 2012: Goals for the New Year
Happy New Year, friends! I am not a big celebrator of New Years. I don’t like big crowds so I hate going out NYE but I do like fireworks and the possibilities that each new year brings. 2011 wasn’t a great year for me but I’m putting it behind me and am looking forward to bigger and better things for 2012.
I don’t really believe in resolutions but I do believe in goals. They may seem like the same thing but to me, a goal is something that I can strive for and hopefully achieve, whereas I feel like I fail a resolution the first time I veer off the track. I don’t know if that makes much sense but I call them goals so let’s just leave it at that. I have several reading goals this year.
- Read 100 books – Last year I read about 130 books so this is totally achievable. I went down to 100 because I feel like I raced through a lot of books last year and didn’t really stop to enjoy all of them. I am also hoping to start some longer books series this year, which will take longer to read. Hoping that slowing down a bit will let me savor my reading more than just trying to find out what happens at the end.
- Read from the giant stack of books that I own (or have borrowed from friends) – I love buying books and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. However, there’s not much use in filling my library with awesome books if I never actually read them. I have a giant pile of books I’ve gotten this year and another giant pile that I borrowed from my friend Alethea that really need to be read. I also have a boatload of Kindle books that I haven’t read that I need to get to. I went a little crazy over Christmas and am going to try really hard not to buy any more books for awhile and read what I have.
- Read my Netgalley books – I LOVE Netgalley but they have so many great offerings that I often can’t keep up with my requests. Goal this year is to keep up with my NG reads, or at least get it under control. Starting it off by joining Netgalley Month, hosted by Red House Books.
- Read Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Game of Thrones – I have the first book in both series and want to read them this year. Hopefully I’ll like both enough to continue with the entire series.
- Reading Challenges – I’ve joined a few challenges this year. On the YA side, I’ve joined the Debut Author Challenge and the Standalone Challenge. You can see what I plan to read in my post on our YA site here. I’ve also joined the Krazy Kleypas Challenge for more Lisa Kleypas fun. See my original post here.
- Write reviews in a more timely manner – My reading speed far surpasses my writing speed and I am way behind in my reviews. I’d like to try to catch up a bit and review books I’ve read within a week or a couple of weeks of reading them. Pretty sure this is going to be the hardest one to achieve. :)
Those are my goals this year. I don’t think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, but we’ll see. I’d love to hear what everyone else’s goals are for 2012. Comment below or leave a link and I’ll visit. Happy 2012! (I hope that world doesn’t end this year. I have so many books I want to read before the apocalypse.)