January 5, 2015

New Years Resolutions, Bibliophile Style

Book funk. Book slump. Bad book vibes. Book dumps. Reading downer. Whatever words I used last year to call my unfortunate year of reading it’s all true: last year was a miserable year for reading, for me.

Shockingly I still managed to meet some of my goals! Even one of my big ones!! Yeah!!


challenge

1. Read more! Read 100 books and more!

That’s right! I did it! 100 books. Before I lament on how easy it use to be to make 100, or what a hard reading year it was for me.

COMPLETED!

Oh, it feels so good to see that stupid red completed thingy on my challenge. So good!!!

Now the moment of shame that most of the books were easy reads, comics. They’ve been on my TBR pile for a while.  Yes, they’re smaller then manga in general. It still feels good that even in my horrible book funk I still read something. And to be honest I needed to catch up on some of the comics. Especially since I haven’t tried the New 52 or Now! ones. That said I don’t “officially” review them. So it didn’t help me put out with review more books.

This year I’m officially reaching for 100 again, but the real goal is to reach it with books to spare!

2. Catch up on series and finish some!

Yep, it’s well known that staying caught up on series, and finishing them, is one of my HUGE venomreading issues. There were a number of series I picked and to be honest some of them fizzled out for me, and some I made pretty good progress!

My big three were: Jennifer Estep’s Elemental Assassin series, Rob Thurman’s books, and C.E. Murphy’s Walker Papers.

Yes to Elemental Assassin, I re-read it and got up to book 3. Yeah! Poor Rob Thurman . . . reread the first one! And well . . . Murphy’s first book was a great re-read. However, the second was a let down and I’m still frozen in the middle of the third book. The only reason I’m not dropping it is because of the Kate Daniels thing. You need to make it to a certain book before writing it off. For Urban Shaman it’s book 4, and I’m still trying!

This year I’m gonna push myself harder.

3. Mix up my genres!

Epic fail. Urban Fantasy was my main squeeze. Though I didn’t junk out on as many heart-of-obsidianParanormal Romances so that’s something for a change.

This year I want to catch up on Steampunk and Dystopains. Man I miss them and there’s been some great stuff that’s being put out there.

The new genre I want to add to the mix is (drum roll!) sci/fi. It’s the one genre that I’ve really just left behind!

4. Post reviews for every book read!

Despite stalling out in the summer and barely starting up blogging in the fall again, I did pretty darn good! Only five reviews left to post for last year! What helped was that after finishing every book I immediately wrote a review.

cruel-beautyEven the threat of closing down Book Whispers didn’t stop me! After all that’s what I originally started Book Whispers for! Review freedom.

5. Read more Young Adult titles!

This one has changed! Last year it was to “Participate in more Buddy Reads!” However, it’s clear I’m not a happy reader when I plan out my reading “schedule”. Nope I’m a spur of the moment reader, and that’s how I like it. So I won’t be doing as many Buddy Reads.

I did notice that after May I stalled out on YA titles, and anytime I picked them up . . . well I couldn’t get into them. Most of my DNF were YA titles. Thenightlife problem was that for every great YA read I had to sludge through 3 to 4 horrid ones.

My official goal is to read every other YA. So you know one adult, then YA, adult, YA, adult, YA, and so on. That way I don’t get burned out on one or the other.

6. Utilizing my DNF (did not finish) powers.

Now this one I never made official, but once I started doing it last year . . . it felt freaking awesome! It also helped to revive my reading love. My DNF rights are ones that I’m going to embrace this year. Because as many Goodreads friends keep telling me:

“There are too many amazing books out there to waste your time on shitty books.”


So there they are! My reading goals! What are some of yours?  

2 comments:

Lola said...

I really have to cath up on the Elemental Assassin series. I love that series and even own 2 books I haven't read and I think by now 3 more are already released.

I did pretty good with introducing myself to the sci-fi genre in 2014 and am aiming to read more historical romances and mysteries this year.

Shera (Book Whispers) said...

Yeah, Estep really cranks them out!! (Which is a good thing. ^_-)

That's great about sci-fi, I noticed the YA genre is really exploding with them lately.

I really junked out on HR a while ago so I'm trying not to read too many of them. Which author are you going to check out?