Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! It being the new year and all, this week we’re talking about resolutions. I’ve decided to split mine up into five each, personal and bookish both!

Personal

Have a successful fifth session: February will mark the beginning of the fifth session I’ve spent working in government affairs, and though it will be a challenging one because of the pandemic, I’m ready to do my best!

Visit my new nephew: This will have to be after session at some point, which means I likely won’t get to meet him until after he’s six months old! I’m glad we’ve been able to facetime regularly with my sister so I’ve gotten to see him but I really want to meet the little guy in person!

Take vacations when it’s safe: I made a trip to Michigan in the fall for my sister’s baby shower, but that was the only time I’ve left Reno since last March. When it’s safe to travel again, we are definitely going to spend more time out of town than we’d been doing!

Keep working out regularly: This is something I sometimes have a hard time with during sessions because of the scheduling difficulties that inevitably arise, but working out on a regular basis has been something that’s been really important to me during the pandemic, both for my mental health and my physical health, so I want to keep it up as much as I can!

Watch more movies: I’m a former Blockbuster clerk, I used to watch so many movies! As I’ve focused more and more on books, though, I am now lucky to get to more than a dozen per year. I love movies, and I really want to focus on seeing more of them this year!

Bookish

Read 75 books: I know, my actual goal is always 50. But I’ve got a lot of books to get through, and I’ve been able to get to at leas 75 for the past five years now, so here’s hoping I can get there this year too.

Read fewer white men: I have passionately loved books written by white men, but I have also read quite a lot of them over the years. There are so many books in the world written by people who aren’t white men, so I’m going to try to read more of them.

Buy fewer books: I own enough books. I own MORE than enough books. I don’t need more (but I really, really want them!).

Get more involved with bookish social media: I’ve made this resolution before, but I really do want to be more engaged with the book community on social media, but my actual job requires so much social media engagement that it’s difficult to find the time. I’m going to work on this more this year!

Talk about books with other people more: I’m in one book club (which has been meeting on Zoom these days, which is honestly not ideal), but I have plenty of friends not in that book club who like to read and I want to talk about books with them more often because talking about books makes me happy!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we’re setting some resolutions for the year ahead. There are always ways to learn and grow and be better in the months ahead, although I admit I always have a hard time setting book-type resolutions because I largely read in acquisitional order so I actually have a fairly good idea of what I’ll be reading for the next year already. But here are the ones I’ve made and will almost certainly break sooner rather than later.

1. Be more selective with the ARCs I reach out for. I like to look at Netgalley and Edelweiss regularly, but idly browsing and thinking “oooo that looks interesting” hasn’t worked out super well either from a getting-reviews-done standpoint or enjoying-what-I’m-reading one either. I want to be much more deliberate and request no more than one or two per month that I have good reason to believe will be worth my time.

2. Read more than last year. In 2016, I read 102 books. Last year, it was 85. And it wasn’t because I was picking up bigger ones! My page count was definitely down, too. I’m not entirely sure why that was, to be honest…I didn’t feel like I was reading much less. But I’d like to read more this year, even if it’s just one more book.

3. Be less embarrassed about promoting this blog on my personal social media. I have a blog-specific Facebook and Twitter, and I almost NEVER cross-post on my regular, personal accounts. I’m happy to try to get the rest of the internet to read my stuff, but I’m shy about what my friends might think…which seems silly, not that I think about it. No need to do it for EVERY post, but I should do it more.

4. Be more selective about the books I buy. Y’all, I am drowning in books. And while I don’t think that’s a bad way to go, I really need to slow down the number of books coming in. I’m drastically cutting back my hard copy purchasing for this year.

5. Really figure out my reliable sources for recommendations. For the past two years, I’ve run an average of my rating of all the books I’ve read in a year, and both times, it’s come out just north of a 6/10. Which isn’t bad, per se, but I’d like to drive that closer to 7. Which means I need to figure out who is pointing me to books I love, and who is pointing me to books that are just okay, and read more recommendations from the former than the latter.

6. Set aside at least 30 minutes each day for reading. I usually get here in fits and starts, but I’d like at least one half hour every day in which I just read straight through. Reading in bits sometimes diminishes my enjoyment because I don’t get as into it.

7. Do more re-reading via audio. I read so many new (to me) books that I don’t have a lot of time left for re-reading, and I love to revisit books. So I’ve started getting back into my old favorites on audio and it’s wonderful and I want to do it more.

8. Recommend books to my friends and family consistently. I read many books that are wonderful and that my loved ones would also enjoy, and I should more consistently point them towards those books. So I want to proactively reach out to each person I love that enjoys reading with an unsolicited book rec at least once this year!

9. Visit a bookstore in every city I visit. I don’t travel a TON, but I find that books make wonderful souvenirs so I want to find a book to leave with in every city I see.

10. Be more thoughtful in my reviews. I feel like I’ve let myself get a little lazy with my reviews, resting more on a plot summary than I’d really like. When I read a review, I like a little grounding in the plot, but then I really want to know what the reader thought about the book…what worked, what didn’t, whether it’s worth spending my time to read, etc. I’ve been making a conscious effort for the past few weeks, as I write, to focus more on a reaction and less on a plot summary, because even though reviews are my least-viewed posts, I want them to be something I’m proud of.