Top Ten Bookish Resolutions

Top Ten Tuesday is a feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. You can find upcoming topics at their Top Ten Tuesday page.

This week's TTT is a freebie, so I decided to do the Bookish Resolutions topic from last year. I figured it was still early enough in the year to make some goals :)

1. Read 65 books this year: I read 90(!) books last year, but that was including books I'd read for classes, including a month of summer classes. I graduate in May (Yay!) so that means that I'll have about five months less of assigned reading that I can count. I think sixty-five will still be a pretty challenging goal since I used to only read about 40-50 books a year before I started college.

2. Write more reviews: I'm such a slacker when it comes to reviews. I've only written one review in the past couple months. Not good. I resolve to write a review within the week of finishing a book that I would like to share on my blog. I also resolve to write reviews for the 10 or so books that I read in the past couple of months by the end of February.

3. Posts: I have two goals in regard to my posts on this blog. 1) Post more! I haven't been as committed to posting as I hoped I'd be when I started this blog, and I really want to change that. My last semester is going to be super busy so I might not be able to make much progress with this goal right away, but after April I will have no more excuses. 2) Branch out more. I tend to stick with either memes or reviews, but I would like to write some discussion posts, make vlogs, share bookish sites and other things, and maybe even put up a random personal post every once and a while (assuming that anything interesting enough actually happens to me to write about).

4. Create labels for my posts: I put off doing this in the beginning, thinking it wasn't necessary then since my blog was small enough to navigate without those handy labels. But now as more posts are going up, my blog is becoming less searchable and I want to change that.

5. Visit and comment on more blogs: I love checking out other blogs and interacting with bloggers, which I haven't been doing enough of lately.

6. Read more classics: I've been reading mostly young adult books ever since my sophomore year of college. They're such fast reads that it's easier to find time for pleasure reading than it would be if I tried reading anything heavier, but now that I'm graduating I'm excited to get back to reading more literary fiction and classics (of my choice--aka not assigned reading) that I really loved in high school. This doesn't mean I'm done with young adult by any means, but I don't want it to be my major genre this year like it was for the last two.

7. Read more thrillers/mysteries: When I checked out NPR's Top 100 Killer Thrillers list, I was disappointed to see that I had only read five books off the list. However, about half of that list is on my to-be-read shelf. I've been making very little *cough* zero *cough* progress with this list since I came across it over a year ago, and it is well past time that I started reading more of this genre.

8. Start reading outside: I've tried reading outside a couple times, but I never really enjoyed it as much as I thought I would, and I think that's because I'm not really used to it. As soon as the weather gets warmer, I'm going to really give it a shot. If I can learn to love outdoor reading, that would open up a million more possible reading spots for me, and I love my variety.

9. Get an eReader: I really want a Nook Simple Touch for my birthday, which is coming up in April. I keep seeing some really amazing ebooks for only 99 cents and there are a lot of FREE ebooks (such as most classics which I'm excited for, but there are also some interesting paranormal and romance ebooks for free). I'm certain that I'm going to be on a very strict budget for most, if not all, of this year-who knows if I'll ever get a job in this economy?-so the eReader will be great to have for that time. Not to mention how handy it'll be on my two week trip to Europe in June. Instead of having to lug around a dozen books, I can just carry around my ultra-light eReader with dozens of books at my disposal. Heck yes!!

10. Read more books that I own: I resolve to read only books that I own during the summer (with the exception being those cheap ebooks, of course), and if my will power is strong enough, continue reading only books that I own as late into the year as I can manage. I own 126 books that I have yet to read, so my personal library is definitely big enough to see me through to the end of 2012 and well into 2013 (though I know I won't go that long without buying more books or visiting the library).