Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Resolutions for 2021

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted at Jana's blog That Artsy Reader Girl

We are starting week two of 2021 and after 2020, I am sure like many of you I know I am relieved to be moving onto a new year. I am not naïve enough to know that when the clock magically struck midnight on 1-1-2021, our world would be in a better spot. If anything, I think we can all agree (at least in the United States), that does not seem to be the case. But I have hope that it will slowly improve--it will not go as fast as I would like I am sure, because I am impatient especially during the colder months of the year. 

This week we are discussing our resolutions/hopes for 2021--bookish or not. I always start with my GoodReads Reading Goal at 100 books. It is usually always attainable for me, as long as I remember to update it.  For the rest I listed below, I have some specific ones, those I guess are what I would refer to as my resolutions. Then, I have some goals that I striving to meet--these are ambitions and may or may not happen, but they are more like guideposts. 

-Resolutions-

Resolution #1: Get a handle on my bookcases

One of my main goals this year reading wise is to get my bookcases under control. I am to a point that I want to start slimming down what I own. I wrote a blog post about this recently: Getting My Bookcases Under Control: A 3 Step Process (Unshelf Project, 21 in 2021, and 21 Series in 2021). Part of this includes my plan to be sure to focus on books I have had for over three years and also series that I need to make decisions on: do I continue reading them or am I done, or am I even interested in reading them? I will have one more post about this resolution about my participating in the Unshelf Project Reading Challenge.

Resolution #2: Diversify my reading

Diversify my reading is such an important goal--I know so many of us are focusing on this. I started keeping a more detailed reading spreadsheet last year, after having kept loose statistics the previous years. I want to make sure I am reading more broadly, including BIPOC and countries of origins and settings. 

Resolution #3: Read everyday

I managed this last year so I am making it a priority again this year. I have it as a goal to make sure I read or listen to a book at least every day. I shoot for at least 15 minutes and usually what I find, is once I hit 15 minutes I find that it is easy to stretch it beyond the 15 minutes to at least 30 minutes. 

-Goals-

Goals #1: Read 12 Classics

I want to read (or listen) to 12 classics--this can be modern classics or they can be traditional classics.

Goal #2: Listen to 36 Audiobooks

Obviously this averages out to 3 a month, seems obtainable to me but unless I am on Odyssey, there are times when this does not happen. This year I want to focus on being consistent with my audiobooks as well.

Goal #3: Read 24 Nonfiction Titles

I love nonfiction when I read it and I want to prioritize reading nonfiction more this year.

After the resolutions and goals above, I have these additional ones that I am working on meeting as well this year. Some of these are habits, that are easily met each year (spreadsheets and bullet journal for instance) and others take work--reading challenges and blogging.

-Additional Goals-

Additional Goal: Reading Challenges:

After my resolutions and goals, I am also working on participating in several reading challenges: GoodReads' group Around the Year, Popsugar Reading Challenge, BookRiot's Read Harder Challenge, Modern Mrs. Darcy, and as previously mentioned Unshelf Project. I would like to loosely try to meet most of these prompts, as many as I can. I have set the following as the goals for them as follows:

• Around the Year: 40
• Popsugar: 40
• BookRiot's Read Harder: 30
• Modern Mrs. Darcy: 24
• Unshelf Project: 24

I am counting overlaps--any book that can do double duty is just fine with me. :)

Additional Goal: Reading Journals and Spreadsheets

After the reading challenges, the only other reading related things I have to say I would like to accomplish this year is to keep up with my reading journals: both my bullet journal that I track all of reading challenges, stats, etc. in each month and yearly type spreads. I also am keeping a written journal for my notes. There is something soothing about writing out notes--even though I have messy handwriting. 

Along with my journals, I also keep a thorough Reading Spreadsheet--two actually. One is my Reading Log and Stats sheet. By logging in all my book information, it creates statistics and charts from the data. It is great for me to be able to quickly check to see if I am meeting my other resolutions and goals listed  above.

The second spreadsheet is one where I compile the books that I know fit my Reading Challenge prompts. I take the first five books I know hat fit the prompts, record them under each prompt. I transfer the titles into a spreadsheet, then sort them by title. This allows me to see which books are duplicated across the challenges, essentially letting me see quickly which books will serve as a double (or triple) duty in some cases. 

Additional Goal: Blogging

Lastly, the final thing I want to keep working on this year is continuing to blog. I have to make a conscious effort to remember to do it because I got out of practice and even with starting again last year, I have ebbs and flows with it. I want to work on being more consistent. I want to try to post full length reviews, I want to post more collective mini reviews, and also bibliography style posts. I do not mind doing tags as well every so often. I am not going to participate in any blog hops or such. I would like to also like to work on including school librarian content.

Wow this turned out to be a much longer post than I intended. Thank you for hanging in there and reading or skimming it if you did. If you answered this post, please do leave me your link below so I can pop over and see what you listed as your resolutions and goals for 2021. I hope you have an amazing reading year! Happy New Year!