Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Goals For 2013

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted at The Broke and the Bookish.

Bookish goals. Pretty self-explanatory this week. So without further adieu...

10. Read More

Yeah, that pretty much explains itself. Too often I get distracted by all the other media available, or bogged down with other things... Some of it can't be helped, but I do hope to try and prioritize reading a little higher than it's been before. And I hope my new dedicated reading chair will help me in this endeavor.

9. Try Out Some Group Reads

Quite a few of my GoodReads groups have monthly book discussions. Unfortunately, as of yet, I've only participated in reading/discussing one. I'm hoping this year I can clear out my schedule a little and get my eyes reading some of these group reads. I love discussing books, I'm just horrible at working on a time crunch...

8. Complete Series/Trilogies

There are quite a few series out now which I've either neglected entirely, or read the first couple and neglected the finale. This year I plan on finally putting some of these series to rest.

7. Read My Own Books

Amazon is way, WAY too generous sometimes. There are SO many free books for Kindle, and more and more cycle through every day! I've already 'purchased' over 700 in the near-year I've owned my Kindle, and I just keep buying more! One of these days (maybe this year) I need to sit down with my Kindle and just get to reading them.

Plus, I own another few dozen physical books which I haven't touched. I'm hoping the one of my reading challenges will help me finally crack down on these too.

6. Author Requests

I know, I know, I'm a horrible horrible person. I still have four books sent to me for review, a couple I've won from GoodReads, AND another seven I need to review from NetGalley! I hope to get these off my shoulders by March at the latest (preferably done this month, if I can manage it!), and finally clear off my Review Policy hiatus message (which people seem to ignore anyway...)

5. Complete Reading Challenges

Even though reading challenges are more goals, not etched-in-stone promises, it'd still be nice to actually complete one for a change. Last year I took on a ton of challenges around March (some even later) and didn't complete even one. This year, no matter how tempting, I'm restricting myself to the five (six) challenges I've taken on. If I'm making a huge headway, I might allow myself to tackle another one... We'll see.

4. Attend More Author Events

Even if the YA2U tour doesn't hit up Portland, we still get a ton of various authors stopping in. I mean, next week we get Kevin Emerson, Martha Brockenbrough, Sean Beaudoin & Cat Patrick on the same night! Not to mention all those coming to LeakyCon (which, I can't, since they haven't been announced yet).

Problem is, I tend to hold myself to reading their book(s) before attending, and if I don't I totally stress myself out about not having anything to say or sign or getting spoilers...so I don't sleep, get sick, and don't go. I missed out on an entire convention last year because of that. Not this year. I will attend and I will enjoy myself.

3. No Breaks

No, I'm not a self-imposing slave-driver. At least, I try not to be. I'm talking about month-to-three-month-long breaks of absolutely nothing going up on the blog. It's horrible. Stop it. Just read/write something! So even if it's just TTT posts (hey!) I'll at least *try* to have something up every week, if not more. And the next goal should help greatly with that...

2. Prepare

I hope to have quite a few posts pre-written days if not weeks before they're posted. I already schedule posts for 5:30am (8:30am EST) usually for the following day, just so I can hit inboxes first thing in the morning. But I figure if I can get enough content generated beforehand, then I won't have to worry about slow times, like when I go to LeakyCon in June!

1. Stop Procrastinating

I'm a master procrastinator. Did it all through high school. Did it all through college. It's resulted in greatness...and it's resulted in massive stress, failure, breakdowns, and shutdowns. Even though all my Reading Challenges and such are my own goals and don't really mean anything, I'd still like to actually get them done this year.

And that means not leaving all of them until December when I get super busy with family, church stuff, and life in general. If I could have *all* of my challenges completed by November (before Thanksgiving even!), I'd be ecstatic!

But even on a smaller scale, I tend to leave my reading until last-thing. Book's due at the library next week? I'll read it tomorrow...this weekend...the day before it's due. An author's coming next month? I'll get to their book(s) next week...the week before...the night before their event/signing. STOP IT! Just pick up the book now!!! Hopefully I'll have less self-imposed stress and burn-outs, and more happiness, confidence, and blog content.

So, what goals do you have this year?
Are you trying to read more, less, differently?
Got any major plans for your blog?
Let me hear you howl!