2019 Bookish Resolutions

I’ve never been big on making New Year’s resolutions in the traditional sense; it always seems like a recipe for failure. Instead, I’ve tried to focus on more mindful changes about how I want to live my life, and while there’s no guaranteed measure of success, I like using the changing of the year as a chance to recenter myself and find a focus for the year ahead.

That said, I HAVE started making resolutions each year when it comes to books and reading, and I thought it would be fun to share my 2019 Bookish Resolutions today.

1. Accept/Request Fewer Review Books

This was one of my goals last year, actually, and I’m pretty pleased with how I did. I read more books for myself than I have in a long, long time, and it felt super rewarding and relaxing. So much so that I’m doubling down this year. I want to continue working on being pickier and firmer when it comes to saying “no” to review requests, and being more particular when it comes to requesting ARCs.

I’ve got a whole lot of unread books on my shelves I want to get through, not to mention all the new books I’ll no doubt be picking up throughout the next twelve months.

2. Read More For Pleasure

This is basically the second half of my first goal. 2018 was the year I discovered a love of reading romance books, and I want to continue exploring that genre in 2019. Last year was also the year I barely read any middle grade books, and while I love providing an outlet for promoting MG books here on the blog, I must accept that these just aren’t the books I’m in the mood to read right now — and that’s okay.

3. Make a Good Dent in TBR Books

Are you sensing a theme? Yep. As much as I read for myself last year, I still bought a ton of books and left plenty of unread books on my shelves. I want to whittle down my TBR shelves this year — and while I do try to regularly purge books from my collection at least once or twice a year, I also want to finally read some of the books I’ve had on my TBR for far too long.

4. Decide How to Proceed with Blogging

Look, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I’ve struggled with blogging over the last year or so. The book blogging world has changed in a big way since I first started nearly ten (10!!!!) years ago, and I probably contemplated quitting the book blog at least once a month last year.

Now, the blog has never been a source of income for me, but I do pay about $200 per year out of pocket for hosting services (a choice I made a few years ago, when I switched from the free WordPress platform) — and while I don’t really want to see this whole thing vanish, I’m not sure if it’s worth continuing. And I know I’ve certainly gotten burned out on writing reviews, which is a big part of running a book blog. So can I continue blogging without posting reviews? What would that even look like?

Or do I focus my energy on something else, like bookstagram — which I enjoy, but also has its own set of challenges and pitfalls.

Maybe I just need to find a more harmonious way to blend what I love about bookstagram with the blog.

All this is to say, I need to figure out what my future in book blogging is going to look like and make an action plan … before my blog hosting renewal comes up in 12 months.

5. Re-Read Some Old Favorites

I haven’t really done much re-reading since I started book blogging almost ten years ago, because I’ve always been so busy cramming in new and upcoming releases. But last year, I took the time to re-read a few old favorites (namely, Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke & Bone series, and the first three books in the Throne of Glass series, before binge-reading to catch-up prior to the Kingdom of Ash release) — and let me tell you, it was SO delightful to revisit these books I had previously loved. There are lots of books on my “want to re-read” list, and I doubt I’ll get to all of them this year, but maybe a few of them, at least? Lately, I’m mostly itching to dive back into Holly Black’s Curse Workers trilogy, or maybe Cassandra Clare’s The Infernal Devices trilogy (my favorite of all the Shadowhunter books). But we’ll see what I end up actually revisiting! Either way, I WANT to re-read something this year.

What I’m NOT Resolving To Do

Two things I WON’T be doing this year:

1. Setting a Goodreads reading goal

I’ve never given myself a numeric reading goal — that is, a set number of books I want to read in a given year. The number doesn’t matter to me, so much as the quality of the books and how much I enjoyed them. I don’t plan to change that this year, or ever.

2. Book Buying Bans

Look, I’ve got a budget — we all have a budget. But my budget includes buying books, and even though I have a TON of unread books, well … I’m not going to stop buying more books. I don’t have that kind of willpower. While I CAN control myself from going too nuts at any given time, I already have a list of upcoming releases I want to pre-order or buy once they’ve been released this year.

For the Comments: What about you? What are your bookish goals for 2019?