My Reading Goals: 2017 edition

It's 2017 and I want to share my reading goals with you!

My biggest goal of the year is to read my own books and reduce my TBR. Today I counted how many books I have unread on my shelves. There are 219 books on my TBR bookshelf. Yes. It's ridiculous. To help out, I'm only allowing myself to buy a max of 2 books a month. If I don't buy any books that month, it won't roll over. 2 a month and that's it. I'm also on a library ban. I can only go to the library if it's to get the next book in a series that I'm reading. For example, I started reading Fruits Basket last year, and I'm getting those books from the library. I'm also including book club books that I don't own.

My next goal is to finish reading series. I have quite a few unread series (I'm not sure of the exact number, but probably over 10). Some of them only have the last book for me to read, and because I have a serious procrastination problem, I just don't get to it! So I especially want to finish up series where I only have to read the last book.

Some series to complete:

• Harry Potter (my first read through ever!)
• The Remnant Chronicles by Mary E. Pearson (I just have to read the last one but I'm so scared I just want everyone to be okay)
• The Young Elites by Marie Lu (just have the last one)
• The Lone City by Amy Ewing (just the last one as well)
• Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya (I'm up to volume 9 of 20? However many it is...)
• Red Rising by Pierce Brown (I've just read book 1 but I own the whole trilogy)
• The Silo series by Hugh Howey (last one)
• The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey (I've only read the first one)
• The Heir Chronicles by Cinda Williams Chima (I've read 2 out of 5)
• The Lord of the Rings (yup. I've only read the first one)

I also have some series where I've read everything except the novella bind-ups that came after the other books were published. Specifically the ones for The Selection series by Kiera Cass and The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken. So technically I'm done the series but there are more things to read! 

My Goodreads goal for the year is 50 books. That actually isn't that important to me to accomplish. I know I will, because I read more than 1 book a week, but it's not the most important one to me this year.

And that's basically it, guys! What are some of your reading goals for the year?

Hello 2017: On setting goals.

Hi.

My dear friend Callie has started doing "old-fashioned" blog posts, where she hearkens back to the good ol' days of blogging (ie before the days where you had to have a Pinterest-worthy image and when no one even knew what SEO was) (I still am a little hazy on that, to be honest). I know that 100% that's why I haven't been blogging over the last few years. I just don't care to have the buzziest, most beautiful blog with inspiring pictures and content that will change your life. I mean, that would be really cool, I guess, but that's not my aim. I just want this to be a space where I share thoughts about life. So, here we go. Back to old-fashioned blogging.

One of my goals for 2017 was to blog every week at least once, and we're on week 3 now with the first post. Oh well! I'm not going to beat myself up about it.

I like to set goals for myself at the beginning of every year. There's just something about that fresh start that I love. So I set myself goals, but at the same time, I'm not super hung up on them. I just think about things that I would like the year to hold, and then see what I can do to get there. 

Some of my goals for the year are:

- To buy a maximum of 24 books all year. Unless you are familiar with my YouTube channel, this is going to seem kind of silly. Like, really, how many books do you buy, Felicia? Well since I discovered the Booktube community over 2 years ago, my book buying has become ridiculous. I have over 200 unread books on my shelves. Now, here's a disclaimer - the majority of these books are not bought at full price. I buy mostly from thrift stores and Book Outlet. So it's about a quarter of what it would be if I was buying everything at full price. That being said, it's not actually that fun to have that many books that you haven't read on your shelves. The problem is that I still want to read all of these books, but the rate of books bought has long surpassed the rate of books read. I want to level the playing field again so that I actually have a chance of reading books within a couple months of buying them. I'm not telling myself no books all year, because that's just cruel and why would I do that to myself?? But buying only 2 books a month when I read at least 5 will at least have the total number of unread books still going down. Pray for me, guys.

- To organize my house using the KonMari method. Yes, I've read The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Yes, I thought it was really helpful. No, I'm not saying "thank you" to my old socks for their service to my feet. But our house is small and things need to be organized better for the storage space we have. What I love is how simple her method is - organize by category, not by room. That makes so much sense to me. We have similar things in different places in our house, and I would like to get things in order. (If you're curious about the book, you can find plenty of articles and blog posts that contain all of the information you would need from the book without having to read it)

- To get caught up on my backlog of letters. For 3 years I have not really been into writing letters, so I have quite the pile of letters (probably 30+) that need to be responded to. But honestly, I'm not going to respond to every one of those letters. I'm going to respond to people that I had a good correspondence with, obviously, but I know there are a few letters from people that were first letters, or people that I didn't really enjoy writing to. I'm probably not going to respond to them, because why would I after all this time? I'm sure at this point they're not expecting me to reply. I know I had too many correspondences going on at the time, and I'd like to keep it at more of a manageable number. Quality over quantity.

As you can see, these goals are pretty flexible, and ongoing. The overall goal with them is to shift my mindset and my priorities behind them. I want buying books to be a treat again, not a routine. I want to be mindful of my possessions and what is actually in my house. I want to cultivate relationships and conversations, not collect pen pals like they're Pokémon.

So there it is. Some of my goals for the year. And my first blog post in months! Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with this one and you'll be seeing more from me this year.