2019 Bookish Resolutions

My HUGE announcement this year is that I AM GOING TO  STOKER CON 2019. My family came together and surprised me with a ticket to the conference as a Christmas/birthday present. For those of you who do not know what Stoker Con is it is a horror novel convention for readers and writers.  They are going to be featuring some big names in the horror community. So…one of my big goals is to collect and read books by people who will be at the conference.

I haven’t really ever landed on reading in just one genre before but I am also excited that this will give me more of a focus for my reading this year.  This past weekend after going to Dreamhaven Books and 6th Chamber Books I came home with a stack of used horror books that I was excited about.  I realized that I did not have a section of my bookshelf that was dedicated to non Stephen King horror novels and decided that I needed to re-organize some shelves and get rid of some books that I no longer wanted  so that I would have more room for horror novels. (I already have a part of my bookshelf that is a shrine to Stephen King novels but as I am reading more horror writers they need more of a home on my bookshelf) The section of my bookshelf with books that I was really excited to read that I could just grab from the side of the couch that I usually sit on used to be full of romance novels…and has now been replaced with horror novels. It felt good to accomplish this task. I feel like as a reader there is something about having a bookshelf that reflects where I am truly at in my reading life that makes me feel better organized with my reading life, which is a very active part of my life.

I debated whether or not I should participate in an official reading challenge this year or not. I was tempted to just ditch reading challenges and do my own thing. But the 2018 Book Riot Read Harder Challenge actually gave me a map for some of the bookish goals that I already had for myself.  There are so many different bookish challenges out there. The key is finding one that not only aligns with the goals that I have set for myself but also one that excites me.  I browsed the different book challenges I could participate in this year. I decided that I would participate in the  Modern Mrs Darcy challenge with a plan to read horror novels for most of the tasks.

I know that a lot of people use Goodreads to share their reviews while I realize that I could be better at the social media aspect of Goodreads, I use it as a tracking device for what I have or haven’t read. I have consciously finished more books ever since I started using Goodreads because as someone who often reads more than one book at once it reminds me what I have already started and motivates me to finish all of the books that I am reading. I often have mixed feelings about setting a goal for the amount of books that I read for Goodreads because the amount of books I read has never been my issue. But I decided that setting a goal number is still a good thing to do because it is like my reading Fitbit. (I love tracking fitness goals on my Fitbit)  In choosing a number, I decided on 125 books this year. This past year I read 304 books…the reason why I have a smaller number (for me) this year is because a chunk of last year I was unemployed and trying to work through a lot of the shorter books that had accumulated on my shelf over the years.  I resolved that I had to read and/or get rid of a lot of books in order to feel less bookishly overwhelmed. This year I am working again and will need to balance my reading life with more things. I need to work in order to have the money to buy some of the newer books that I want to read and to continue to collect the books that I want to read.

Before my excitement with this unexpected awesome gift of being able to go to Stoker Con, I had a few ideas for some more interactive bookish projects I wanted to pursue. I am not planning on abandoning these ideas but since I have some other very clear goals these will be secondary projects that I will pursue when time permits. Stay tuned to see what I do accomplish! Also stay tuned to read reviews and reactions to things that I am already reading!