My Reading Goals for 2019

Slow down.

2018 was a frantic reading year.  142 posts vs my next highest year, 2012 with 89.

Short stories added to the post count because I believe they required individual consideration.  But I felt rushed all year long mostly because I would borrow armloads of books from the library which all had to be returned within a short period of time.

I did not have the chance to relax into stories and books as I was always thinking about the next title.


In 2019 I will try to remove the time limit and concentrate on the books that I own.  I have four bookshelves and a dozen boxes filled with work that is just waiting for me to pick up. I will blow the dust off these books and enjoy them without the urge to push through.

I mean to savour my reading.

Happy New Years Resolution

Normally I look at my reading accomplishments and just want to read more.

This year, my challenge to myself is to read books that I actually own.

Most of my reading has been through the Edmonton Public Library.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with that but I am, what is charitably called, a bibliophile.  I buy books and simply shelve them.  I love books and want them around me but there is always something I don't own that I am interested in reading and the library enables me to do so.

But I have so many books that I have been forced to box up most of them and store them in the basement, and yet I keep buying more.

So this year the only books I will enjoy from the library are audio books, which I listen to while delivering the mail.

My books deserve my attention and this is the year I will make a dent in them.

Not a bad goal, eh?

My idea of heaven.

Below are pictures from my basement of shelves and boxes packed with books I have not read.  My house should look like the image above but, since it doesn't, I have to start unpacking and read, read, read.

2016 Reading Goals

The theme for this year is

 - SPACE! -

This will apply to fiction and non-fiction.

On the non-fiction front I have dozens of books to satisfy my needs.  I have been a giant NASA geek for my whole life so I will dedicate this upcoming year to reading about the agency.  I also hope to read a bit of speculation on where space exploration, both government and commercial, will go in the near future.

I really loved my 100 short stories in 2015 challenge and I will try to read 150 shorts this year.  I will primarily accomplish this by following a secondary goal; to read each issue of Analog Magazine with a 2016 publication date.

I cannot control what is published in Analog but they tend to stick to Hard Science Fiction which will satisfy a reading focus I'd like to attempt on the fiction side; that is to read fiction without FTL travel.  The massive best seller, The Martian by Andy Weir, has re-awakened a market for "plausible" SF.  Let's face it, without a breakthrough in propulsion, humans will not see another star system in anything resembling the near future.  I want to concentrate on fiction within our own solar system.

Kim Stanley Robinson, Ben Bova, Kristine Kathryn Rusch,  Robert J Sawyer and Michael Flynn are authors that immediately come to mind that have written novels in our home solar system so my focus should not be difficult.

Just to keep things symmetrical I will set a goal of 15 books (fiction or non-fiction) and 150 short stories. 

A Reading Challenge

It's been nearly a month since my last post and I can happily say that nothing has happened.  For weeks now the only exciting thing that's been going on is the weekly grocery shop.  I can't tell you how nice it feels knowing that I'll not starve for the next seven days.

It may sound like whining but really it's not.  Nothing happening means that everything is working out like it should.  It might be a bit boring but that's what TV, movies and books are for, right?

To that end; this is where I'm deleting the 52 Movies In 52 Weeks campaign.   I achieved the goal a long time ago but Sue is proving a tough nut to crack.  She'd just rather NOT go to the movies, unless it's really compelling to her.  So instead of trying to bend other people to my will I've decided to set a new challenge for myself.

BOOKS!

I love to read, but I just don't have the time and when I do, it's usually in bed.  So now my brain associates reading with sleep and whenever I sit down with a good book I fall asleep!  This can't go on.  I buy far too many books and I never get to reading them.  So, my challenge to myself is this:

26 books (cover to cover) in 26 bi-weekly periods! 

Okay, it doesn't exactly roll of the tongue but I thought 12 books in 12 months to not be enough of a challenge and 52 far too many.  I get paid every two weeks and that should be a comfortable length of time to read a book

I don't know what I'm going to do about discarded/abandoned books and how that effects the two week deadline but I will list them with a reason as to why I stopped reading the book.

To link my reading with my paydays I'll say that I have to get my first book read by November the 26.

So that's it.  Nothing keeps happening so in order to make "something" happen I'm starting a reading challenge.

Cheers!