New Year = 2014 Reading Goals

Oh, hey, remember me? I use to blog here. November/December was non stop and the thought of blogging made me break out in a cold sweat, so I took a little break. It may have been quiet around these parts, but I can ensure you that I’ve been reading up a storm. The other day as I sat down to prepare to write this post, I figured out the number of titles I needed to review in order to fully catch up and get back on the book blogger ball is EIGHTEEN. I figure that I’m just going to try my best to review what I can and what doesn’t get done, doesn’t get done. I love blogging and I don’t want it to every feel like a chore, so I’m going to continue to have fun with it and if I don’t fully catch up, the world will surely not stop turning. Right? Right.

Now that all being said, Happy New Year! With every new year comes resolutions and since this is a book blog, I figured I should come up with a list of reading goals that I hope to achieve in 2014. I didn’t want to just list the usual reading goals, like, read 75 books or try to review every book, so I put on my thinking cap and came up with some very specific goals. Some are easy, some will be a little more difficult, but my hope is that in 365 days, I’ll have achieved each and every one of them.

Read 10 Short Stories – I’ll be perfectly honest and say that I’m not a huge fan of short stories. I like reading a 255 page book about the same characters. I feel like I get to know them, I identify with them and they become sort of like friends after about a hundred pages. I obviously don’t get the same effect with a short story, because by the time I start to understand the motives and actions of the character I’m reading about, the story is over and I feel like I’ve been jipped of a thorough and well developed story. Recently though, I’ve been trying to give them a real shot and have picked up some early copies of short story collections that I’ve loved,

a. One More Thing by B.J. Novak (review to come)
b. Circus by Claire Battershill

So my plan is to dip into 10 short stories throughout 2014, which I think is a very reasonable number of books. I’m pretty lucky because I have a lot of friends that adore this genre so I foresee lots of great recommendations coming my way to help me achieve this goal.

Finally Read the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling – I know some of you may be gawking at me right now, but I haven’t read this series. Back in the day, Steph from Bella’s Bookshelves convinced me to read the first book in the series, which I enjoyed, but I’ve yet to pick up another book in the series because it just didn’t intrigue me. Again, I can feel your gawking… but I’m not a reader who enjoys fantasy or magic realism. I don’t typically tend to read books that create a made up world, because I find it hard to visualize what I don’t’ know. Does that make sense? Okay, well it does when I say it in person. Needless to say, every one (and their dog) has read this series countless times so when I made a goal late 2013 to read the series. This worked out perfectly when I found out that Michele from Just A ‘Lil Lost was organizing a Harry Potter Reading Challenge. I’ve got 7 months to read the following:

• January 2014: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone
• February 2014: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
• March 2014: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
• April 2014: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
• May 2014: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• June 2014: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• July 2014: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I think once I actually immerse myself in this world, I’ll finally understand the buzz and can join in conversations with words like “Dobby”, “Hogwarts Express” and “Slytherin”.

Events/Review End of Month Videos – I’m certain that the title of Goal #3 is confusing, so I’m going to try my best to explain. A while ago, I become a tad obsessed with these great Document Your Life videos being made by Lauren Hannah. Her story, videos and a description of the project can be found here. In a nutshell, it’s a collection of videos from one month condensed and overlaid with a music track. So I thought that because I’m very fortunate to attend book launches and book readings often, that I would try to take little videos at each event and combine them with small little videos of books I’m reading to share at the end of each month. I thought this would be a great way for me to remember each event and the books I read each month so I can see them all at the end of 2014. I’ll be sharing them on the blog at the end of each month, but also on my YouTube account. 

What are your 2014 Reading Goals?