Happy New Year

Obviously I totally abandoned reviewing in 2010 (it was a weird year), but I didn’t stop reading. I actually read 274 books, which is a good number for me. I prefer round numbers though, so my goal for 2011 is 275. To encourage myself I’m doing several challenges this year.

The TBR challenge, hosted this year by Wendy the Super Librarian. There’s a theme for each month and while going off theme is definitely allowed under the challenge rules I’m going to try to stick to them.


Literary Escapism’s New Author challenge. My goal is to read 50 new fiction authors this year.


I’m doing two of the challenges hosted by J Kaye at Home Girl’s Book Blog:

100+ challenge. For me the issue is not reading 100+ books. I read enough that even in a slow year I read more than 100 books. My issue is reviews (see: the 1 lonely review I posted in 2010), so I’m using this challenge to push myself to write 100 reviews this year. Most of them will be for books I actually read this year, but I'll also review a few books I read last year. For books read in 2010 I'll only post reviews if I particularly liked the book, if it was by a new-to-me author, or if it was part of an ongoing series.

Support Your Local Library challenge. I love public libraries and always have. These days I’m appreciating them even more than usual though. Things being what they are, my book budget is tiny and I rely on the library for most of my reading. I signed up for the 100+ library book challenge not to push myself to borrow more books, but as a way to advertise and support the wonderful work libraries do. Seriously, libraries yah!


Last but not least I’m participating in the 50 State Challenge that Sheila is hosting at Book Journey. I expect this one to be the trickiest for me. Some states will be easy peasy, others not so much. I also have some doubts about my ability to get my map to work because sometimes I’m a total computer dork. I think it will be fun to try though, so I’m really looking forward to this one.



I’m also setting a couple of additional goals for myself. First, I want to read 50 nonfiction books this year. My nonfiction reading was very light in 2010 (grad school burn out) and I want to get back to it. My second personal goal is to read or reread more literary fiction. I’ve been reading almost nothing but genre the last few years (also at least partially grad school related). I love genre and I don’t feel like it’s a waste of my time or that it’s all mindless or any of the other criticisms that some people level against it. However, I would like to be reading more lit, so I’m giving myself a goal of reading or rereading at least 25 books that are “serious” fiction. I probably won’t do detailed reviews for most of them, but I’ll note them on the blog for tracking purposes.