Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish meme hosted by The Broke and Bookish. This week’s topic is resolutions for 2016.
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Serendipity. I need more unplanned, non-goal-oriented reading in my life. (I am fully aware of the irony of listing serendipity number one on a list of goals.) I resolve to go to the library without a list. I resolve to be lured by display tables in bookstores.
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Reading what my students recommend. I’m teaching two courses this semester (Children’s Lit and Adolescent Lit) where students recommend a lot of books to me. And usually I say oh yes, wonderful, thank you, I’ll definitely read that—and then I never do. I resolve to read some of those books recommended to me by my students.
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YA Book Club. This is going to be a thing this year. It really is. It fits with my teaching goals for Adolescent Literature, it fits with one of the course requirements for students (join or create a book club), AND it gives me ample opportunity to follow through on Resolution #2.
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Morning reading. I usually wake up earlier than everyone else, and that quiet morning time is simply delicious reading time. Sadly, however, I have a tendency to fritter away that precious time on social media. This year, I resolve to read for at least ten minutes every morning BEFORE checking email.
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One romance novel. My reading comfort zone is pretty big, but one genre that is most definitely outside that comfort zone is romance. Book Riot’s posts on romance had me intrigued, and so this year, I resolve to try one. I’m thinking Sarah Maclean, who gets very good reviews and even has her own romance column in the Washington Post.
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More poetry. I love poetry, so why do I never read it? Serendipity and numbers goals are really at odds, but I’d like to read twelve volumes of poetry this year.
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At least 100 books by diverse authors. 100 may sound like a lot, but most likely it will still be less than a quarter of my reading total for 2016, and that’s not good enough. But it’s a solid start. Akilah’s Diversity on the Shelf challenge should keep me focused.
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Books for grown-ups. I love children’s books, but I also love reading books that are just for me with no connection to work.
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More fantasy and speculative fiction. My two favorite novels of 2015 were Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown and Naomi Novak’s Uprooted. I think this means I need to read more fantasy.
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Some organization. My bookshelves are a mess. I can’t find what I’m looking for. Half the time I don’t even know what state the book is in! (I live in South Dakota; my office is in Nebraska.) If it weren’t for Amazon’s nifty “You bought this on X date” box that pops up when you click on a title you’ve purchased, I would have bought multiple copies of several books this year because I kept forgetting what I bought. Goodbye Stranger was lost somewhere in my house for several months. I still can’t find The Octopus Scientists. I don’t know what books my students have borrowed. I don’t know what books they’ve returned. So. I resolve to clean out and clean up the bookshelves and design some kind of organizing system.
the dirigible plum 
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