Reading and blogging resolutions 2016

Happy New Year! As 2015 drew to a close, my thoughts turned to the year ahead and how I’d like my reading to go in 2016 so I drew up some bookish resolutions. 

One of my personal resolutions this year is to be kinder to myself. I have a tendency (well, honestly, more than just a tendency) to be hard on myself; I put a lot of pressure on myself to be better, to do better, to do more. So with this in mind, I’ve been thinking about how I should approach my reading resolutions for 2016. Having resolutions in place helps structure my reading but I don’t want to put any unnecessary pressure on myself. Reading should be fun, after all!  So, I’ve decided to simply set myself a few goals that will push me in the direction I’d like to go in, but these are going to be free of pressure!

Read and blog well.

Reading well has been my resolution for the past two years and it still remains. I want to make sure I appreciate each word and truly think about the book. This year I want to extend this more into my blogging, too. I really want to push myself with my reading in terms of how I think about what I’ve read and how I articulate my thoughts. When I first started blogging, I wanted to carry on a practice that I was introduced to in my final year at university – the reading journal. Each week for one of my classes we had to post a journal entry online before our seminar on that week’s book for the class to read. It could be about anything that struck us about that book. Reading everyone else’s entries was fascinating and led to great discussions, but from my point of view, it was very intellectually stimulating to take an idea and run with it.

I talked myself out of moving this idea over to blogging when I first started, but recently the idea of reading journal style posts is calling to me. For me, my blog has always been somewhere I record what I read and look back on. So if a book has provoked a line of thought, it makes sense to explore that here, too. I’m hoping that if a topic/idea particularly strikes me when I’m reading a book, it can be a starting point for a post and hopefully some discussion in the comments.

Read one non-fiction book a month.

This is a resolution I’m carrying over from 2015 because it worked well for me.
I’d particularly like to read more essays, and continue discovering nature and
travel writing.

Keep inspired by reading.

I had some time off work recently due to ill health and, unable to read much, I watched a lot of Youtube book videos: reviews, hauls, gift guides, and general bookish chat. It was something I used to do a lot but recently I’ve been so busy I haven’t really sat down and watched any. But hearing people talk so passionately about books definitely inspired me. I’m going to start listening to book-related podcasts on my drive to work in the mornings as I’m hoping that regularly listening to conversations about reading and books will keep me inspired. Does anyone have any recommendations? And, of course, I’ll continue to read blogs as they’re a constant source of inspiration.

Do you have any resolutions for 2016, reading or otherwise?

Advertisement