2017 Reading Promises

I stopped making new year resolutions for myself a couple years ago.  I found the process arbitrary and counter productive:  if you set your goals too high and you don’t achieve them, it leaves you disappointed.  Why wait until January 1^st—or the first of any month—to work on bettering yourself instead of trying to work on it all year round?

With that said, I’m going to make promises to myself to treat myself the way I want to be treated.  My personal promises include addressing some ongoing problems that I have neglected. The book-related promises I’m making to myself are as follows:

-          Read more books written before I was born.  I was born in 1988, and I think I only got around to 3-5 books last year that were written before the 1990s.  This isn’t necessarily a problem (there are a lot of good modern books), but it’s important to keep myself entertained with older books as well as contemporary works.

-          Read fewer, longer books.  Again, it’s not a problem that I averaged 230-250 pages with the 100 books I read in 2016.  However, I will admit that when I see a book that is 600-700 pages long, my initial reaction is to be intimidated by its size.  In 2017, I’d like to be able to read a book this long without thinking twice.  There are a couple big books I’m planning to read.

-          Set time for reading.  This isn’t something I’ve had a problem with in the past, although I do get distracted with social media and my phone in general at times, which could lead to absentmindedly surfing the web in lieu of doing something more productive.  When I started my office job back in 2014, I was amazed that I had an hour lunch (my previous jobs only allowed 30 minutes), and I wondered how I’d fill an hour each day.  I quickly decided that reading was the answer, so from 12-1 (with small breaks to eat) I’m either in the lobby of the office building, or outside on a bench, reading a book.  Having a set time to read is good for me, and I’d like to keep that up during the weekends when I’m not working.

-          Read more diverse books.  Look, there’s nothing wrong with YA contemporary books—and in the past two years, I’ve latched on to that genre.  I’d like to keep on with that, but I’d like to read more adult-themed books, graphic novels, plays, biographies, poetry, and other genres of books written by a variety of authors. 

-          Limit myself to two audiobooks a month.  Again, this isn’t a big problem for me.  I’d much rather physically read a book than listen to it (I’d guess that over half of the 100 books I read in 2016 were physical reads).  Still, it’s important for me to limit myself on audiobooks so that I can enjoy the process of reading physical books.

Here’s hoping 2017 is productive!