"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'" ~ C. S. Lewis

Monday, June 1, 2015

Bookish Resolutions: May Progress

This is really helping me focus my reading! So here's how I've done this month.

1. Read 200 books in 2015:
Well, number-wise I'm up to 120, which is crazy, but page-wise I'm less than half way to what I read last year. I've read quite a few picture books and early reader graphic novels, which I count as books, but which don't bump the page number that much. So, while the book count is good, I'm hoping to bump the page count a bit in the next month.

2. Read 12 non-fiction books in 2015 (1 a month preferably):
WOW! I read 5 non-fiction books this month (and 1 of those I enjoyed, but am weeding from my collection to make room, so double win!). I read Sun Tzu's The Art of War, G. Neri's graphic novel biography Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty, Max Lucado's 3:16 The Numbers of Hope, If I May a collection of essays by A.A. Milne, and The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived by Allan Lazar, Jeremy Salter, and Dan Karlan.

3. Clear out my Currently Reading GoodReads shelf:
I finished Wendy Delsol's The McCloud Home for Wayward Girls bringing it down to 2 1/2 books left lingering (that I'm not actively reading). So nice to start seeing this actually represent what I'm actually currently reading. (And that 1/2 is a book I was reading for research for a novel that I've temporarily shelved, so I am going to read it sometime, but if it's not read this year, I'll be okay with that.)

4. Read at least 2 print books I already own each month (with an eye to weeding):
I started reading through alphabetically by title, so I've actually made progress on this one! I read Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived (mentioned above in #2), The McCloud Home for Wayward Girls (mentioned in #3), Mortal Heart by Robin LaFevers, 3:16 (one of my non-fiction reads), and The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale. Out of those 6, I weeded 3. It's nice to finally see a win in this resolution! I may be taking a break from the alphabetically to work through the books I just picked up at BEA, though, so I can review close to release dates, rather than sitting on them for five years as has happened in the past. We'll see what happens.

5. Read at least 2 eBooks I already own each month (I upped this from 1 to 2, because I've been blowing it out of the water each month):
Another alphabetical win! I read a total of 9, though 2 of those were superhero weeklies and a couple were more novellas. But still! Books read that I own. I read After the End by Amy Plum, Apocalypse Weird: The Red King by Nick Cole, Aquaman 1: The Trench by Geoff Johns, The Arena Wars and War of Hearts by Samantha Hoffman, 11 Birthdays by Wendy Mass, Arrow #1 by Marc Guggenheim, A Breath of Eyre by Eve Marie Mont, and The Art of War (one of my non-fiction titles).

How about you? What have you read that you've loved? Have you made any bookish resolutions? How's it going?