"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

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Bookish Resolutions: August Progress

1. Read 200 books in 2015:
I'm up to 169 and the page counts on this month's books were a little higher. I'm still about 20,000 pages lower than my 2014 total, so I'll just have to make sure I read some longer books :)

2. Read 12 non-fiction books in 2015 (1 a month preferably):
I read Karl Barth's The Word of God and the Word of Man, which I found quite interesting. This was my first encounter with Barth, but I have a feeling it won't be my last.

3. Clear out my Currently Reading GoodReads shelf:
I DID IT! I finally got through the last pending book that was sitting here, reading The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross. Which I loved. I can't wait to read the next one in the series. I still have 2 non-fiction books on this shelf (in addition to the active currently reading ones), but they are both ones I'm just going to pick at as I feel like it, so they are actually currently reading as opposed to all of the books I had started and then stopped that were just sitting there forever. I feel really good about this.

4. Read at least 2 print books I already own each month (with an eye to weeding):
I did well on this goal this month. I read James Dashner's The Kill Order, the prequel to the Maze Runner trilogy, and while I enjoyed it, I won't reread it, so I am weeding that one. I also read The Girl in the Steel Corset as I noted above as well as a couple of ARCs that I picked up at BEA including Will Walton's Anything Could Happen and Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit both of which were good, but are on my potential weeding pile.

5. Read at least 2 eBooks I already own each month:
Knocked this one out of the park again. I finished the Grace S. Richmond collection, which gave me Red Pepper's Patients, The Second Violin, Strawberry Acres, and Under the Country Sky. I also read Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (I swear if I had had to read 1 more description of fish I would have found a real copy to throw out the window) and Lorena Angell's A Diamond in My Pocket. I also made it through Asylum by Madeleine Roux, Goddess Girls: Athena the Brain by Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams, and Awaken by Rachel M. Humphrey-D'aigle. Some of them I enjoyed, some of them I wanted to enjoy but just didn't do it for me. But I'm working my way through the A's and I think I'm pretty close to hitting the B's!

Forcing myself into a structure has certainly kept me on task with my reading and made me read things I might not have gotten to. I'm enjoying this journey!