Bookish Resolutions

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Its a new year and you know what that means - resolutions!  I've already made a few personal ones ( you the know the kind I mean - eat healthy, try to be patient, practice Spanish speaking skills, etc.), but I haven't made any bookish ones, until now.  I was visiting the blog Savidge Reads and reading his latest post, 'Blogging & Blogging Resolutions 2013' and something just clicked.  Simon was describing how he felt during the holidays - fed up with books and blogging, and I realized that I had been feeling the same way.  I wasn't reading as much as I used to and I wasn't blogging about the books I had purchased, but rather the books I had agreed to review.  I wasn't feeling bookish at all. And I didn't like feeling that way - it was making me rather irritable.  So, like Simon, I've decided to make some bookish resolutions - ones that will make reading and blogging fun again.  And here they are:

• Read books that catch my fancy - meaning, whatever strikes my mood. It could be Vonnegut (which I'm reading now) or Kinsella or even King.  Anything goes.
• Only accept books to review that I truly want to read.  I sort of let myself get caught up in all the free books made available to me, that I didn't even really stop to think about what I was agreeing to review (this didn't happen all of the time, but it did happen).  And now as a result of my greedy behavior, I have a huge TBR pile of review books waiting to be read and reviewed; thereby leaving me with little to no time for my own books. Hence, the goal to make wiser choices.  Don't get me wrong, there was some new to me authors that I was happy to find via review books (Jetta Carlton - Clair de Lune; Richard Lloyd Parry - People Who Eat Darkness; Chris Pavone - The Expats; and Michael Schofield - January First) and I am thankful to the publishers for providing me with copies of those great reads.  However, I don't want review books to dictate what I read.  
• Read more books.  Seriously! I feel like I barely read anything last year.
• Enjoy blogging again.  Have fun writing reviews and don't stress over what to write.  I swear, I get all stressed out when I have to write a review for a book I agreed to review and it drives me bonkers.  It makes writing reviews rather tiresome.  From now on, I plan on just writing what comes to mind regarding the book (like I used to do in the very beginning of my blogging days) and just go from there.  If I love a book, then I will expound on the reasons why I was captivated by it.  If I don't like a book, then I don't like it - the end.  No more worrying about whether or not I'm the only one who DNFed the book - if so, big deal!  We can't all love the same books, right - or, what would we have to discuss?
• Blog when I want to.  Although that really isn't a resolution, since I do that already. 
• Respond to comments.  I've gotten rather lazy about responding, so I'm going to try to work on that this year.  Also, I plan on leaving more comments on the blogs I follow.  I've gotten into the bad habit of only leaving comments on specific blogs and just lurking on others. I'm going to try and break that habit and just start commenting. No more lurking!

And there you have it - my 2013 bookish resolutions.  What do you think?  Its not such a bad list, right?  At the end of the day, I just want to read more books and enjoy blogging - its as simple as that.  I'm confident I can stick to these bookish resolutions - in fact, I'm already on my fifth book of the year and its only January 8th.   Not too shabby, eh?  Now I've just got to write the reviews.  Wish me luck!