Be it Hereby Resolved

The Broke and the Bookish' theme for Top Ten Tuesdays this week concerns New Years resolutions, naturally. I'm not usually one for resolutions, or even paying attention to the New Year, but it's as good a time as any to set some goals for the new few months.

1. Give honor where it's due


 


I don't review every book I read -- some don't ignite my interest enough to merit it,  some are simply too short or don't distinguish themselves -- but a rare few are books I like so much that I shy away from reviewing.  They were so provoking I feel as though I'll miss something or not do justice.That number is increasing, though, so I think a good project for me this year would be re-read a few of these and post reviews.  Of the above titles, two fall into the "awe" category, three I read in a sequences with too many similar books and was tired of thinking about the subject, and one (Happy City) was an accident.

2.  Have more fun

I read a lot of nonfiction, following a rapacious interest in..err...everything, but a lot of times I read series of books that leave me gloomy and despaired.  I've come to realize that this is my version of sitting in front of the television, being caught up in everything that's going wrong in the world.  Just recently I started creating a list on urban poverty to read later in the year,  with titles like: Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class, and stopped myself. This sort of thing has to be considered like salt, a little at a time.  So far, in January, I've read only titles about things that make me happy -- science, horses, garbage collection, and now, trucks.  (I'm a SimCity 3000 nerd. Yes, books about garbage collection and power lines make me happy.)

3. Take the Classics Club challenge seriously

I joined the Classics Club last year but haven't pursued any titles on it yet. That will change this year.

4. Wander away from the track

Vast portions of the world are still terra incognita for me: South America has never been touched outside of reading The Motorcycle Diaries, and I haven't read about subsaharan Africa for six years.

5. Give those Amazon delivery teams a rest
My stack of purchased-and-unread books is starting to climb again. I'm not at the point of having to institute another bar on buying books a la the To Be Read Takedown Challenge, but I definitely need to start reading my own stock faster instead of ogling Amazon's. (Fun fact: they have three books on garbage I haven't read.)

What sort of books do I have on hand at the moment? How Greek Mythology Can Save Your Life, Small is Still Beautiful, and The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left to start.  There are a lot more on my Kindle, because they're cheap and invisible.


I think five will do to start, yes?