2017 Reading and Blogging Goals

Happy New Year, everyone! It’s that time of year when most of us are reflecting on our lives and making resolutions for what we hope to do differently in the upcoming year.  In addition to a few personal resolutions I’ve made (working on my organizational skills, eating healthier, and exercising more), I’ve also come up with the following list of reading/blogging goals that I hope to accomplish in 2017.

READ AT LEAST 60 BOOKS IN 2017.  

I’ll be tracking this goal through my Goodreads challenge.  I used to only manage to read about 40 books per year before I started blogging, but starting my blog this past year actually pushed me to read nearly 70 books in 2016. I’m hoping therefore that 60 will be a manageable number as I continue my blogging adventures in 2017.

WRITE AT LEAST 52 BOOK REVIEWS FOR MY BLOG.  

If my first goal goes as planned, this goal should be manageable since I’m basically aiming for an average of one review per week.

PUT A DENT IN MY ENORMOUS TBR PILE.   

In order to facilitate this goal, I’ll be taking part in the Beat The Backlist challenge, which is hosted by NovelKnight.  Here’s the list of books I hope to knock off my TBR by participating in this challenge.

  1.  A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin
  2. A Gathering of Shadows by V.E. Schwab
  3. The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
  4. Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
  5. Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
  6. An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
  7. We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
  8. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
  9. Landline by Rainbow Rowell
  10. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
  11. A Shadow Bright and Burning by Jessica Cluess
  12. Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven
  13. We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  14. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
  15. Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley
  16. A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
  17. Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple
  18. Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova
  19. When We Collided by Emery Lord
  20. Illuminae by Amie Kaufman
  21. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
  22. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
  23. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
  24. In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
  25. The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson

WRITE MORE DISCUSSION POSTS AND ORIGINAL CONTENT.  

This is something I haven’t been very successful at thus far in my blogging journey.  I post regularly and participate in a few weekly features hosted by fellow bloggers, but I fall into these ruts where it feels like everything I want to talk about in discussion posts has already been discussed by dozens of other bloggers and so I talk myself out of posting anything.  So yeah, I need to get better about just going for it and putting my thoughts out there.

KEEP MY BLOGGING EXPERIENCE FUN.  

In this goal, what I’m seeking is to maintain a balance between reading what I want to read when the mood hits me versus the ARCs I need to read for review purposes.  Why this goal? Well, late last fall, I requested quite a few books from Netgalley assuming that I’d probably only get approved for a couple of them.  Needless to say I was rather shocked when I got approved for almost all of them and then realized that at least three of them had a publication date of January 10th.  With the holidays upon me, I got pretty stressed out about the prospect of having to quickly read that many books and put together that many reviews in such a short time.  It felt like I was back in college again, cramming for finals.  (I’m actually still trying to finish the last book right now since the book is due out on Tuesday.) Plus, in addition to the pressure of the deadline, I also didn’t have time to read anything that I wanted to read so December wasn’t that fun of a blogging month for me.

That stress is most definitely not something that I care to repeat so my goal for 2017 is to pay more attention to publication dates and choose my ARC requests more wisely so that I don’t unnecessarily stress myself out and, most importantly, so that I leave myself time for pleasure/mood reading.

INTERACT MORE WITH THE BOOKISH COMMUNITY.  

The past few months I’ve tried to make it a goal to visit other book blogs and comment whenever I have time.  I know how happy it makes me when I log into my own blog and see I have comments to respond to, so I just really want to continue to do my part to be supportive of the community and make other bloggers feel that same sense of joy.

I also want to improve my twitter presence.  I follow a number of bloggers but because I can be such an awkward potato at times, I rarely ever talk to them.  I did participate in a few twitter chats in 2016, which were a lot of fun, so I hope to do a few more in 2017 and to just be better about interacting overall.  Even being an awkward potato, I still managed to cross over the 500 follower mark on twitter, so for 2017, I’m hoping to make it to 1,000 followers.

* * * * *

Well, that’s what I have so far anyway.  I think (hope!) they’re challenging yet reasonable goals.  Do we share any of the same reading or blogging goals for 2017?  If not, what are your goals for this year?

18 replies
  1. Angela
    Angela says:

    I literally have a post coming up tomorrow on my blogging goals for the year, and many of them are similar! Maybe it comes from both of us being relatively new bloggers. Great list!

    • Angela
      Angela says:

      P.S. Any discussion posts you come up with will be great, I’m sure! Even if you think the topic has been done before, I think readers would appreciate hearing your thoughts and take on it.

    • Suzanne
      Suzanne says:

      Probably so. I actually caught myself wondering how my goals would be different if I had been doing this a lot longer. I’ll look forward to reading your list 🙂

  2. Chrystal
    Chrystal says:

    I love this. I especially like that you’re looking for balance. Keeping it fun should be mandatory, because being stressed out and not reading for fun makes it feel like a chore.

    Every year I saw I want to read more for me, but I’m finally finding a balance. This year gas an added challenge of being a new Mom (I have a 6 month old). I’ve learned to read when you can and same goes for blogging. 🙂

    Good luck with you goals.

    • Suzanne
      Suzanne says:

      Thanks Chrystal! I’m glad to hear that you’re finding a balance that works for you, especially while caring for a little one. That’s wonderful!

  3. Lefty @ The Left-Handed Book Lover
    Lefty @ The Left-Handed Book Lover says:

    Good luck with these goals! I have a few of these on my 2017 Reader Resolutions post as well. The one about keeping blogging fun is SO important. I’ve been blogging on and off for many years. At one point, I took like at least a year off of blogging, and when I came back I made a vow to myself that I wouldn’t let reading of blogging become a chore for me anymore. That has really impacted my blogging life a lot, and I think my blog has become much stronger because of it. Once again, best of luck to you in all of these!

    – Lefty @ The Left-Handed Book Lover

    • Suzanne
      Suzanne says:

      Thanks Lefty! Yeah, I think keeping everything fun for myself is probably the most important goal on the list for me. If it becomes a chore, I’m not going to want to do it anymore and that’s the last thing I want to happen.

  4. Wendy @ Birdie Bookworm
    Wendy @ Birdie Bookworm says:

    I’m terrible at Twitter as a social network. I need to try to join a Twitter discussion.

    I love discussion pieces, even if it’s been talked about before. Every blogger has brought something new to the discussion. 🙂

  5. ShootingStarsMag
    ShootingStarsMag says:

    I think you have some great reading/blogging goals. I’ve been trying to read more of my own books for the past few years so I hope to do even BETTER with that in 2017. I love review books – and I find a lot of great books that way – but I also own a lot of titles I need to make more time for, so that’s definitely a goal we share.

    I hope you can keep blogging fun. It can be stressful, but just do your thing and try not to worry too much, and it will stay fun most of the time! 🙂

    -Lauren

    • Suzanne
      Suzanne says:

      Yes, same here. I don’t even want to think about the number of titles that I own but have neglected for way too long. The e-books are the ones that I’m especially bad at. I see those Amazon $1.99 deals for books that are on my wishlist, buy them up, and then promptly forget I have them because I’m so busy working on the physical TBR pile that is staring me in the face, haha. Best of luck to both of us on getting more of our own books read!

Comments are closed.