Happy 2014!

Happy New Year!

I do love the New Year’s traditions of starting fresh, trying to rid yourself of bad habits and instill good ones. But forget exercise, eating healthy, being tidier, and all of that. Let’s talk about our reading resolutions!

One thing that I’d like to focus on in 2014 is reading less crap, simply because it happens to be free. Having a limited budget is still no excuse to not read good books. It all comes down to whether or not I have a pile of good books to read when I actually have the time to read them. So for me, that means planning ahead and keeping books on hand from the library, instead of not having anything and trolling the Amazon “free” bestsellers list. I have found some true gems on there, but I’ve also finished a lot of poorly written, poorly edited books just because I didn’t have anything else. Life is too short to read bad books!

I’m also curious to see how many books I actually read in one year. I’ll try to keep track on Goodreads, which historically I’ve been pretty bad at, but this year, I’m going to make a push to record everything I read. My “easy” goal will be 100 books (including children’s books), and my stretch goal will be 214 books (for 2014). But the main point will be to record everything, which will help me set a better goal for 2015. Right now I have absolutely no idea how much I’m reading. For the purposes of this exercise, I’ll count books I’ve already read as long as I read the whole thing, and I only get to count them once.

For the blog, I’d like to reorganize the Children’s section, and add in categories for Caldecott and Newberry award winners. I’m also going to try to broaden the age range for my Family Fridays, since I know I’m doing a lot of picture books, and younger kids books. Since my only child is still young, that’s just what I happen to be reading the  most of right now, but I know a lot of you are reading to and buying for older kids as well.

So that’s it for Lector’s Books: read good books, record what I read, and get organized with my children’s recommendations. What about you? Any reading goals for 2014?