Happy 2009!
2008 was a pretty good year for reading some good books and here’s hoping 2009 will be even better. There are some books coming out I can’t wait for, especially Corambis by Sarah Monette, Hope’s Folly by Linnea Sinclair, and Kings and Assassins by Lane Robins. Elizabeth Bear also has a new Edda of Burdens book (By the Mountain Bound) coming out later in the year and the next of Ann Aguirre’s Sirantha Jax series (Doubleblind) will be out as well as the first book in her new Corine Solomon series (Blue Diablo). I’m sure there will be many, many more too.
Over the last week I’ve been thinking about some reading goals for 2009:
1. Read 50 Books
I really considered making this number higher since I made that goal in 2008, but in the interest of being realistic with my goals I ended up deciding to just aim for 50 again. If I’m going to continue to review every book I read, I just don’t think I’ll have time for much more than that unless 2009 is the year I become independently wealthy.
2. Read some urban fantasy
While I’ve read a few books considered to be urban fantasy, such as Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman and Elizabeth Bear’s Promethean Age series, I haven’t read that much. I can’t think of a single werewolf or vampire book I’ve read where they weren’t background characters or in a parody. So I thought this year I’d try to read some more urban fantasy, especially the types of books very different from what I have read before. To work toward that goal, I did get Moon Called by Patricia Briggs and Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison.
3. Read more science fiction that scares me
Although I’ve become a huge fan of space opera this year, there are some science fiction books that still frighten me because I think they will be too dry or won’t have good characters. Not having actually read these books, I don’t know that, though, and maybe they aren’t as scary as I think. It’s time to find out.
4. Read more comic books
Since reading Sandman, I haven’t read any graphic novels. On my list is Watchmen and at least the first of the Lucifer comics (which are a spin off of the Lucifer from Sandman).
5. Challenge myself to read one book a month that I’m hesitant to read
This goal is mostly so I’ll read some of those books that have been sitting on my shelf for whatever reason (most of these will be books that are there because they’re very long, because they’re science fiction that scares me, or because the first book is part of a long series/short series containing long books). I might be challenging myself or having John challenge me or do some of both; I haven’t decided yet. After I told John about my goal (and my decision for January’s book challenge, which is reading Childhood’s End, a book he told me I should read), he wanted to give me a book to read every month. So I may try that for a while unless I find I’m not getting to a lot of books that have been sitting on the bookshelf for a while that I want to get off my conscience.
I’m still going to try to manage it so I only read the longer books when I’m behind on reviews and have some catching up to do since I only avoid long books now because I have nothing to review if it takes me forever to read a book.
I thought about having a goal of reading more book published in 2009 than I did books published in 2008 last year but decided that wasn’t a very realistic goal if I’m going to only be able to manage about 50 books for the year. There are too many older books I still need to read.
So that’s it for reading goals. Anyone else been setting goals for books to read this year?
