*** I FINALLY DID IT ***

I finally did it!!! The third time was the charm!

I read 36 books in 12 months!! And then I read one more!!! Making it a total of 37. YAY ME!!!

That has been my goal since 2010 and every year I almost make it. Well, that’s not completely true. The first year I missed the mark by 10 books I think, and the year after that I missed by 5, or something. But this year, I finally did it. And thanks to a good friend of mine who introduced me to Goodreads, I have a much easier way to keep track of my reads as the year goes on. I even have an easier way to share with you what I read.

Here’s the link to my Reads for 2012 book shelf on Goodreads.com.

2012-Reads Shelf

So, now that I’ve done that, what’s next? I want to continue with the goal to read 36 books in a year, however, I do a lot of borrowing books from the library and I order a lot of free books on my Kindle. Very few of the books I read this year were from my own book shelf. In fact, I think that out of 36, only 5 came from my shelf and one of those books were purchased within the last 2-3 years.

The reason why I initially set the goal of reading 36 books in a year was because I owned about 86 books that were sitting forlorn & untouched in my house. The goal of 36 books in a year was intended to help get me through the books I owned, but hadn’t read.  Well...new books keep coming out, or someone tells me about a series they liked, or I saw a book that looked interesting, or I heard about a book that some of the tweens & teenagers I know really enjoyed, or I saw a movie preview for an optioned book -- so I’d hit the library, or the discount book rack, or the free eBook sites and my own books would be pushed further and further on the back burner for the sake of reading a book here, finishing a series there…its really a vicious cycle. Fun, but vicious.

So here’s my next goal: to stay out of the library and read the books I presently own that reside on my bookcases in my house.

In reality, am I going to be able to stay out of the library?  Most likely NOT. I am an honest to goodness bookworm/geek/nerd... whatever, and proud of it. But I have GOT to get through these books.  Another reason why I haven’t been reading them is that I have a lot of romance novels and romance novels have not been sitting well with me for the last few years so when something sci-fi or adventure-like comes to my attention, I’m quick to go check it out for a change of pace. But after a few years of being in the adventure & sci-fi genre, I guess its time to put some romance novels back into the rotation.  Besides, I need to pay my favorite authors the respect they deserve & read them…so I can talk & blog about them.

So that’s the plan for 2013. Time will tell how far I get.

TTFN!