Top Ten Tuesday #45

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish!

This week's topic is...

Top Ten Goals/Resolutions For 2014 (Bookish/Blogging/Other)

I'm going to stick with the bookish/blogging side for this one. Any personal ones will be just that, personal. I was able to come up with ten for this post though pretty easily. A bunch of them are sort of all tied together but they're still each their own thing. It'll make more sense once you read the list. Let's get on with it shall we?

1. Finally finish the enormous pile of NetGalley ARCs that I got back in freaking 2013!!

- I thought I'd get just get my most embarrassing blogger shame out of the way first. I probably have 40 or so books that I got nearly two freaking years ago now off of NetGalley and I've just sort of forgotten about them sitting there in my Kindle. I feel like it's at the point now that I've had them all for so long that even if I had wanted to read them really bad before, now it's almost as if I've lost any sort of desire to read them. It feels so forced. I just can't let them go though! Sigh. Oh how I wish my brain would just let me though.

2. Read more books I already own

- I have so many unread books. Both physical and eBooks. In order to accomplish both of these first two goals I plan on doing the next three things...

3. Buy less

- I don't do well with temptation. You dangle a pretty book in front of me and my finger just starts clicking! I've been a lot better with it this month so hopefully I can keep the momentum going through the coming year. 

4. Request fewer ARCs

- So as above with the whole temptation thing, I'm on the mailing list for Entangled Publishing to request review copies of their upcoming releases. And if you've been around my blog for my weekly hauls then you know that if there's one thing I can't seem to resist it's an Entangled book (especially those Brazens!) Since November though I've only requested ONE that comes out in January...or maybe it was two, I can't remember. But that's huge for me!! My goal is to keep this up because I've been bogging myself down so hard with review books that I'm neglecting all the stuff I already have.

5. Sign up for fewer blog tours

- As you can see a lot of these are all tied together. But besides getting to stuff that's been on the TBR forever I want to put less pressure on myself. Both to get things read and reviewed in a certain window of time and to keep away the anxiety of whether or not I'll like a book that I requested to review you know? I always get nervous before cracking open an ARC.

6. Finish some series

- I can't believe the number of series that I have started and not finished. Some of them even go back a few years. There's really no excuse for it. I know at one point I bought a bunch of first books in a bunch of series just to see if I liked them. The problem is that I'd love them but then move on to one of the other ones to see if I'd like that, and then another and before you know it I'm knee deep in unfinished series. It's shameful.

7. Read more YA

- When I first started blogging I was only reading YA. Once I branched out a bit I was pretty good with mixing it up between YA, NA, Adult and occasionally but not often even a few MG. The last year though I haven't been mixing them up as well and I've really been sticking to NA and Adult. They just seem to be what I end up picking up! I miss the variety and I'd really like to get into doing that again.

8. Read more Fantasy

- I think maybe it's because I take so long to read them that I don't do it often enough. Which is really a pathetic excuse. I often get in these moods where I just want something mindless that I don't have to really think hard about or put effort into reading. I just want to start it and finish it and move on. Which is really sad because I freaking love Fantasy, but they're not exactly something I can breeze through. A lot of them have complex worlds and/or magic systems that are highly detailed. Which is one of the things I love the most! But they require more concentration. Still trying to reread and finally finish The Wheel of Time series this year and starting Mistborn has really got me into a Fantasy mood!

9. Get back to some of my favorite authors pre-blog and start of blog

- I've discovered so many amazing new authors since I've started blogging but I've been neglecting some of the ones that I used to love reading all the time. It's been quite a change for me because years ago I had like 6 or 7 authors from a wide variety of genres that I would only read books by them. I was afraid to try reading anything new. I started that way as a teenager and it wasn't until a few years before I started blogging, in my mid thirties, that I slowly started to branch out and try new authors. Then once I started blogging I fully embraced the new. I miss all those authors that I was stuck on though and would love to find the time to get back to my reading roots so to speak.

10. Keep being good and getting reviews written before I move on to my next read

- When I started my requesting review books frenzy I made the rule for myself to not start reading the next book on my TBR until I've written a review for the one I've just finished. I've only failed a couple times but hopefully I can stay disciplined and keep it up. 

My confidence isn't very high for quite a few of these. I'm going to give them my best effort though. What kinds of goals do you have for 2015? I hope everyone has a safe and fun New Year's Eve!