New Year’s Resolutions—who needs them! They mostly deal with boring stuff like diet and exercise. I only want to talk about books. So bookish resolutions. Those are still cool. So cool I gave you a bonus resolution. [Now two! Because I rather egregiously forgot one.]
Top Ten Tuesday now lives with Jana at The Artsy Reader Girl.
Schedule more reviews
I drafted a handful of reviews over the summer and scheduled them. I frequently pushed my scheduled posts back to make room for a fresh post, but it was great having those posts ready to go when I didn’t have something else or, even better, when I planned something else but couldn’t make it happen for whatever reason. With the baby on the way, I want to draft several posts I can schedule for those first few hectic weeks.
Read a work of Slavic or Slavic-inspired fiction
The next few are old bookish resolutions that I have been getting away from. No better way to get on track than to get them on record here. This could cover anything from one of the Russian classics (I read the Maude translation of War and Peace a few years ago) to English-language fantasy inspired by Slavic myths (so, for example, Uprooted would count).
Read a book about Southeast Asia [NEW]
I somehow forgot to include this one one in my original post. My wife’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Burma, so I have slowly been learning a bit about Burma and Southeast Asia more generally. My father in law gave me a copy of Finding George Orwell in Burma for Christmas, so maybe that. I did get to go to Singapore, Burma, and Vietnam a couple years ago.
Read a book on writing
Any kind of writing. Good writing takes practice, but it also takes study. And it isn’t like I don’t have a few lying around.
Read a book on faith/religion
Another one I have fallen off on.
Read a biography of William Henry Harrison
Like a lot of people, I am reading presidential biographies in order, one per year. I assume I’m reaching the point where people start to bail. Martin Van Buren certainly deserves a high quality biography, but if he has one I certainly didn’t read it. I haven’t picked my book on Harrison yet, but I assume there isn’t much of a selection.
Restore reading balance
You can see below how much my reading has shifted to speculative fiction. I would like my reading list to look a lot more like it did in 2011. On the other hand, I am very happy with my reading split among modern traditionally published SF, indie SF, and vintage SF.
Read a lot of Tolkien and a lot about Tolkien
If I’m going to do a series on Tolkien this year I will have to. I hope to reread The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Author of the Century, and Joseph Loconte’s book. I hope to read for the first time the Silmarillion and The Fellowship. I’m starting this one tonight: I’m going to introduce our daughter to The Hobbit while she is still in the womb.
Post reviews of ARCs on release day
The blog name kind of implies a focus on release day reviews. Something I ought to be able to pull off when I have an ARC two months prior.
Limit ARC requests to one per month
I don’t want to get in the situation I got into last fall where I had a dozen ARCs all coming out within a three month span. If I’m going to post reviews in a timely fashion and if I’m going to balance my reading, then I need to limit my ARC requests.
Read two classical works
I intentionally left this a bit vague. It could be The Odyssey, it could be Ivanhoe, it could be Beowulf. It could be Shakespeare! I have copies lying around of all but one of those, which helps with that next resolution. Beowulf would tie in nicely with my planned series on Tolkien. Maybe I should push Ivanhoe off until I do a series on Robin Hood.
Get fewer books/Save money on books
These aren’t exactly the same thing, since I get a lot of review copies. And I have the bad habit of buying a stack of books every time I walk into a used bookstore and buying a lot of books when they show up for $3 in those sale emails. Which controls the cost but still leaves me with more books than I can possibly read. So I will work on that. Maybe even whittle down my TBR.
Every Day Should Be Tuesday 
For the Slavic item, I highly recommend checking out the Witcher. The first book is a bunch of short stories, so easy to digest and segment.
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Sapkowski wrote a bunch of Witcher short stories first, right? You know how I feel about publication order versus chronological order. (It appears there is another short story collection published later but set earlier–that one I would push off.)
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Yes, the first book is the Last Wish, a collection of shorts. So far as I know it’s the first in both publication and internal chronology.
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I could be mistaken, though, as I haven’t done research on this.
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I did not understand your blog name until just now! Duh. Thanks for clueing me in!
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Do the many Steven Brust fantasy novels count as Slavic-ish inspired? That might be something of interest to you (or not). I have only started following your blog so don’t know if that is old news and you’ve read them all–!
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I have not yet read them, and they would certainly count under my loose interpretation.
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If you like them, you’re in luck since there are a dozen or so, but if it’s not your speed then eh. You’ll find out!
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One ARC/month is a big one for me as well! I like your goals – a lot of these haven’t been on other peoples’ lists! 🙂
If you’re looking for a writing-book recommendation… I really enjoyed “On Writing” by Stephen King. 🙂
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On Writing is one I’ve heard many, many good things about, though it isn’t one that I own.
I actually did read a book on writing last year–Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd. I originally read it for day job purposes and wasn’t planning to post on it, but it is I think a pretty fascinating book for a fiction writer to read, if only for the contrasts that are naturally drawn.
http://amzn.to/2DFCIsH
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“I’m going to introduce our daughter to The Hobbit while she is still in the womb”
You’re practically a Jesuit with a practice like that!
And best of luck with all these resolves. We’ll see how the chips fall as the year goes on 🙂
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I’ve just seriously started digging into prep. One bit of advice was to read to the child in the womb to start bonding (since they hear their mother’s voice all the time). Another bit of advice was to read to the child as soon as she is born to bond. What better choice than The Hobbit? If I finish it, I may have to start it over after she is born.
Since she won’t understand the words, a work that’s language itself is pleasing to the ear seems in order. The Hobbit is the obvious choice. Maybe Uprooted. Robert E. Howard should wait, I think, until she turns two or three and it is time to teach her to drink and cuss.
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I thought Novik’s Uprooted had some rape scenes? That was the impression I was under anyway…
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Not by my recollection, no…but it has been a couple years.
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For Slavic fiction, “Metro 2033” was popular a while back, but I haven’t read it. I’m curious to see what you’ll go with.
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I’ve heard of that one, I think (there are only so many Russian-language SF works that have been translated into English).
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Love the reading balance graphs- very neat!
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If I may – please read Deathless by Catherine Valente. That’s for the Russian inspired. It’s dark, strong and unbelievably imaginative. Remains one of my total favorites!
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Cool post with some fine resolutions. I’ve also read and enjoyed King’s ‘On Writing’, as much for the autobiography part as for the writing advice. I’m part-way through Jeff Vandermeer’s ‘Wonderbook’, which is brimming with advice for writers from writers. Beautiful artwork in it, too.
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