Happy New Year!

Welcome to the New Year! I haven’t been around much. The holidays always seem to take more out of me than I expect, and blogging gets set aside. What little ‘extra’ time I find, I spend reading. So I have a lot of catching up to do!

During January, I am going to try to put up a few posts regarding my 2013 reading and blogging, as well as some goals for 2014. So let’s start off with goals…

First let’s talk about blogging. I was doing pretty well until Thanksgiving, and then things got sporadic. So it is time to reevaluate.

• I have been doing a lot of reading but have not been very good about writing reviews, and even worse about posting reviews, even when I’ve taken the time to write them. So I am setting a goal of a minimum of 1-2 reviews each week. Since I do have a backlog, I will probably be doing 2 per week for the first couple of months, and taper down to 1 per week as my blogging catches up to my reading.
• I also want to get back to pointing you to freebies and contests. I had been blogging every Friday, but when things got too busy, I missed that. So instead, I am hoping to tweak the blog a bit and add a tab at the top that will be a list of current events. And hopefully I will be able to keep that up to date.
• I also hope to do some random musings and discussions about reading and blogging. I hope this will be interactive and that you will post in the comments. I’d like to know what you think.
• Lastly, I hope to continue participation in the Teaser Tuesday and Waiting on Wednesday memes, though possibly not weekly. I don’t always have a book I want to blog about, but I do enjoy participating, as it helps me keep up with new releases. I may modify my Waiting on Wednesday post to tell you about a book I am waiting to read, whether or not it has already been released.

Next, challenges. I don’t do well with challenges. While I usually hit my mark in READING the books for the challenge, I seldom get back to REPORTING what I read, so I never really complete the challenge. For that reason, I do not plan to particpate in many reading challenges for 2014. Here is what I plan

• The Goodreads 2014 Reading Challenge. I have committed to reading 52 books, or one per week. This will be the fourth year I have participated and at the same level. I’ve actually read 57, 55, and 53, so 52 is attainable, but still a challenge, since I don’t see any ‘extra’ time this year.
• The Historical Fiction Reading Challenge at Historical Tapestry. Historical fiction is by far my favorite genre, so the main challenge will be actually checking in and logging my reading. Right now I am signing up at the Medieval level, or 15 books. If I find that most of my reading is historical fiction, and I am remembering to check in, I will up that to Ancient History, or 25 books. But since one of my personal goals is to enrich my reading by trying different genres, I’m not going to commit to more than 15 at this time.
• Another ‘challenge’ is not an official challenge, but as I mentioned, I want to ‘broaden my reading horizons’. So I am going to take a look at Goodreads ‘Best Books of 2013’ list and attempt to read one book from at least 10 different categories. I will not restrict myself to the winners, but may choose from any of the nominees on the list.
• Another informal challenge to myself is to clear some of the books from my bookshelf and ereader. All these freebies are wonderful, but I really need to commit to reading some of them. So I am challenging myself to read one book per month that I already owned as of January 1st. Hopefully I will split them between ebooks and print books.

In addition to these, I hope to tweak my blog over the next month, though I’m not sure how far I will go with it. So keep watching. And tell me...do you have any reading goals for 2014?