Hi friends,
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
Today’s theme is bookish resolutions.
Well mine this year follow three trends: LESS PRESSURE, EXPERIMENT and CHAT.
LESS PRESSURE means:
1) Not worrying about the amount of books I read.
That’s why I halved my Goodreads goal and now I will aim at 50 books, even if I read 127 in 2020.
2)Request few ARCs.
When I began blogging, I was excited to read ARCs and I wanted physical ARCs like one of King Arthur’s knights wanted the Graal.
Now, I know that being international means that I will never get the most coveted physical ARCs and even Egalleys are difficult to obtain because of international rights. What’s more astonishing is that…I don’t care anymore.
I noticed that getting ARCs put me under pressure because I have to deliver! Read and review for a certain date and nearly excuse myself if I want to give three stars of less. I always had a schedule in my head and …that was stressing me out.
Now I plan on asking for 1 or maximum 2 ARCs per months and only for books I absolutely want to read.
3)Stop promoting without reviewing
When you work with PR agencies, they do everything to make your blogger life easy sending you html, graphic and all. But I noticed that posting these easy posts nearly every day required my energy as I had to plan ahead, follow and check if I didn’t forget something etc. Being accountable!
It’s already been months now since I eased up on promoting and I feel way better.
Now….that may be counter productive for a book blogger but that’s how I roll!
4)Write mini reviews
I have always written long and detailed reviews but recently, I just want to read. I feel the need to write something long for books that really amazed and impressed me. I don’t want to end up reviewing only a small portion of my reads as I think it still can help readers choose their next read. The mini reviews for books that I enjoyed but that didn’t amazed me seems the way to go.
5)Post less
I used to post every day or nearly every day. But since the lockdown I feel tired and I don’t want to become burned out and stop blogging completely. Posting two to three times a week seems the way to go. Four if I really am productive on the weekend 😀
6)Listen to audiobooks
Why this under the “less pressure”? Because audiobooks are a wonder when you want to read without realizing it AND it makes chores so much fun! Less pressure to clean, iron etc 😎
That’s why I entered the #2021AudiobookChallenge
EXPERIMENT means:
7)2020 and the lockdown has been quite boring and repetitive.
I can’t plan travels to meet authors nor go to the theater etc. Hence I want to shake up things a little and challenge myself. I want to try new genres and go out of my comfort zone but…cautiously.
Remember, I want to have less pressure, so if it does not work for me, so be it!
8)Try new things on Instagram
I am a bookstagrammer and in awe with some feeds! I want to try new things and maybe change my feed or..maybe not. Trying and failing is all right. If I never take risks, I can’t progress.
CHAT means:
9)Being a book blogger shows that I want to talk about books.
Of course I can do it here, on the blog and WordPress but I also can do it on Instagram through Book Clubs or via chat group. Discovering book clubs has been amazing to try new genres and new authors.
10)Buddy read
I LOVE buddy reads! I read Daughter of Smoke and Bones with Trisy @bobosbookbank and Caro @cjr_tbt and now we have Kristen Ashley’s new book to buddy read next month!
OK that’s it! What are your goals for 2021?
Thanks for reading.
Sophie
Yeah I’ve noticed I’d started to request loads and then, after being rejected loads, started to get accepted for everything. And now have too many books I need to read…
Those are some great goals! I didn’t know that there were book clubs on Instagram so I learned something new today. Have a great week!
I love these goals! Fingers crossed that you manage to keep up with them!
Good luck with all your goals, Sophie! Less pressure and more freedom definitely sound like a plan!
Right?
I also want to do more buddy reads! They’re so much fun. Besides that I want to read more books but I don’t mind if I don’t get to my goodreads goal. I just want to enjoy the books I read. I didn’t request my first ARC until 2020 actually because I was afraid to not liking the books I request. That’s why I’m really careful with what I request but there’s always few bad ones unfortunately.
I always tried to be careful with ARCs too jamsu but indeed you never know!
You’ve got some great goals here, Sophie. I hope you are able to achieve them all and that you have a wonderful year both on and off the blog. 🙂
Audiobooks sure make my chores more fun!
Right?
So many of these are either things I want to do or things I am already doing. I am blogging less, and it’s been a really good thing. I cut out all promo posts (that weren’t accompanied by a review) because it felt like filler and it wasn’t the content I wanted to be putting up. ARCs are few and far between and that’s been a good thing, too. I love reading from my own shelves (physical and Kindle) and diving into all the books that I kept putting off in favor of “new and shiny.” And I love shorter reviews – both writing and reading them. Here’s to doing all these things in 2021!
Thank you Tanya!
Oh, definitely less pressure. That’s why I too decided 50 books is a better idea to aim for, and then, anything beyond that is icing on the cake. And one thing I want to do, like you, is not promote anything I haven’t read first as sometimes, just sometimes, we promo a book on tour that turns out to be, well, less than everyone hoped for.
ANd that’s a big YES to mini reviews and less posting in a week. Which, again, means less pressure. We’re all too busy enough as it is without making our hobby, reading, kill us!
Exactly Alexandra!
Exactly Alexandra!
You have a lot of great goals! Good luck with all of them!
Thank you Kristi!!
You’re welcome!
I just love all the goals that you have here and hope it brings you all that you need for 2021! Buddy reading is so much fun, I definitely plan on doing that more. I can’t wait for that Kristen Ashley release, its going to be SO good, I can just feel it. Hope you have a fun time reading it.
I hope that book will be amazing Renee!
I like your goals! I’m doing something similar as well, this year I’m going to try not to stress too much with sticking to a reading schedule, and do more things like mood reads and playing things by ear.
I think mmost of us are aleardy with enough constraints from real life and don’t want to add more stress Mogsy!
After reading this I’m feeling quite ashamed of myself in that I have absolutely no goals right now.
Having no goal is a goal Kim LOL
I only feel comfortable promoting a book I have read, unless it’s a Looking Forward to type post. Cutting those out will definitely cut back on work for you, and you can use it to experiment and chat. All great goals up there and I wish you lots of luck with them.
Thank you Sam!!