A resolution

Holy Crap, it's been a while!

It's a new year, and that means Resolutions.

And for the third year in a row, my resolution is to read more. One book a week (on average) to be exact. A resolution at which I have failed miserably two years running!

But this time I have a new approach: the 2015 Reading Challenge. I guess that's a thing that Goodreads does, where you say "I'm gonna read hella books" and then you use Goodreads to track how many hellas of books you read. And I'm doing that (I'm "explodenator" on Goodreads, so you know). However that seems kinda unexciting, and so more specifically I'll be using this list. And I realize that I just linked to some women's health blog thing, and that figures since I only know about this list 'cause my mom found it on Pinterest, but whatever, gosh. It's seems like an interesting list.

For those of you who didn't click the link, it's a checklist of goals for your reading, like "A book with a number in the title" and "A book by someone under thirty". It's got 50 things to check off, and since one entry is "A trilogy", that's 52 books - one a week (51 if you don't count "a graphic novel", which I don't, for reasons I will get to).

So as I take this on, I'm gonna lay down some ground rules (for myself - you do whatever you want). First off, One Goal per Book. I could knock out the list in a month if I allowed myself to meet multiple criteria with one book, and as the goal is to read a book a week, I'm not going for efficiency.

Second, No Re-Reading Books. My goal in past years was to read one NEW book a week, so I'm applying this constraint to the Reading Challenge as well.

Third, Graphic Novels Don't Count. No disrespect to comics. Mostly just 'cause it would confuse my count. I spend way too much on comics every month, but I read most of them in single issues, and thus, it would inflate my book count. Plus, I could read a Graphic Novel a Day, just cause they're so light on words, but that would get even more expensive. I'll keep reading them, but it's not part of the challenge.

Fourth, a major concern from previous attempts: What IS a book? And to that I say, a front cover, a back cover, and all the words found between. However, I made a few exceptions for myself in the past. Anything advertised as Multiple Novels (ie. an ACE Double Book) counts as multiple entries. Also, collections of material originally published separately counts as multiple entries. But not short story collections; those are one book each. Or "The Complete So-And-So" if so and so wrote a lot of poems and short stories (like "The Complete Edgar Allen Poe" for instance, is one book). But "The Complete H.G. Wells" counts as hella books 'cause those are all separate novels. Get it?

Now, as I said, my ultimate goal is to read more new books. Not to enrich myself or expand my mind, but simply because I have way too many unread books cluttering my house. I'm not going for literary, entertainment, historical or whatever, value - just sheer volume of... volumes.

I have so many books 'cause I am quite fond of buying cheap used paperbacks. But reading books is competing for my free time with other equally valid pastimes such as reading websites like Cracked and Straight Dope, reading comics, watching TV, Movies, and Youtube, playing video games, and tabletop games; and other less savory pastimes like getting 16 hours of sleep a day (BTW, I do work... I was just listing the things I do with my SPARE time, which is only spare because it isn't spent fulfilling grown-up-type obligations).

... Yeah, I'm not done yet. In addition to this reading challenge, I have set two goals. One, a long term goal, is to read all of Stephen King's books, in the order they were published. No deadline on that one, and I jump ahead whenever he releases a new one, just to stay current. But the nature of this side-challenge is that, when I reach a book I have already read, I must reread it. And that doesn't count towards my overall goal.

Two, I have a calendar from Half Price Books. Maybe you have it, too. Each month it features a different author, and gives their list of Favorite Books. I will try to read one book each month by that author, as well as one from their list. No promises, but I'll use it as a guide.

And so you say "Andrew, that's half your books right there! Throw in a Stephen King every other week, and the list writes itself."

Except... remember when I said I've never actually met that book-a-week goal? I meant I REALLY FAILED, and in order to be at a book-a-week average for 2013-15, I'll actually have to read 92 books this year. Which is totally do-able. But Netflix is also a thing. Which hurts.

Anyway, Happy New Year, folks!