2012 Goals & Resolutions..

Happy New Year everybody! This is the first year I have started as a 'blogger' proper, and I thought I'd mark the occassion by making myself some goals for this year.

• Firstly, as of yesterday I'm back on my book buying ban. Although ideally I'd go the whole year without buying a book, I don't think this is particularly feasible and so I'm just going to try to go longer than I did last year which was three months and a week. I think this is manageable. I'm limiting myself to one swap a month as well, and hopefully it will encourage me to use the library tons more. 
• I'm also planning to go the whole of 2012 without using Amazon to buy anything. For reasons why, see this post.
• Make a list every month of what I intend to read and one at the end tracking the books I've managed to complete. 
• Continue to read more non-fiction that I did last year 
• Complete all of the challenges that I sign up for, and remember to post a link-up every month for the Telling Tales Challenge.
• Comment on blogs and make an active attempt to discover new blogs. I did this a lot until about half way through the year, at which point I inexplicably stopped and I think it's time to start up again!
• Schedule posts for the week on Sunday nights. I started doing this a little while back, and while I've been better at it some weeks than others, I find it really helps me keep my momentum.
• In 2011 I read 151 books. Of these, I didn't get round to reviewing 58 of them. Although this is gigantically better than I thought, my goal this year is to review 75% of what I read, and to review all my five star reads which I failed dismally at this year.
• Participate in RAK every month. It's a fantastic event, and I love that I can make people happy by giving books, and as they're gifts they don't count for my ban so it's like I'm buying them but without them actually accumulating in my house. It's a win-win situation!
• Get over my illogical aversion to reading YA. I get really annoyed when people read only YA, and for some reason this means that anybody recommending me any YA will just get sighs and eye -rolling. Having said that, when I caved in a did read some this year, it was incredible! The Hunger Games trilogy, When You Reach Me, An Abundance of Katherines... Clearly, I've inherited a view of what all YA will be from somewhere and am refusing to rethink despite evidence to the contrary. Help me! All you people who read YA, I am appealing to you for recommendations of the best you've read!
• I want to re-vamp the blog a bit, but I'm totally crap with design type stuff. If anybody knows anybody/is willing to give me a hand I'd be eternally grateful!

I'm really pleased with how 2011 went in terms of blogging. After almost a year of blogging I feel like I'm finally starting to find my place in the blogging community and hit my stride with what I want the blog to be. In a few days the blog will be one, and there will be an awesome giveaway so watch out, as well as a suitably sappy post about the awesome people I've 'met' in the past year! Happy 2012!