The month of January has traditionally always been about making resolutions. It’s the time where we turn the page on a brand-new year and promise ourselves all manner of things from losing weight and eating fewer sweets to being more active, sleeping more, etc… While our resolve to do all of these things tends to wane partway into the month, reading resolutions are far easier to keep.

In that spirit, we at LSC thought it would be fun to share some of our 2022 reading resolutions with all of you.

To start, Jamie resolves to read more practical non-fiction about recycling with a “make do and mend” notion – how to make and repair clothing, how to reuse fabric, sustainable choices, etc. She hopes that this will lead her into reading more about composting and gardening as well. Fiction wise, she hopes to find more graphic novels by disabled authors,  and hopes to venture into some science fiction. In the past it’s been a genre that she has generally avoided, but has recently caught her interest, and she plans to read Becky Chambers and Tochi Onyebuchi in 2022 while starting on Ursula K. Le Guin now.

Sara resolves to actually finish the many series she has started over the past few years. She has pile of books sitting beside my bed that are all book 3 or 4 in a series that forces conspire to prevent her from finishing. She notes that she often gets as far as book 2 or 3 and then stops due to delays in publishing and then forgetting the plot and never finishing. She recently purchased the last Diana Gabaldon, Go Tell the Bees that I am Gone but still needs to finish the previous volume and maybe even re-read the previous one to refresh her memory. She also wants to start the second "A Kingdom and Fresh and Fire" in the Jennifer Armentrout 'Blood and Ash' series as well as the 4th in Sabaa Tahir "An Ember in the Ashes" which came out a while ago, but hasn’t had the time to finish.

I echo Sara on this one, as I think we all do. I start a duology/trilogy/series with every intention of completing it, and if I like the first book, I’ll be ravenous for the next. Something always seems to happen between the second and third book that prevents me from ever getting back to it, and I have tons of unfinished series on my shelves. There’s only so many books I can read in a year, and with so many that I want to read, it’s hard to come back to a series.

Karrie likens her movie watching habits to reading, and comments that while she’s a big fan of all types of genres, it’s almost always fiction that she’s drawn to. In 2022, one of her Reading Resolutions is to read more non-fiction, particularly memoirs and biographies. Being a movie buff, she’s especially interested in reading the stories behind the actors on the big screen, and learning about them beyond the characters they play.

Stefanie resolves to make more time in her busy schedule for reading in general, but also to try and read outside of her comfort zone and broaden her reading horizons. She’s resolving to take a chance on reading genres she isn’t normally interested in, and seeing if she likes them rather than just reading who and what she knows she likes.

This is one of my resolutions as well. When an author you know you like and always read comes out with a new book, it’s a lot easier to make time to read it. I think I did a good job in 2021 of reading books by authors I’ve never read before, but in some ways it wasn’t really a stretch because they are still writing in genres that I already know I enjoy. Not to say that there’s anything wrong with reading thrillers or romance novels, but there are many other genres to explore.

Last but not least, I resolve to be more impulsive in my reading. I’m a compulsive planner. I like schedules and routines, and I get a bit too caught up in planning what I’m going to read next, and the book after that, and the book after that. We all have To Be Read piles that seem to grow rather than shrink, and in the digital age, I often joke that my Kindle is a black hole. I have so many titles on there that I lose track of what I have, and just adding something to a pile makes it easy to forget about it and never read something I was really interested in. The only person dictating what I read for pleasure is me, and I have to allow myself to deviate from my set schedule and read something on impulse right away just because I want to.

I’m sure that there are plenty more reading resolutions that we could/should make, but for now we’ll try to stay on top of these and see where the year takes us.

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Happy Reading!

Rachel