Last year, instead of setting doomed-to-fail goals, I highlighted a few priorities for my reading life. It worked much better! I didn’t think too much about them over the course of the year, but reviewing them today, I actually met most of them without getting stressed about it.

-Read more new releases. I read three brand new releases in 2017 (How Not to Be a Boy, How to Be a Kosovan Bride, and Little Deaths). The reason I wanted to read more current releases, though, was that I missed being part of the conversation around new books, and to that end I think All the Single Ladies and The Power, though they were both published in 2016, also fitted in pretty well.

-Post more consistently. Yes! I actually did it! I say this every year and never do it, but I wrote 30 posts this year! Admittedly, I didn’t write anything in February or March because that was back when my PhD was making me ill, but since then I’ve written something every month, and normally two somethings.

-Write about my other interests sometimes. I didn’t do quite as much of this as I had planned, but I did do a non-book favourites post a few weeks ago, some more podcast mini-reviews, and I wrote a Star Trek-themed post back in January.

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It turns out that gardening is an interest that I love nearly as much as reading.

This has been a very enjoyable year of reading and blogging for me, which is, after all, the aim of this sort of post. With that in mind, I’ve done the same thing this year.

-Read more science fiction and fantasy. Two of the best books I read in 2017, Station Eleven and Infomocracy, were both science fiction, and it reminded me that I really love this genre. Ellie at Curiosity Killed the Bookworm is hosting a science fiction/fantasy bingo challenge, and while I didn’t sign up very punctually, I will still be using it to inspire some new science fiction and fantasy choices this year. Hoping to have a post with some thoughts about what I might pick up some time soon.

-Read something in German. I routinely buy German editions of my favourite books, and then I am intimidated by them and don’t read them. I think I am going to try Die Bücherdieben (The Book Thief), because I think the language is probably simplistic enough for me to follow without too much referring to a dictionary and I’ve read the English edition three or four times, though I might need to revert to something easier in the end.

-Read a few of the longer books I’ve had on my shelves for a while. As I wrote previously, setting an overoptimistic Goodreads goal was putting me off tackling longer or denser books. I have set my goal to just ten this year, which gives me plenty of breathing room to tackle big books.

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From a walk in my beautiful local park. Hopefully lots more of this in 2018 too.

I am really looking forward to 2018. There is lots planned already: my thesis hand-in deadline is in March, I’m learning to drive, I’m going to see Hamilton in April, and I might even take my first holiday abroad as an adult (I’ve travelled for conferences, but never just for fun). I am busy and happy and can’t wait to see what’s next.