How I Kept My 2022 New Year's Resolution

I actually kept my new year's resolution this year. 

I've always been a reader. I was an hours at the library, family trips to the bookstore after dinners out, books under the sheets kind of girl. The library might be a key word here - at some point in my young adult life, I decided that I didn't want to own books that weren't important to me as person. Perhaps it was because I moved so often and I only wanted to keep things that were treasured, perhaps it was because books, while being a relatively cheap purchase, add up quickly and so I wanted to make sure I spent money on books I loved, and went to the library for the rest. I lived over a decade with this mindset - rarely buying books that I hadn't already read and loved. 

Then, I slowly started to shift my thinking. First, I felt like independent bookstores and even more importantly authors deserved my investment. So I started buying some books that I knew I would love, preordering from some favorite authors, asking for books for gifts pretty much exclusively. And so I started to accumulate more unread books on my shelves, ones that had a longer availability than the three week library loan. So those books waited, usually because I had between five and ten books out from the library at a time. 

And then, the libraries closed. I could still get books from Libby and read on my iPad, but just like everything else you suddenly couldn't have, I was craving physical books. So I started buying, ramped up my gift requests, and the next thing I knew it's 2022 and I have around 50 unread books on my shelves - in fact, a whole bookshelf just with unread books. 

So my new year's resolution was to read at least one book I own every month. I didn't institute a book-buying ban, I don't hate myself. But I was tired of the guilt of knowing I had some really carefully chosen books that I expected to love mere feet away from me all day every day and I wasn't reading them because the new Bookstagram favorite had been ON THE SHELF when I went to the library that week. Great find, but also not the point.

I've kept this resolution, and more. As of today (Saturday, November 19, 2022), I've read 27 books off of my physical and electronic To Be Read shelf, and you can see which ones they are on the Goodreads shelf I have for this challenge. Of course, I have more than filled the emptied spots, but I really have found some new favorites among those books. And also found a different source of frustration that I spent money on a book I didn't love, which is no different from any other buyers remorse I may have over, say, the black leather loafers I had to have the last time I was at Nordstrom rack (that was a joke I love those loafers). 

I've loved this small resolution. It doesn't take up much space in my brain or life, but once a month I get to review the books I own and see what I want to pick up. Yes there has been at least one month where I had a day or two to read one and frantically sorted my ebook library by number of pages, but I've done it every month. I even took this resolution one step further and spent the entire month of May only reading books I already owned, a challenge called My Shelf May. More on my learnings from that another time. 

Revisit my newest little internet space for more thoughts like this - explorations on my reading life, my bookish community, maybe even some reviews or quotes from books I've recently loved.