My 2018 Reading Resolutions!

Last year I made a fairly substantial list of resolutions and, sadly, three of them I failed: I didn't manage to read a series (although I tried); I didn't read the rest of Shirley Jackson's novels; and I completely failed at not buying any books that weren't published in 2017, although that was always going to be tricky. I did, however, manage to go cruelty-free with my makeup, read more than twelve authors of colour and my work/play balance was much better than it was in 2016.

This year I'm not really giving myself any strict resolutions because they just don't work for me - even going cruelty-free was more of a life choice than anything else - but there are a couple of things I'd like to do that I thought I'd talk about now that 2018 is officially here!

Rather than giving myself resolutions I've decided to make a '30 Before 30' list which, as the name implies, is a list of 30 things I'd like to do before I turn 30 in 2021. Some of them are little things - such as baking a rainbow cake - and some of them are a little more challenging - such as visiting every continent, which is mainly going to come down to whether or not I can afford all those holidays. The answer: probably not, but a girl can dream.

The main bookish challenge I've set myself, though, is to have read 100 authors of colour by the time I reach 30. I recently went through my Goodreads shelves and realised I haven't even read a quarter of that amount which, considering I'm 26, is appalling and really makes me realise just how white my childhood reading was. Thank goodness diversity in children's books is being promoted so much more now.

I've made a list here and, each time I read a new author of colour, I'm going to add them to that list so I can keep track of my progress. This is for individual authors, not for books written by authors of colour, so I need to have read 100 different books by 100 different authors of colour. That's not going to stop me from reading more work from authors of colour I already love, of course!

My only other resolution, which is something I'd like to do this year and beyond, is to stop being intimidated by the bigger books on my shelves. It's so easy to become obsessed with the amount we read and ticking as many books off our TBRs are possible, but I want to really enjoy reading again and I want to go back to being the kind of reader who would see a 700 page book and get excited, not nervous that it would take up too much time and halt my reading progress.

There are quite a few books on my shelves that have been waiting to be read for a while now and I keep putting them off for shorter books, but not this year! I'm going to be talking about some of those books in another post on Friday, so come back then if you'd like to know more about them, and if I can cross even one of those off my TBR this year I'll be a happy camper.

And if I don't read any big books or I don't read as many authors of colour as I'd like to (though I hope I will!) I'm not going to beat myself up about it. Reading's supposed to be fun and reading challenges are supposed to be fun, too.

Have you made any bookish (or non-bookish!) resolutions for 2018? What are your reading plans for the year? Let me know down below!