It really should go without saying that I wish you all the best for 2009.I've seen lots of New Year's resolutions flying around and my guess is that most people take the opportunity to resolve to do at least one thing a little better, to remake themselves in at least one small way, when the calendar ticks over.
In many ways we set ourselves personal challenges that are reflected on our blogs in some of the challenges running there.
I'm not "into" book reading challenges much myself, although some of the activities I participate in could possibly be called challenges.
However there are many people who organise their reading agenda for the coming year around a set of challenges.
So if you are one of those who participates in a range of challenges, or is even running one or two yourself, I invite you to leave a comment pointing to blog postings, yours or others, where readers can find out about challenges to join. They don't have to be related to crime fiction or murder mysteries, although given the inclination of readers of this blog, that would probably help.
For myself my resolutions for 2009:
- try to get on top of my books to be reviewed pile. There are some 20+ books sitting in that pile now, and I've been feeling very guilty about them for some time. It would be great to get them read
- and also, most importantly, read all the books that I have on loan from friends, and give them back!
- try to read just a little outside the crime fiction genre occasionally. I'm sure it would be good for me, but it does feel a bit like taking your medicine
- restrict myself to one blog posting a day. Now I know almost straight away that this is one that I will break from time to time. I am addicted to blogging. In the face of other addictions that you can get, perhaps this is not such a bad one.
- learn how to back up this blog. Last time I investigated this, I couldn't work out what to do but it would break my heart to lose it all. In reality though I do have copies of individual postings coming in through email but they only go back to the middle of last year, not to the beginning of the blog.
- Sunday Salon
- Friday's Forgotten Books
- What's On Your Nightstand
- Library Thing
- my own Agatha Christie Reading Challenge.
- Carnival of Criminal Minds: have you seen the latest posting?: mine on Murder in the Outback
- and I've joined the Book Review Blog Carnival. You'll see a link to it on the bottom right of this page. Click on future hosts and you'll see that I am listed for April 12. I'm hoping it is an opportunity to spread my reviews a bit more widely.
- challenges you will participate in or know of
- your New Year's resolutions
photo courtesy of nickherber
10 comments:
Kerrie, there is a new feature on Blogger called Import/Export, and you can use that to create a backup of your blog. It's pretty easy to do too.
Just go to Settings>Basic>Export Blog.
This exports everything, including comments.
My goals are going to be to read more than 150 books, to read at least 10 books that I already own, to read at least 20 books by Australian authors. That's probably about it.
Literary feline has a list of challenges over at http://www.literaryfeline.com/2009/01/warning-challenge-fever-is-contagious.html
and Marg has some icon links on her blog at http://readingadventures.blogspot.com/
Sally has some listed at http://myreadingchallanges.blogspot.com/
I promise I'll list all the links in a special posting after there have been a few comments
Thanks for the backup tip Marg and good luck with 150 books
Thanks for the backup tip Marg. I now have a an xml copy of the blog, which I could use to restore in an emergency
It's pretty easy to do isn't it. I just did mine as well, although I probably need to do a computer back up as well, so it doesn't get lost from there if anything happens!
Kari at http://anotherbookonthestack.blogspot.com/ has a list of challenges in the side bar on the right
http://chris-book-a-rama.blogspot.com/2009/01/i-suck-at-challenges-challenge.html
There are a heap of challenges listed at A Novel Challenge
it has NEVER occurred to me to back up my blog! YIKES!
I have not worked out my resolutions yet. Hopefully soon.
I don't really do resolutions but I would like to reduce my TBR pile before buying/mooching too many more books. I'm trying to do that in the rest of my life too - have only what I need rather than what I want and I don't need more books than I can read.
I don't participate in reading challenges. I have other ways of stretching myself beyond my comfort zone and I find challenges end up forcing me to read things I don't enjoy which seems a pointless waste of my time. I have signed up to the Read and Review challenge but that is simply to give me more incentive to review each book I read which I want to do for myself anyway.
Yes, the number of books around here is a bit overwhelming sometimes. Where is the Read and Review Challenge Bernadette?
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