Weekend Update: 2011 Goals in Review & 2012 Goals Tweaked
Now that I've talked about my reading goals for 2012 (you can read that post here), I want to talk about how well I did reaching my 2011 goals. For those of you who are waiting impatiently for my Top Ten list for the year, breathe easy. It's on its way, but it's just gonna be in a separate post. :)
So 2011. Not a bad year. I expanded to WordPress, jumped into Goodreads, and read quite a lot of books and comics. Here's how I did in comparison to last year's goals.
1) Reduce cross-posting to communities: before 2011, I would post a review, then whip up a summary version of said review, and post that summary version along with a link to the full version in any book-related community I thought would be appropriate. That, however, was a lot of work, and it's caused some issues in the past, so instead of cross-posting reviews, I started posting my monthly review round-ups every month, so that I'm still letting the communities know I'm here and I'm reviewing, but I'm not bombarding said communities with two, three posts a week (and it'd get really annoying for those members who followed all the same communities I posted in -- they'd see the same post two, three, four times!). So yay for fulfilling this goal!
2) Divorcing Authors: technically, I said that I wanted to stop buying installments of series I'm no longer enjoying, but divorcing authors sounds catchier, and I have Lurve a la Mode to thank for that phrase (I think). And in truth, I could've done better, but there's a part of me that likes giving authors second chances, and in some of those cases, those second chances really paid off. That said, I can think of three authors I've officially divorced this past year, authors who used to be absolute favorites of mine, but whose latter work is either sloppy and unpublishable and/or just no longer holding my attention. No, I'm not giving you any names. If you've followed this blog, you could probably guess who said authors are, but I'm not volunteering the info. :)
3) Reading poll selections by end of challenge month: EPIC FAIL. I had 47 books that made the Alphabet Soup polls last year (four books per month, 12 months a year, and one book was a repeat), and of those 47 (which includes winners), I read 30, DNF'd 3, and one of them, I decided I just didn't want to read at all. That left me with 13 unread poll selections. Okay, so maybe that failure isn't EPIC, but I didn't get stuff read in a timely manner, and if I had, perhaps I'd have 100% completion on this list, you know? That said, I learned a valuable lesson: despite that fact that I'd already bought the books that were nominated for the poll, and so in theory should be interested in them, I wasn't, and asking book club members to help me narrow each month's poll gave me some really odd selections I wasn't into at the time. On the flip side, sometimes I'd finally pick up a book just BECAUSE of the poll and it'd end up being a great match. But still… I don't feel great about this goal. Alas…
4) Pay attention to ratings: This time last year, I was really in a reviewing funk. I wasn't giving many positive reviews, and I was worried that I wasn't being fair. Some of the comments made to my Ender's Game review really had me wondering what I was doing, so I decided that in 2011, I'd pay attention to my ratings, to see if I was being consistently harsh or pissy or unimpressed, that way if I was, I could re-evaluate my book-blogging hobby. Thankfully, whatever was happening, I got out of it. No, I didn't keep track of how many books got which ratings (maybe I should do that for 2012!), but as a whole, I feel pretty good about the year, and while I inevitably had those periods where I didn't want to review at all, those feelings are part of the game and never persisted. Woot!
Of course, the flip side to that goal was to pay attention to where said books came from, that got mediocre to bad reviews. Which I did. I made some headway in curving my book intake, but not enough for it to make a dent in 2011. Maybe 2012….
5) Updating the Rating System: I did it, and I'm pretty happy with it. What I'm not happy about is the sheer amount of work that still needs to be done to give my old reviews the updated ratings. UGH. That's a goal for 2012, at least for the WordPress account. It's a heckuva lot of work, and I really wish I had access to these sites at my day-job, so that I could do a little bit during downtime, but if wishes were fishes, I'd be caught up. :)
6) Splitting Weekend Update: Before 2011, I used to have the link section and the discussion section ALL IN ONE POST. Now that I've split them, it's hard to believe I ever did it the other way! This was an easy change, and one I'm really happy with. Whether or not all of YOU are happy with it is another question!
Let's see, did I miss anything? I'd intended to read a comic book a day in 2011 like I did in 2010, but that just didn't happen. I got too wrapped up in the books I was reading and I wasn't really following all that many long-running comic series. Oh well. No biggie. But we'll talk more about those particular goals when I post my actual lists.
Any other goals for 2012?
1) Reduce number of books received by HALF (this includes purchases). So I received 144 books in 2011, which means in 2012, I'm only allowed to "get" 72 new books from any and all sources (including gifts). Sheesh… that's gonna be tough! Still though, that's 6 newbies a month, which is MORE than I can read in a month, and if I limit myself to what I can read, then I might be okay! And look at it this way, in 2010, I received 171 books, so I did reduce my intake, just not very drastically. :)
2) Get WordPress out of construction. I expanded to WordPress back in April, and since then, I've been laboring to get all the review posts into a more WordPress-friendly format as well as update all of those reviews with the new rating system (which on WordPress, includes a numerical value as well). I'd really, really like to get this DONE by April of this year, so that way I can remove that stupid "under construction" comment on the side-bar and start playing with the theme in earnest. :)
And that's it! Other than my new way of reading my TBR pile, I'm not going to go overboard. I really want to focus on READING this year, enjoying the stuff I read and tossing the things that don't hold my attention. I'm really looking forward to Theme Park, our 2012 book club, and I'm looking forward to blasting through the Mount TBR Challenge, which I'm hoping will put a sizable dent in my TBR pile. :) Who knows? Maybe I'll raise that goal!
What about all of you? Any reading goals you'd like to share? Evaluations of your 2011 goals? Remember: my 2011 reading list and Top Ten list is on its way, but until then, how'd 2011 work for you? Links are welcome!
So 2011. Not a bad year. I expanded to WordPress, jumped into Goodreads, and read quite a lot of books and comics. Here's how I did in comparison to last year's goals.
1) Reduce cross-posting to communities: before 2011, I would post a review, then whip up a summary version of said review, and post that summary version along with a link to the full version in any book-related community I thought would be appropriate. That, however, was a lot of work, and it's caused some issues in the past, so instead of cross-posting reviews, I started posting my monthly review round-ups every month, so that I'm still letting the communities know I'm here and I'm reviewing, but I'm not bombarding said communities with two, three posts a week (and it'd get really annoying for those members who followed all the same communities I posted in -- they'd see the same post two, three, four times!). So yay for fulfilling this goal!
2) Divorcing Authors: technically, I said that I wanted to stop buying installments of series I'm no longer enjoying, but divorcing authors sounds catchier, and I have Lurve a la Mode to thank for that phrase (I think). And in truth, I could've done better, but there's a part of me that likes giving authors second chances, and in some of those cases, those second chances really paid off. That said, I can think of three authors I've officially divorced this past year, authors who used to be absolute favorites of mine, but whose latter work is either sloppy and unpublishable and/or just no longer holding my attention. No, I'm not giving you any names. If you've followed this blog, you could probably guess who said authors are, but I'm not volunteering the info. :)
3) Reading poll selections by end of challenge month: EPIC FAIL. I had 47 books that made the Alphabet Soup polls last year (four books per month, 12 months a year, and one book was a repeat), and of those 47 (which includes winners), I read 30, DNF'd 3, and one of them, I decided I just didn't want to read at all. That left me with 13 unread poll selections. Okay, so maybe that failure isn't EPIC, but I didn't get stuff read in a timely manner, and if I had, perhaps I'd have 100% completion on this list, you know? That said, I learned a valuable lesson: despite that fact that I'd already bought the books that were nominated for the poll, and so in theory should be interested in them, I wasn't, and asking book club members to help me narrow each month's poll gave me some really odd selections I wasn't into at the time. On the flip side, sometimes I'd finally pick up a book just BECAUSE of the poll and it'd end up being a great match. But still… I don't feel great about this goal. Alas…
4) Pay attention to ratings: This time last year, I was really in a reviewing funk. I wasn't giving many positive reviews, and I was worried that I wasn't being fair. Some of the comments made to my Ender's Game review really had me wondering what I was doing, so I decided that in 2011, I'd pay attention to my ratings, to see if I was being consistently harsh or pissy or unimpressed, that way if I was, I could re-evaluate my book-blogging hobby. Thankfully, whatever was happening, I got out of it. No, I didn't keep track of how many books got which ratings (maybe I should do that for 2012!), but as a whole, I feel pretty good about the year, and while I inevitably had those periods where I didn't want to review at all, those feelings are part of the game and never persisted. Woot!
Of course, the flip side to that goal was to pay attention to where said books came from, that got mediocre to bad reviews. Which I did. I made some headway in curving my book intake, but not enough for it to make a dent in 2011. Maybe 2012….
5) Updating the Rating System: I did it, and I'm pretty happy with it. What I'm not happy about is the sheer amount of work that still needs to be done to give my old reviews the updated ratings. UGH. That's a goal for 2012, at least for the WordPress account. It's a heckuva lot of work, and I really wish I had access to these sites at my day-job, so that I could do a little bit during downtime, but if wishes were fishes, I'd be caught up. :)
6) Splitting Weekend Update: Before 2011, I used to have the link section and the discussion section ALL IN ONE POST. Now that I've split them, it's hard to believe I ever did it the other way! This was an easy change, and one I'm really happy with. Whether or not all of YOU are happy with it is another question!
Let's see, did I miss anything? I'd intended to read a comic book a day in 2011 like I did in 2010, but that just didn't happen. I got too wrapped up in the books I was reading and I wasn't really following all that many long-running comic series. Oh well. No biggie. But we'll talk more about those particular goals when I post my actual lists.
Any other goals for 2012?
1) Reduce number of books received by HALF (this includes purchases). So I received 144 books in 2011, which means in 2012, I'm only allowed to "get" 72 new books from any and all sources (including gifts). Sheesh… that's gonna be tough! Still though, that's 6 newbies a month, which is MORE than I can read in a month, and if I limit myself to what I can read, then I might be okay! And look at it this way, in 2010, I received 171 books, so I did reduce my intake, just not very drastically. :)
2) Get WordPress out of construction. I expanded to WordPress back in April, and since then, I've been laboring to get all the review posts into a more WordPress-friendly format as well as update all of those reviews with the new rating system (which on WordPress, includes a numerical value as well). I'd really, really like to get this DONE by April of this year, so that way I can remove that stupid "under construction" comment on the side-bar and start playing with the theme in earnest. :)
And that's it! Other than my new way of reading my TBR pile, I'm not going to go overboard. I really want to focus on READING this year, enjoying the stuff I read and tossing the things that don't hold my attention. I'm really looking forward to Theme Park, our 2012 book club, and I'm looking forward to blasting through the Mount TBR Challenge, which I'm hoping will put a sizable dent in my TBR pile. :) Who knows? Maybe I'll raise that goal!
What about all of you? Any reading goals you'd like to share? Evaluations of your 2011 goals? Remember: my 2011 reading list and Top Ten list is on its way, but until then, how'd 2011 work for you? Links are welcome!