Today’s Top Ten Tuesday was Top Ten Resolutions for 2021, so here are my 10 Bookish Goals for the year! I have a couple very general ones, and a couple very specific ones, so hopefully I can do at least most of them!

1. Read 150 books this year

I read 150 books last year, so I’m aiming for that again. I think I’ll almost definitely be able to do that again, but who really knows with the state of the world right now what’s going to happen this year? I’ll try my best; I’m currently at 8 books, which is 3 ahead of schedule, so that bodes well!

2. Read all the completed Jane Austen books, (and possibly the unfinished works as well)

I’ve read Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Persuasion before, but I want to reread those and read her other books. I love Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, so I’m excited to reread those, and I didn’t enjoy Sense and Sensibility at all, but I’m hoping my opinion will have changed in the past two years. I’m definitely looking forward to reading Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Mansfield Park for the first times. I might also try to read Sanditon and Austen’s Juvinilia, but that’ll depend on when I finish the first 6.

3. Finish reading War and Peace, and read Anna Karenina

Hopefully I finish War and Peace this month, but I definitely want to read that and Anna Karenina this year. I’m loving the former so far; I just keep getting stuck on the sections that are pure battle, which I find it a little hard to focus on, but I’ve been getting better at that as I get further through, so hopefully my speed will improve as I get later in the book!

4. Read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

I’ve been meaning to read The Lord of the Rings for years, but after reading The Hobbit when I was younger and hating it, I haven’t been able to bring myself to do so. Nevertheless, I’m determined to finally power through, starting with rereading The Hobbit, which I last read six and a half years ago, so hopefully I’ll like it better now.

5. Read at least 5 books in translation

The aforementioned Tolstoy books will be two of those, but in addition to those I want to read at least three more translated books. I also need to get around to the second and third books of the Mirror Visitor Quartet, so those would hypothetically make up another two.

6. Read at least 3 Shakespeare plays

I always love reading Shakespeare, but I never actually do it on my own time, so I’d like to try and start doing that this year. I want to reread A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and other than that it’s pretty up in the air which plays I’ll read.

7. Read at least 2 books in French

I’ve taken three years of French, but I dropped it this year to take German. I’d like to maintain some semblance of literacy in it, so I want to read at least two books in the language this year, even if they’re quite short. Right now I’m thinking they’ll be L’Etranger (which I’ve read in English, but not in French), and a Harry Potter book, but I’m not really sure.

8. Read more poetry

I love poetry, but like with Shakespeare, I never really read it on my own time. I want to read more work from Emily Dickinson (my favorite poet), and Edgar Allan Poe (my second favorite poet), but I also want to expand past those two and discover new poets. This is one of the vaguest of my goals, since honestly reading any poetry will be reading more poetry than last year.

9. Review all books read, even if it’s super short

Even if it’s just a few sentences, I want to make an effort to record my thoughts about every book I read. I am already failing at that, but I’m still hopeful about this goal. It may be foolishly optimistic, but I’m going to try!

10. Maintain blog schedule (at least most of the time)

I’m still in school, so I can’t guarantee two posts a week every week, but I definitely want to be a lot more consistent than I was this past fall, when I kind of fell off altogether for 2 months. I have a month off in February, when I’m going to try and pre-write a significant portion of my posts for the spring, which will hopefully aid in that.

*Bonus: Post consistently on my bookstagram account*

Since this doesn’t really have as much to do with actually reading as the rest of the items on the list, I’m including it as a bonus to the previous ten goals. This is something that I definitely want to do, because I enjoy it, and it really does not take that much effort to post most days while at home. When I’m at school it’s harder, but I’m going to try and take a ton of photos in advance.

Those are my 10 (11) Bookish Goals for 2021! They definitely vary a lot, but I’m hoping to complete all of them. One thing I’m going to do to try and accomplish them is create Reading Challenges for each of them on Storygraph so I can have my progress on each of them readily available. No clue if that will actually help me to accomplish them, but at least it will help me to assess them throughout the year, and readjust if necessary!

Do you have any book-related resolutions?