New Years Resolutions

Bookish Musings is a feature here at Beautiful Bookish Butterflies that allows one of us to share our thoughts and opinions, talk and discuss things happening in the book and blogging community or share a personal book related issue we have. Today, Amanda is talking about her New Years Resolutions.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Did everyone have a good festive season? I know I did, I did extremely well with all my presents and managed to pull off Christmas Dinner just in the nick of time. However, it was brought to my attention by my Mum to other day, and she mentioned how I never make New Year Resolutions anymore, because I always used to break them and it made me think.. Maybe I could make some Book Resolutions and see how well I stick to them instead, instead of the usual 'eat less chocolate' and 'lose weight' because I'm sorry, but I've received way to much food in general this Christmas to start wasting it all. So, here are my New Year Book Resolutions.

1. Don't Be Afraid to DNF Books: Last year, I only DNF four books, and when I say DNF, I actually mean put-down-for-now because I simply wasn't feeling them, but there were a few books last year, that in hinds sight, I probably should have put them down when it wasn't improving, or while I wasn't enjoying them instead of wasting my time. I was so torn between 'but the author should know I didn't enjoy the writing style or plot' and 'why waste time reading this when you can read that instead?' It was a testing time, but after much thought, this year, I'm going to use the 60-100 page rule. If I don't enjoy it more or the book doesn't improve by 100 pages, I'll be DNF'ing it.
2. Think Of The Book, Not The Cover: I did a post very recently talking about the circumstances on when I buy a sequel or not, and in it, I mentioned matching covers; well no more! I've already kick-started this resolution before Christmas when I ordered some on sale books and in the batch, I ordered Sister's Red and Sweetly, both by Jackson Pearce, yet they had the old, unmatching covers, but I still went and bought them. Why? Because it's about time I thought more about how much I want the book rather than the presentation of them on my shelves.
3. If At First You Don't Succeed, Try Again: I have been known to ditch an author when I didn't enjoy a book by them, which is wrong, because sometimes, it really isn't the author, sometimes, it's, the story itself, and really, if we all judged films that way, you think we'd have some of our most prized and loved films in the world? I don't think so. So, if at any point this year I read a book by an author and think 'meh', I vow to at least attempt to read a different book by that same author; second chances and everything.
4. Only Buy Books You Really Want: Damn, don't we all have a problem for buying books we've never heard of, but getting them because they look or sound amazing? It's a bad problem, and after my stocking up on books in the last week and currently, I'll be doing exactly that this year. I have books that I want to buy that get released this year, and that's great, I'll be buying them, but what about books that just look good, or sound pretty, what about those? Well, not so much. Money doesn't grow on trees, and motivation only comes around so often, so don't buy a book and then never read it. Buy a book and read it because you wanted it, desperately.
5. Hold a Giveaway: Yes, that's right, you heard me, I promise, I vow, I make it a- thing, that I will host a giveaway this year. When? I don't know. What will include? I don't know that either, but I know that I want to, because I'd like to hope that we'll have a really good year together on Book Badger, and you'll all deserve a shot at winning something as a thank you gift, AND, I'll even try and make it international. So, more of a thing I want to do rather than resolution, but hey ho, still makes sense.

What are some of your resolutions? What are you vowing to do in 2014? Leave your comments down below and I'll come and have a read of them. Here's to a fun and different year ahead of us.