2017 #Reading And #Blogging Goals

Yeah, I know most people were posting these kinds of posts last weekend, but I had other things I wanted to post first. Besides, we're only about a week in to the new year, so I'm not that far behind.

Anyway...

I set a reading goal of 216 books for 2016. I ended up reading over 300. 317 to be exact. So... Yeah... I read quite a few more books than my goal for the year... Again!

If your reading total for 2016 came nowhere near mine, please don't feel bad for not reading as many books as me. People read at different speeds, and of course the length of books needs to be taken in to consideration too. Not to mention, other commitments you may have in your life will influence the time you have available for reading. What I'm basically trying to say is, it doesn't matter if your total for the year was nowhere near mine, because the important thing is that you are getting some reading in. It's more important for you to be reading something, and enjoying the act of reading.

So... As I was saying... I posted my December book reviews post last week, but if you want to take a look at all the details for what I read in 2016, you can do so by going here, and checking out my year in books. You never know, you may find one you'd like to read.

By the way, as I mention in the monthly review posts I started doing on this blog, the format reviewed may not be the format I actually read, so please disregard the format. Also, I read across multiple genres and age ranges, so you should always check if a book is suitable for the intended reader or not, especially if children are involved.

Anyhow, I did consider making my reading goal larger this year, but I have a few things I'd like to achieve this year that will most likely result in less reading time, so I'm not going to do that. Instead I'm setting a reading goal of 217 books. Some of the things will be ongoing, so if I find this year that those things take away less of my reading time than I expected, I may up the reading goal by more next year. We'll see. Either way, my reading goal for this year is 217 books.

My other reading goal for 2016 was to make a point of reading some of the books I've had on my Kindle for ages, since I've had some of the books waiting to be read ever since I got my first Kindle a few years ago. I knew I'd end up reading several newer books too, and would probably add books to my to-read shelf on Goodreads as fast as I read others. But my aim was to focus at least a large chunk of my reading time on those books I've had on my Kindle the longest. Well, I did an okay job with doing that. Not as well as I'd hoped, since shiny new books kept catching my attention, but I did get a reasonable sized chunk of the books I've had for a while read in 2016. I plan to continue trying to focus at least a good chunk of my reading time for 2017 on getting those older books read too. I'm hoping to do as good of a job as I did in 2016, if not better. I'm joining the reading challenge one of the groups I'm a member of over on Goodreads is running for the first quarter of 2017, which is to tackle the books that have been on your to read shelf for three months or longer, so that will hopefully get me started with it... It worked last year, anyway.

I also did the A-Z book title reading challenge the same Goodreads group does each year. I completed 2016s challenge before the year was half over. You can see my post about finishing it here. I'll be doing the challenge with them again this year, and will post when I'm done. Let's see how many months it takes me this time.

OK, now for the blogging part...

You may have noticed that the way I do my blog posts has changed slightly over the past year or so.

I'd said in early 2015that I was posting a random post on Monday, a writing one on Wednesday, and a "Furkid Friday" post on Friday. Well, the Wednesday and Friday posts have continued as planned, though with some tweaks to the titles to make use of hashtags. But I started seporating the Monday ones in to more spacific topic based posts in late 2015, and since that seemed to work well, continued doing so throughout 2016, with hashtags being introduced at some point during the year. This generally resulted in me having enough to say to cover more than one extra post a week, hence the addition of posts on Sundays, and sometimes other days too.

In 2017, I plan to continue with my current blogging schedule of posts about random things on Sundays and Mondays (the topics of which will be determined by what I want to share), posts about writing related things on Wednesdays, and pet themed posts on Fridays, with the odd post on other days if I'm getting too long of a backlist of things I want to post about, or if I want/need to post about something on a spacific day. I'll also continue to make use of hashtags in the titles when possible/appropriate, in hopes they'll do their job and improve visibility for my blog. They might not do much, but it's worth a try, right?

By the way, if you click on a link in any of my old posts and it either doesn't work, or takes you to somewhere that's obviously the wrong place... Sorry! I did think about going through my old posts and checking the links. Loads of people recommend doing so. But I've done over 3000 posts, many of which contain links (often several links). I mean, I did over 200 posts last year alone. So, as much as I'd love to make sure all my old links are working for you, I can tell you now that it's not about to happen any time soon. Sorry, but that's how it is. Quite frankly, just the thought of checking so many posts makes me want to run away, whimpering in distress, with my Metaphorical tail between my legs. So, like I said, sorry, but you'll just have to try the link, and if it doesn't work, Google what you were looking for or something.

Anyway... To summarize...

Reading goals:
*Read at least 217 books.
*Focus at least a large chunk of my reading on those books I've had waiting to be read for longest.
*Complete the A-Z title reading challenge.

Blogging goals:
*Continue to post writing themed posts on Wednesdays.
*Continue to post "Furkid Friday" posts on Fridays.
*Continue to post about other things on Sundays and/or Mondays (preferably both).
*Make use of hashtags in post titles, in hopes of increasing post visibility during social media shares.