Happy New Year! Before the first day of 2013 officially ends, I thought I’d put this post up now before I work on my 2013 wish list and my first Required Reading for 2013. Oh, and of course, catch up on the reviews. :) I still plan on writing reviews for the other books I read in 2012, promise!

Image from we heart it

The start of the year is always the best time to join challenges, yes? 2012 saw some sort of change in my reading habits, so I’m adjusting my goals for this year to fit those new habit and preferences more comfortably. Because I believe that there should be no pressure when it comes to something like reading, plus I feel that 2013 will be a busy year for everything else in my life. I’m taking advice from people like Dr Hauschka…no wait, I meant, general advice from everyone else to take it easy and just enjoy reading. :)

So! Here are my reading goals and challenges for 2013. :)

52 Books

I am lowering the number of books I plan to read this year significantly because like I said, I’ve don’t read as fast as I used to. I blame my social life for that. Also, I’m starting to venture to other genres, and I tend to read and absorb instead of just read through. So I’ll take it easy with the number and just aim for 52 books — 1 book a week. :) Should be easy enough.

5 Classics

As usual, there’s the 5 classics book goal for the year. I only got to 2 in 2012, but I hope to finally reach 5 this year. Well, okay, I got to 5 in 2011, but three of them were children’s classics and two were rereads, so I hope this year, I would tackle new ones. :)

4 Chunksters

I’m trying to embrace the reality of doorstoppers, and you know, not fear very thick books. Heh. I read 2 of them last year, and I want to read more of them in 2013. I intend to read one every quarter, and so far, here’s my list:

• Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
• Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
• Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet
• The Passage by Justin Cronin

20 Filipino Books

I was surprised that I got to more than 20 Filipino books this year. I thank the Filipino ReaderCon and author friends and friends from local publishing houses for this, because I got access to more local fiction. I look forward to more of that this year. :)

Required Reading 2013

I will still be doing Required Reading for 2013, especially since other friends have started doing it, too, with their own variations sometimes. It helps me when I plan what books I will read in the month. Watch out for my first Required Reading post this week!

The Reread Factor

I enjoyed rereading several books last year, mostly because they’re less pressure reads and I find that rereading old favorites give me comfort and fresh insight on why I liked the book when I first read it. I will still do this every now and then, but I won’t be setting a goal or counting them anymore. I will probably post about them sometimes, though.

I thought of setting some blogging goals, but quite honestly, I think the blogging has taken a bit of a back seat in the past year. I will still post reviews and some of my features, but there are no specific goals for the blog just yet. I think, in 2013, I will just enjoy my reading and not be too pressured to always blog. :)

Are you planning to join challenges this year? I’m curious! Share them in the comments so we can encourage each other as 2013 unfolds. :) Happy new year, everyone!

Ahoy there! Greetings from 2012! :) It’s been 2012 on my side of the world for more than 12 hours, and it’s been quiet so far. But that may be because I’m alone at home right now. :P The best time to blog is always at the start of the year, so I’m going to make use of all that optimistic energy by getting as many posts in now and not just follow this link with all this spare time.

So anyway, a new year means new reading challenges. And if you know me, I’m all about reading challenges. Or, okay, not really, but I like challenging myself to see how far I can go. I’ve got some interesting challenges I’m going to join this year, and instead of making a post/page for each, I thought I’d put them all in one. :) (Oh, and here’s my 2011 reading statistics, if you’re curious :D)

Well, not necessarily buy... :P

Reading Quantity – >125

I don’t really set the number of books I’m going to read since I believe it’s about quality and not quantity, but I am going to try to top last year’s number (125). I don’t know if I can get to 150, but I will try. Let’s see. :) Print books and ebooks will still be here, but I also really want to start trying out more audiobooks this time. They’re fantastic in the gym. :D

Classics – 5 books in 2012

It was very rewarding to finally reach the five book goal for my classics reading challenge. This year, I’m still sticking to five, but I will try to read classic books I haven’t read yet, and no more thin novella-like books. This tentative list contains Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, 1984 by George Orwell and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I won’t decide on the fifth one just yet, because I’m still debating if I will finally read Vanity Fair.

Books written by Filipino authors – 20

I didn’t reach my goal last year, but 15 isn’t a bad number. This year, I will try reading the 20 again and hope I get to reach that goal this time around. I think it may be easier now since there’s Flipreads so there are more Filipino ebooks now, and I still have some leftover Filipino books on my TBR pile. Also, I will make it a point to review these books I read.

2-digit TBR pile

This is going to be a little harder than my other goals because…well, book-hoarding is an addiction! But anyway, this year I will try to reduce my TBR pile from 130+ to somewhere below 100. If I can maintain that at the end of the 2012, then good, but I’ll be happy if I manage to reach a 2-digit number for my TBR pile sometime within the year and go back to 3 digits again because of book acquisition. :D

Chunkster Challenge – Chubby Chunkster: 4 chunkster books

Since I read more YA than I read non-YA books, I’ve always felt a little intimidated by those oh-so-thick books. With the amount of books on my TBR pile, I feel like anything more than 400 pages is too much of a time investment. But it’s time to stop thinking that way and start reading those awfully thick books that everyone has been raving about. So this year, I am joining my first Chunkster challenge, at the Chubby Chunkster level, which is 4 Chunkster books. Here’s my list:

• Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet (976 pages)
• A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R.R. Martin (835 pages)
• The Passage by Justin Cronin (766 pages)
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (465 pages)

Required Reading 2012

I enjoyed setting monthly books for this challenge, so I’m doing it again this year. Watch out for my first Required Reading post of 2012 coming this week! :)

Re-read Challenge – 10

This is really just for me and my obsession at finding out if the books I liked/loved during the first read. I want to know if I would still like/love them when I read them again. Ignore me, I’m just OC (but if you want to join me, I’ll post about it :D).

Book Acquisition: Borrow instead of Buy

This isn’t a reading challenge, but more of an acquisition challenge. LOL. This year, I plan to really keep track of the books I buy for myself. I tried doing that last year but lost steam later on. This year, I will do better with that, and for books that I kind of want to read but not sure if I’d want to have a copy, I’ve resolved to just borrow. I will only allow myself to buy books for auto-buy authors, and pre-order of books that I really, really want — preorder because it’s cheaper (see this list).

Blogging: Interact and participate more

I will continue to interact with other bloggers and I will up the ante this year. Which means, well, leaving more comments, and participating in Twitter conversations and things like that. I will also participate in Armchair BEA again, and Book Blogger Appreciation Week too (I missed joining BBAW last year because I was too busy).

This also includes participating in local things, like in my book club’s discussions and Filipino Book Blogger events. :) It looks like it will be an exciting year for us, too. :)

Blogging: Come up with blog features and fun stuff

I think it’s time to have some changes in this blog and post things other than reviews. This means some more author interviews, maybe some more giveaways (when I have budget, of course), and then some guest posts here. I’ve got some things under wraps — I will post about it soon. :)

And that’s it! I think these things are pretty doable. I’m not going to stress myself out — I plan to have as much fun (even more, if possible) this year with my reading like I did last year. Let’s do this!

Share your reading goals in 2012 in the comments! I’d love to know what you’re up to this year. :)