Top 10 Bookish/Blogging Resolutions

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As I’ve mentioned before, I love makin’ me some lists, so Tuesday is rapidly becoming my favorite day of the week.

So here we go: my resolutions for this New Year.

1. Comment more

As a person who makes a living convincing others of the greatness of inbound marketing, I know how vital it is to participate in discussions on industry blogs.

Although it would be great to “get found” by a famous book blogger (hi out there!) who then makes me popular with all of their readers, chances are good I’ll have to develop some of my rep on my own. This means getting involved in conversations on the ten or so blogs that I follow.

And of course my comments need to be something more valuable than “Great post!”

2. Discover/read male bloggers

Although the female to male ratio for books I reviewed in 2010 were pretty good (20 female, 22 male), I don’t subscribe to any blogs written by men.

I don’t know the ratio of female to male book bloggers, but based on the blogs I follow, it’s pretty skewed in the female direction.

Different genders often interpret the same stories or experiences in different ways, and I’m missing the male perspective. I’d love to find at least a few male bloggers, but I don’t know where to start.

3. Read out of my comfort zone

As I mention in my bio, I tend to lean away from non-fiction in favor of YA literature, historical fiction, and fantasy (the exception being psychological studies/books).

So I want to branch out this year. Dystopian literature is a sore point for me; I’m never satisfied with the stories. I keep thinking that if I could just find the perfect dystopian novel, I’d love the genre. But so far nothing’s caught my fancy.

I’m also interested in exploring the steampunk genre a little more, but they all seem to be connected back into dystopian — so I’m stuck going in circles. This year I hope to make some headway.

4. Try out BookSwim

Since all of my paycheck goes toward rent and food and the occasional outing, I just don’t have the spare cash to buy books the way I could in college.

I have borrowing privileges at my local library, but overall I’ve found the selection to be underwhelming. Like many small town libraries, mine has a great selection of children’s books and juvenile fiction, a decent smattering of YA, and an astonishing amount of large print mysteries circa 1970-85 (Victoria Holt, anyone?). Generally if a book I want to read has been printed post-2007, I am (excuse the expression) shit outta luck.

This is extremely frustrating to me, because most of the books I want to read are either too new (or too old!) to be at the library. So this year I’m planning to research and try out BookSwim. It’s like Netflix, only with books, and for the price of one new hardcover book I can read as many books per month as I want (but I can only have three at any given time). Just thinking about it sets my little heart a’flutter.

Not sure how extensive BookSwim’s selection is, but if they’ve got books from 2010, they’re already doing better than my local library.

This’ll be interesting

I think my first year of blogging has taught me a lot of lessons, and that my writing and reviewing have improved a ton since my first blog entry. I’ve learned what to talk about, and what to leave to the reader to discover.

Hopefully the resolutions I make and keep this year will make my second year of blogging even better than the first!

Anyone know any good male book bloggers I could check out (their blogs, that is, not them)? Anyone have any experience with BookSwim? And for the love of all that is holy, can anyone recommend a dystopian novel that doesn’t make me want to scoop my eyeballs out with a spoon?