{"id":13,"date":"2016-01-31T12:03:03","date_gmt":"2016-01-31T17:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.frowl.org\/worstblog\/?p=13"},"modified":"2016-01-31T12:03:03","modified_gmt":"2016-01-31T17:03:03","slug":"renatas-2016-reading-resolutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.frowl.org\/worstblog\/2016\/01\/31\/renatas-2016-reading-resolutions\/","title":{"rendered":"Renata’s 2016 Reading Resolutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the spirit of RA For All <\/a>and other bloggers, I’m setting some reading resolutions! I read pretty quickly, and I read a lot. People (especially non-librarian pals) are often impressed by my GoodReads totals. But, I’m going to take a moment to explain what goes into my reading life, because a lot of my reading is already necessarily locked into pretty specific books.<\/p>\n

As a co-host of the Worst Bestsellers<\/a> podcast, I’m committed to read 24 books a year (more or less). Pretty much all of those books are not things I would ever pick up on my own. Often, I think that’s a good thing for my life as a librarian–I think it’s valuable to read widely to be familiar with popular books of different genres. (I’m not saying, for example, that every librarian needs to go out and read Fifty Shades of Grey<\/em>, but I know that after reading it I had a very different idea of what it was about and what its appeal factors are than I did from just reading blog posts about it.)<\/p>\n

As for booktalk books–every month of the school year my co-worker and I go out and share books with the local 7th and 8th graders. Every month I need 3 new books to share. We’ll call that another 24 books a year. Three a month doesn’t sound like a lot, but it can be pretty tricky to find a diverse collection of books that are appropriate for 7th and 8th graders but also engaging. A lot of YA books with really compelling hooks are really pitched at high schoolers, and I don’t feel comfortable bringing them into 7th grade classrooms. And plenty of stuff that is appropriate sounds too “babyish” to compel 7th graders to go out and pick it up off the shelf. Plus, I like to bring in a good blend of books including stories with diverse characters (especially diverse characters on the cover, so I can hold them up and kids can immediately see someone who looks like them on the cover), nonfiction (a lot of young readers really prefer true<\/em> stories), and graphic novels (a great grab for some kinds of reluctant readers). So to find three good books to bring, I might have to try out ten. (Sometimes I’ll DNF a book after a few chapters if it becomes immediately apparent that a book is going to have too much “YA” content.)<\/p>\n

At the library where I work, we have a Reading Wildly <\/a>book club where each month we have to read one book from a designated genre. This is another great way to make myself read outside my comfort zone, and also adds another 12 books\/year to my personal quota.<\/p>\n

Then, I’m in a book club that meets once a month-ish. We’ll call that another 10 books\/year I have to read. (I mean I guess I technically don’t have<\/em> to, but I’d get a little side-eye if I showed up every month and just drank wine without talking about the book!)<\/p>\n

So, that’s a minimum of 70\/books a year that I have to read, although as mentioned, it ends up being more just to find the right blend of junior high books. But, I read more than that anyway. According to GoodReads, last year I read 272 books.<\/a> What are my reading resolutions beyond what I have to read?<\/p>\n