Project 2011: Reading

So, my first proper post in a while is going to be about the coming new year.

I have discovered over the past few months while studying that my time is very limited, and in order to accomplish anything at all it has to be planned and well structured, and for me that has not been easy.
A year away from the structure of university and a lot of time spent out of employment has meant that time often slips me by, and so I have decided to set myself a few challenges for 2011, I am deciding to call them 'intense resolutions', because they are a bit more in depth then 'eat less chocolate', and I am determined to fulfill them!

They fall into three categories, Reading, Knitting, and Beauty.

Picture from my iPhone last week when moving my bookshelves, thats a lotta books to shift!

Reading is going to involve reading one book per week from my collection. As it stands I have a list of 92 books which I own but have either never read at all, have never finished, or have only read for university and can't really remember them all that well. In 2011 I hope to reduce that by 52, and here is the important bit, NOT BUY ANY MORE!!
 It really does startle me that almost a quarter of my books I cannot remember or do not know what happens in the final chapters, ridiculous! So I shall read them, and I can completely justify this as being legitimate time spent because as my lecturer told us this term, librarians must be well read!

Even more books from the book move!

Now, you are probably wondering why I haven't cut that down to 52 books, and the simple reason is that I am a bit picky and I know that if I limited them and chose one per week, for say september now in december, then I will not want to read that book then, I have also selected 92 books that are of different genres and length so that on weeks when I have deadlines I can read lighter fluffier stuff or a novella or choose to finish the last 5 chapters of something, as opposed to an epic piece like Anna Karenina which would be more suited to the holidays (Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky I am looking to you for Easter's double bank holiday weekends, a royal wedding and Crime and Punishment go hand in hand I think!)

This is the key piece of kit for managing this task, The Moleskine book journal. In the front are a few pages which are for planning, where I am going to write which week I read what, and then there are sections for reviewing each book you have read in an alphabetical section. At the back there are also sections where you can add your own labels, and I have added these:

This first tab (the pages we are open on) contains an alphabetical list of which books are in the challenge, the next tab contains my wish list, which I will add to whenever I want to buy a book and can't because of the challenge. The next tab is a list of all my books, this is just for personal reference. The final tab I have stickied are for reviews, where I will review any books which spill over from the official review section.

That semi-filled in review is for Fight Club, which will be my last book of 2010,
 about 60 pages to go, but its great so it wont be hard.

I am allowing myself two extra rules:
1. I am allowed to read library books which are not in my collection, if and only if I have completed my book for that week. Ideally if I have finished a book I would like to move onto another one to complete, but that might not be possible.
2: I may read the book in question in audio or ebook format, one of my other challenges will be knitting related, and reading a paper copy of a book while knitting is not the easiest thing in the world, so this allows for that!

So that is part one of project 2011, I am hoping that this will also provide me with lots of book reviews for this blog, as it is called '& Ink Stains' for a reason, one which often goes unfulfilled. I hope to post a list of the books which I will be attempting to read on on of the pages at the top of the page, crossing them out as I go, so keep an eye out for that!

Wish me luck!!