Top Ten Tuesday #15: Top Ten Bookish Habits I Want to Start & Quit

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week, participating bloggers create a list corresponding to a particular theme. This week, we are exploring “ten bookish things I want to quit or have quit” – this can be series abandoned, books not finished, general bad bookish habits… etc. I am focusing on bookish habits specifically and have tried to select ten that are either good habits I wish to implement or bad habits that I need to stop.

Sorry my TTT is coming so late on this Tuesday evening – might even be Wednesday already for some of you. I have been working lots more, which is good, but while my last position lent itself more easily to the occasional (okay, not so occasional) blog post during working hours, this job really does not give me that opportunity at all. I’ve not really scheduled posts too frequently in the past but I think I will have to begin doing that in order to be able to continue blogging and providing new reviews and content, while also making money (to buy more books of course).

This leads me well into my first bad bookish habit and the rest of my list…

1. I have not been giving this blog the attention that it deserves and I have been feeling so bad about it. I really want to make some changes so that I can read and review much more for you all.
2. Here is my dirty little secret… Please, please don’t unfollow me… I fold down pages. Full on dog-ear. WHY DO I DO THIS!?!?! I have bookmarks. I have other things I could use as bookmarks. I am ashamed. This is probably my most egregious bad bookish habit and I pledge to try to quit it.
3. I need to learn how to DNF books. I never abandon a book even when I can tell that it is not for me. I just feel bad about it and that maybe it will get better if I give it a chance. I am pretty sure I’ve never full on totally quit a book, even if I have to take a long break I always come back to it. There are SO many books I want to read and I will never get through my TBR if I don’t learn to do this.
4. I need to really organize my TBR list better and possibly purge some of the books. It’s just too long right now and it only keeps growing.
5. I need to… go on a book buying ban? Is such a thing possible? Maybe just buying fewer books and trying to limit myself a little bit, despite how tempting the bargain books section is…
6. I would like to begin working more reading into my schedule. The weird thing is that when I was in law school and so, so busy with classes, internships, and studying, I read lots more than I do now because I would have gone crazy otherwise. I had lots of good time pockets during the day where I could knock out a few chapters at a time. I need to find a way to create similar pockets in a more ordinary day.
7. I am very unrealistic with my ARC requests and I need to be better about that. I make tons of requests and get a bunch of them approved and then never get the chance to timely read and review which defeats the purpose.
8. I would like to use the library more often, to save some money, take out more audio books, use the inter-library request system in my county which really increases the amount of books that I can access, and just generally take advantage of how great my local library is.
9. I guess this one is a bad bookish habit on the part of my husband but would be a good habit for me to implement. This man is one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met but he just does not read! I bought him The Martian and he loved that. He’s reading Ready Player One now but I don’t think he’s as enthused although I loved it. So his bad habit is barely reading and my good habit to start would be continuing to search for books that will encourage him to read more.
10. I need to organize my (many, many) bookshelves. I need to really organize my entire house but that’s a whole other story. But sometimes I kind of just come home from the bookstore and the books just sit in their bags and don’t really find their way onto a shelf. Then I forget about them and just keep buying more books. I suppose this goes along with using the library more often too.

I know, I know, I know I have not been up to par with this blog lately and I really do not want to disappoint anybody. I really want to work on making more time for this and getting more entries up soon. Please trust me that it is coming, and in the meantime let’s have a good discussion about your TTT lists below.