For the final day of Blogmas, and we can’t believe it’s almost over, we thought it would be a good idea to look forward to 2017, and write about how we want our reading habits to change!

There are so many incredible books on our TBRs and sometimes how much there is to read completely overwhelms us! Luckily, Maddie and I are able to read around 10 books a month on busier months and up to 20 in the summer months, so we’re not too bad when it comes to making dents in TBRs, but we’re constantly adding to them with new releases or series we’ve only just heard about, so it can be hard. At the beginning of the year we thought long and hard about the kinds of books we wanted to be reading and how we could maximise the percentage of books we actually enjoy out of all the books we read in a year. Although we made progress, we still have a way to go, so here are a few of the changes we want to make to our reading habits!

1. DON’T READ SEQUELS YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT

Every year we make a video listing the series that we won’t finish, but we just end up reading the majority of those sequels anyway! It’s frustrating because it got to the point where we valued finishing a series over enjoying a series. Although some of the series turned out to benefit from a second chance 9 times out of 10 our gut feelings were right and we ending up not enjoying the sequel(s)! Eg. the Mara Dyer series, and the Throne of Glass series.

2. START DNFing

If you’re unaware, DNF stands for Did Not Finish and as well as DNFing series, we want to start DNFing more books that we’re not enjoying. I’m a big believer in getting to the read, but sometimes you just can’t and you need to stop. That’s okay! You can still add that book to your Goodreads page if you’re concerned about your Reading Challenge. Life’s too short to read books you don’t enjoy. There’s far too much choice out there, there’s no point wasting precious reading hours on something that isn’t worth my time.

3. TAKE CHANCES!

Looking at the reviews on Goodreads or searching around the blogosphere for other opinions is fun, but not always accurate to your reading experience. Even if you really trust the reviewer because you have similar tastes, the only way you’re going to know for sure if you’ll like something is if you try it yourself! You might just miss a hidden gem!

4. READ THE BOOKS YOU OWN

We’re notoriously bad at reading the books we actually own. The last time we bought a book then came home and started reading it immediately was Radio Silence by Alice Oseman, which was ages ago and was probably the only instance of that happening in THE ENTIRE YEAR. We want to prioritise getting through some of our physical TBRs! Last year I managed to read all of the books I had on the shelves in my room and Maddie did the same, then we swapped and started on the books we hadn’t read in each other’s rooms. But obviously we kept buying more books and things got reshuffled! I want to make a list of all the books I own and haven’t read, but I’m scared of how long it’s going to be!