Happy New Year, readers. I’ve thought a lot about what I want to do with my reading life in 2019. 2018 was the year of leaving the classroom and of making measured progress on my dissertation and am set, so long as I manage to get everything done that I need to get done, to graduate in May. These moves definitely changed my reading life, and have affected what I’d like to attempt with my reading life moving forward.

So a couple of things I have in mind for this year.

1. Read diversely. My reading list is pretty diverse already, but I want to, for me, read books from cultures that I’m not as familiar with.
2. Read nonfiction. I’m leaving this one pretty broad on purpose. I ended 2018 reading more nonfiction, specifically books around the experiences of marginalized people in different places. [E.g. After a conversation with the woman who maintains my locs about the history of the slave trade that she learned growing up in West Africa, I really want to read about slavery from that perspective.]
3. Read picture books. Our adoption journey is moving forward, and I want to make sure I have a foundation in stories that we can read to and with our child.
4. Read less. Think more. I want to spend more time doing close reading. This might come from the fact that I’ve started the data analysis of the books for my dissertation so I’m knee deep in language right now. It’s fascinating and I want to do more of it.

Really, this list is about being more intentional in my reading life. For the first five months of the year, I’m not going to have a lot of time to read, and I want to make sure that I’m reading the things I want to read for myself, not for other people, which is what I spent a lot of my time in the classroom doing.

Do you do reading resolutions? If you do, what are some of yours?