Hi everyone! It's Clarisse, this is ClarisseReads,
and today I'm going to share
with you my reading goals for the first
quarter of 2017. You may be wondering,
"Clarisse, why did you decide to set goals
quarterly instead of yearly this year?"
Well, as you may know, reading goals were
a massive part of my reading year last
year, and really liked having that. I felt
like it gave my reading a bit more
direction. But at the same time I did
find some problems with it.
First of all, I noticed that I didn't do
well focusing on multiple goals at one
time. I really preferred just thinking
about one, two or three goals at a period of
time and just forgetting about the others
for a while. And second of all I didn't
necessarily find the same things
important at the beginning of the year
as I did
by the end of the year; it's hard to know
what type of books you're going to want to
prioritize for the whole rest of the
year and try to figure that out just at
the beginning. So I thought that maybe
quarterly goals would be a good
alternative to this. It still gives me
goals and something to work towards when
it comes to my reading, but it also lets me
be a bit more focused and only think
about two or three goals at a time
rather than six or seven.
It's also less likely that the goals are
eventually going to seem irrelevant
or unimportant
if only planning them a couple of months
in advance. So now that I have "why I
decided to do this" out of the way, it's
time that I moved on to the actual goals
that I plan to work towards this January
to March. My first goal for this quarter
is to reread books.This is actually one of
the goals that I set for myself last
year but I didn't end up rereading as
much as I wanted to. But even though this
was my goal last year, I feel like it's still
relevant this year, and it's still
something I want to strive towards
because I do want to eventually get to a
point where I'm rereading more often and
I know all of my favorite books
extremely well. My specific goal for this
is to reread at least six books in
this first quarter.
There are few books that actually really
do plan to reread and I want to
prioritize reading this quarter, and the
first of those is the entire original Mistborn
trilogy by Brandon Sanderson,
including The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension,
and The Hero of Ages.
This is a series that I consider to be
my favorite series ever, and I say
that to everybody, and yet I've only read it
once. But I recently bought myself
physical copies of this series - because I
never actually own physical copies of it
before - in the wonderful UK editions, so
I'm especially motivated right now to
read them. The other series that I want
to prioritize rereading this first
quarter is the Locke and Key series by
Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez. My
motivations for rereading this series
are very similar to my motivations for
reading the Mistborn series. Again, it's
a series that I tell everyone is my
favorite, specifically it's my favorite
comic series ever,
and yet, again, I've only read it once. And
also I just recently finished acquiring
all the physical copies in the master
editions, and so I'm, again, extremely
motivated to reread this because of that.
There's the first one, the second one and
the third one. Each of these would
contain two of the trade paperbacks. In case you
aren't aware, the Mistborn series is a high
fantasy series, while Locke and Key is a
dark fantasy horror series, and I don't
even read horror normally, but I love
this. Another series I'd like to reread if
I feel up to it, though it isn't a priority,
is the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman,
just because there are a lot of parts of
it that I'd like to go back on and read
now that I know how the entire series
ends and I just know I'm going to enjoy
more on the reread. So maybe I'll reread it this
quarter, maybe I won't, but I do plan to
reread it sometime soon regardless. My
second goal for this quarter is to
reduce my physical TBR. As you may know, I
do have this ongoing goal to reduce my
to be read pile in general though that
does include ebooks. And while I do want
to get through my ebooks, my main
priority is actually to reduce my
physical TBR, because of my greater goal
to reduce physical clutter and to reduce
my possessions to things that I really
really do love. So my goal this quarter
is to reduce my physical TBR by 5. I'll
put the current size of my TBR on the
screen somewhere because I'm
pre-filming this
and so I don't know how big my TBR is
going to be when this video goes up, but
whatever this number is, my aim is to get
this number minus five. So if for
whatever reason this quarter I buy a new
physical book, that means that I also
have to read an additional book, but this
also means that reduction of my TBR does
not need to be done by reading the book -
it can be done by me giving away a book,
so that will still lead me towards this
goal. There are few books that are
currently on my physical TBR that I feel
like I'm going to get to quickly just
because of either the size of it - and I
feel like it's small enough that I can
read it fast - or because of my excitement
for the book, or because I recently got
the book and so I'm excited to read the book.
And among those books are: Sounds Like Me
by Sara Bareilles, which I recently got as a
surprise Christmas gift from my parents.
Red Seas Under Red Skies, which I am
currently reading as film this, so I may
actually have finished it before this
video goes up. Zoe's Tale, because I love
the Old Man's War series so much,
though I have heard kind of mediocre things
about this book. I also heard that you
don't necessarily need to read this book,
but I'm still excited to get to it.
Something to Smile About which is this
really tiny book that I got from my thesis
adviser for Christmas, which was totally
unexpected. It was so sweet of her.
As you can see, the merry Christmas to
from thing is still
over there and I forgot to remove it. And
Tree by F. Sionil Jose, which is actually
really short, but I remember taking a
while reading the first book in this
series just because, you know, it's one of
those books you want to take your time
with. And my third and final reading goal
for this quarter is to read more diverse
science fiction, because one of the
reading goals that I had a problem with
fundamentally last 2016 was my
reading goal to read more science
fiction and fantasy from NPR's top 100
list of science fiction and fantasy
books, namely because the lack of
diversity of books on that list made it
contradict with my other priorities in
reading. But I know there's so many great
diverse science fiction and fantasy
books out there, and especially for
science fiction there were quite a few
books that immediately came to mind that
I wanted to read that were more diverse.
So I hope to get to those books this
quarter.
I'm aiming to read 3 diverse sci-fi books this
quarter, though I actually have five
books in mind that I may be able to read
so yay for choices. First of the
possible diverse sci-fi books I could
read is Project 17 by Eliza Victoria.
Eliza Victoria is a sci-fi and fantasy
author from the Philippines who I
discovered last year and both of the books
I've read from her so far, namely Wounded
Little Gods and Dwellers, I really really
enjoyed, so I've been wanting to read
more books by her anyway. I also plan to
maybe read Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, which
is a novella that won the Hugo award. As
far as I can tell, I think the main
character is African and author of this
book is also African. I actually already
read a book by this author. I read Akata
Witch, and while I liked it I did have
some problems with the plot. But I've heard
so many great things about Binti that
I'm still really excited to possibly
read it regardless.
Another book I could possibly read is a
Ammonite
by Nicola Griffith. I didn't want to know
too much about the plot of this book
because I like going to books without
knowing much at all, but as far as I can
tell, all of the characters are female, and I
also believe that it's an own voices
book, because I think there might be
lesbian characters in this book and the
author is also lesbian. Again, I don't
know too much about this book, but I do
know that it's really good.
Another book that actually almost got
around to reading quite a few times last
year is A Planet for Rent by Yoss.
It's written by Cuban author and even
though the book is set in a dystopian
future in space
I heard the whole thing is a massive
metaphor for modern day Cuba and it just
sounds really interesting. And the last
diverse science fiction that I may get to
this quarter is The Three-Body Problem
by Cixin Liu. It is translated from
Chinese. It won the Hugo. But other than
that I don't know much about this book
except that it deals with aliens and the
Chinese Cultural Revolution. So those are
all the reading goals I'm aiming for
this first quarter of 2017. I'd love to know
what some of your goals for this year are,
or if you're planning on doing something
different about your goals this year, will you
have reading goals at all, please leave
all of that in a comment section down
below if you feel like it. Anyway, thank
you so much for watching, and I hope to
see you next time. Bye!
