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Come and get me, 2011.
Dec. 30th, 2010 08:45 pmI only have two New Year's resolutions this year, but they're big ones.
1. Read more novels for fun. This past year I found myself abandoning novels for fan fiction and television -- not even new fic or tv, but comfort fic and tv. To be fair, I worked on an average of 200,000 words per month this past year, most of them written in novels. To work on 200,000 words means reading each of those words at least twice, sometimes three or four times; that's a lot of words, so it's not surprising that I went for fanfic and reruns of The Office and Xena and knitting to cleanse my palate in between.
Plus, most of the time this past year, when I picked up a book, I ended up finding it unsatisfying or irritating. I'm not sure if that's just me, or if the quality of genre fiction is seriously declining -- probably both!
But this upcoming year, I'm going to try to read more novels, push outside my favorite genres to new and different stuff, authors I've never read before and books I'm skeptical about. I want to read at least one new (to me) author every month, and at least one for-fun novel per week.
2. At least once a month, bake something new from a new recipe. This year I cooked a lot and baked a lot -- and, in fact, used a lot of new recipes and perfected some old ones. It was great, and I want to keep doing it. This year I used two pounds of yeast! How cool is that? Here's to using three or four pounds next year!
So... book and recipe recommendations welcome! What are you guys planning for 2011?
1. Read more novels for fun. This past year I found myself abandoning novels for fan fiction and television -- not even new fic or tv, but comfort fic and tv. To be fair, I worked on an average of 200,000 words per month this past year, most of them written in novels. To work on 200,000 words means reading each of those words at least twice, sometimes three or four times; that's a lot of words, so it's not surprising that I went for fanfic and reruns of The Office and Xena and knitting to cleanse my palate in between.
Plus, most of the time this past year, when I picked up a book, I ended up finding it unsatisfying or irritating. I'm not sure if that's just me, or if the quality of genre fiction is seriously declining -- probably both!
But this upcoming year, I'm going to try to read more novels, push outside my favorite genres to new and different stuff, authors I've never read before and books I'm skeptical about. I want to read at least one new (to me) author every month, and at least one for-fun novel per week.
2. At least once a month, bake something new from a new recipe. This year I cooked a lot and baked a lot -- and, in fact, used a lot of new recipes and perfected some old ones. It was great, and I want to keep doing it. This year I used two pounds of yeast! How cool is that? Here's to using three or four pounds next year!
So... book and recipe recommendations welcome! What are you guys planning for 2011?
