Hello all my artsy friends and Happy New Year! I just love the start of a fresh, new year with all the excitement it brings. Setting goals, thinking about positive changes and keeping the good things on course – all seem to be more relevant at the start of a new year. One of the goals I set for myself this year is to continue reading (non work-related) books. I read a LOT of very technical writing for work (which I enjoy), but I wanted to get back my interest in reading for the sake of pure enjoyment. Last January, I joined the reading challenge on GoodReads and pledged to read 50 books throughout the year. I figured that was one book/week with a couple of extra weeks built in to catch up or just take a break if necessary. Setting specific goals is definitely a good way to encourage a particular result. As it turns out, I ended up reading 52 books!
AND I got the coolest surprise at the end of the year . . . GoodReads made an infographic type page with the covers of all the books I read and really interesting stats such as total number of pages read, shortest and longest book, average number of pages/book, highest and lowest rated books, etc. Here is a peek at some of my reading stats:
What a fabulous summary of my year of reading – and you better believe I will be scrapping that! (If you are wondering where I got the digital goodies for the title image, they are from Allison Pennington’s Well Read Collection. )
Another way to encourage the completion of goals is to engage with a community of people who share your interest. We do that everyday with digital scrapping when we post layouts in digital galleries and join in forum discussions and, of course, participate in group challenges like MOC 5. :) Did you know that The Lilypad has a book club? It does! Check out the Reading Pad section in the Forum if you are interested in joining us. We vote on books each month and discuss them in the forum. It is always interesting to me to see the different points of view and the discussions inevitably raise issues that I didn’t think about when reading the same book. This type interaction adds new depth to the reading and makes it even more enjoyable. If you are an avid reader, or just want to participate in one or two of the books we read this year – we would love to have you join us!! Voting for the February book is ongoing right now – so come take a look and submit a vote for your favorite. :)
Happy reading everyone!
Until next time ~
Judie
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