Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Things on my Bookish Bucket List

 Top Ten Tuesday topic is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

This week's topic is Top Ten Things on my Bookish Bucket List! I've never thought about making a bucket list for book-related goals, but it was a lot of fun coming up with things. I hope I can cross some of these off soon!

1. Join a book club. My boyfriend and I belonged to a graphic novel book club in NOVA, and it was a really good experience. It was a lot of fun discussing the book together all month (he's not much of a reader usually), then going to the meeting and finding out what everyone else thought. We'd usually turn it into a nice little date night, getting dinner and drinks afterward. Now that I've moved, I really need to find another club that meets on a convenient night. Book People in Austin has a ton of amazing-sounding book clubs; I want to go to them all!

2. Attend a Neil Gaiman book reading. I feel like I always find out about these too late, or I'm away when he comes to my city. I need to keep an eye on my local bookstores' event schedules and see if I can catch him next time he goes on tour.

3. Organize my shelves. Back when I only had two shelves, my books were perfectly organized alphabetically by author, fiction separated from nonfiction. My library's gotten a bit unwieldy since then, but I'd love to sit down one week and get it all organized again.

4. Swap out my old $5 paperback classics for hardbound or leather editions. This one will probably have to wait until I've bought a house, so I can avoid a bit of heavy lifting during moving, but they would look so beautiful on the shelf!

5. Read Ulysses. I named my cat after this book, and I haven't even read it! I've wanted to since college, but I'm so intimidated by it. I want to get this book and a reader's guide to read along with it. This is my Mt. Everest.

6. Write a book. I'd love to do this, but writing's so hard. This is definitely a long-term goal...

7. Read 130 books this year. I love using the Goodreads Reading Challenge every year. Whenever I'd get asked about good books I'd read lately, I'd always draw a blank, and the Reading Challenge really helps me keep track of all the titles I've read recently.

CultureMap Austin

8. Write a brief review of every book I read in 2014. This is the whole point of this blog, after all.

9. Spend less money. Way too much of my salary goes to book buying. I need to check out some local libraries.

10. Buy more books from independent book stores and independent publishers. There's an amazing book store in Austin called Malvern Books that only sells books by independent presses. I love going there and looking through their selection, and because of this store I've gotten addicted to books from Pushkin Press. Something about their books is just really enjoyable on a tactile level; they're the perfect size and shape, and I love the French flaps. Books like that exemplify why I hope printed books never truly die.