Do you have a bookish New Year’s resolution? In the past I’ve tried challenging myself to a couple.

One year, I think I wanted to read 100 books in a year, because my boss at the time had once told me she read 200 a year (which blew my mind, but I later deduced her count was largely composed of books on CD that she listened to commuting the long hours between her home state and our HQ state). When I realized that for me that would be 2 books a week and that my tastes leaned toward HUGE books, I knew I was doomed to failure.

Last year, I thought I’d take it easy on myself and make my challenge a single book. I would read a classic that I’d never read but should. I picked War and Peace. My husband decided to join me with Les Miserables as his choice. I think we both spent one night looking at the first few pages and never picked up the books the rest of the year. They are currently sitting prominently in our living room as physical reminders also holding up a Buddha head.

Elise asked me yesterday if I had a book goal for this year. I don’t. I can’t think of one. It probably doesn’t help that I’ve grown accustomed to book resolution fails so quickly. One of hers was to read Drood. As I haven’t read it yet either, we think we’ll tackle it together (of course, you see how that worked out for my husband and I last year). But we’ll take it a chapter at a time and you’ll probably see that process here.

Last night, I also realized that I do have a reading challenge I could offer myself, too. I have a terrible, terrible habit of “reading” The New Yorker. Because I feel so time challenged in many ways and am better able to justify spending time reading a book, when I “read” The New Yorker, what I really do is scan through, reading the little bits, the cartoons, the occasional “Block That Metaphor” squib. But I tear out the articles I want to read in-depth. I pile them up to read later. I eventually move them into folders, and now the folders into magazine file boxes, to get to when I have more time.

I do the same thing with stories online. I star them or somehow file them away to get back to … and never do, just adding more and more to the to-be-read list.

I think this year I will tackle them. I will tackle them all.

And what will you be doing?