The Top Ten Bookish Habits I Really Want to Kick

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the lovely folks over at 'The Broke & The Bookish' - to join in simply follow the link!

This week it's all about bookish habits I want to break, and at first I couldn't really think of any, but slowly they started crawling out the woodwork until I was inundated with habits I really would rather do without...

1. Stressing about the Goodreads Challenge
I know some incredible people who don't let the goodreads challenge stress them, but I also know a lot of people that do. 'Just don't set a challenge' I hear you cry, but the problem is that I love a challenge, and the idea of seeing just how many books I can read in a year is too good an opportunity to miss. But then the challenge bar starts judging me by telling me just how behind schedule I really am and I let it effect what books I read. No more! I actually managed to complete my challenge way ahead of schedule this year and instead of moving the goalposts and making it harder for myself for the rest of the year I decided to pat myself on the back for finishing and allow the last chunk of the year to be filled with books I wanted to read and re-read, rather than stressing about how behind my quota I am...

2. Not Letting Myself Re-Read Favourites
This one is kinda linked to the first one, but also linked to the sheer number of awesome books that hit our shelves every year. I become so swept up in all the new releases (and trying to hit my Goodreads Challenge) that I rarely let myself go back and re-read favourites, which is tragic because I love re-reading books. Sometimes I'm really in the mood for Harry Potter, or I want to re-visit Tortall or spend some time in The Dells or Thisby. A lot of this problem would go away if Goodreads would just add a re-read option but so far no luck. That's one thing I really want to work on, letting myself take a break from all the exciting shiny new books and sinking back into some favourites every now and again.

3. Making Myself Miserable Reading What I Feel I Should Rather Than What I Want
Shiny books are awesome, and being sent them by publishers is even more awesome. But unfortunately that puts a lot of pressure on what books I read when. I find my reading schedule gets dictated to so much by what books I feel I have to review and I rarely allow myself to pick up a book just because I want to. It's silly and foolish and whilst most of the time I really don't mind, sometimes it really sucks the fun right out of reading when I feel I have to read a book I'm really not in the mood for.

4. Not Allowing Myself to DNF books
This links in to number three - if a book has been sent to me for review for a publisher I find it nigh on impossible to put the book down part way through and say 'you know what, this book is not for me. I am not going to finish it and I'm not going to review it.'
I'm getting slightly better at DNFing books that I've picked up for me rather than pushing through them, but I'm still terrible at doing it for ones sent to me for review. Definitely something to work on because life is just too short to waste on bad books.

5. Saying yes to ALL THE BOOKS
I am so much better at this than I used to be, but it's still something I need to work on. The temptation to request all the books on Netgalley is something that every book blogger faces, which then results in a lot of stress and panic reading. Like I said, this is something that I've stopped doing as badly, but there are still odd moments where I say yes to books and then think that was a terrible idea, why did I do that?...

6. Reading Multiple Books at the Same Time
This can be a good thing and can also be bad. Sometimes I like having the variety of skipping between different stories, like when I'm reading a paperback during the day and then switch to a kindle book when I'm reading in bed at night. But other times, when I have four or more books on the go at the same time I just end up feeling guilty and inevitably leaving one behind where it will languish in half read state for some time. So whilst I really don't think that reading several books at the same time is always a bad thing, I do think that reading more than three at once is a bad idea for me...

7. Leaving Books to Languish Unread on my Bookcase
Most book buying sprees result in the purchase of several books and usually at least one of them will be something that I'm not a hundred percent sure about but it looks interesting enough to give it a go. Unless I start it within a couple of days of buying it though, I tend to get easily excited by other books I do know about and am desperate to read. Thus the book gets left on the shelf gathering dust, making me feel guilty, and leaving me constantly saying I'll get around to it soon... I think next year I should make a stack of books that have been sat on my shelves waiting to be read so I can finally get around to them.

8. Waiting to Write my Reviews
Again, another habit that I am much better over but not entirely broken of yet. I need to get on and write a review for a book within a few days of finishing it, any longer and my brain starts to get fuzzy and I can't remember all the things I wanted to say about it. The more books I read between finishing a book and writing the review for it, the harder I find it when I sit down to write the review. And the longer it goes the more reluctant I am to actually do it because I know I'm going to struggle (at least at first) to remember all I wanted to say. Vicious circle really!

9. Taking Forever to Finish a Series
We're often faced with a year to wait between installments in a series, perfectly reasonable because of how long it takes to write, edit, publish etc. But my little brain often then has issues remembering all the details of the previous book. I forget names and events - some books are easier to remember than others though so this doesn't happen all the time. However with the volume of books I'm reading, to try and think back to a book I read over 150 books back is quite often difficult. So when a new book in a series comes out I often want to go back to the start of the series and re-read them. Which then runs into my earlier bad bookish habit, not allowing myself to re-read... So I'll want to read this new book, but also want to go and re-read the first books so I remember what's happened up to that point, and I end up not getting around to it for ages.

10. Having Multiple Copies of the Same Book
This could be a bad bookish habit, but also not at the same time depending on your view. I never used to do this, but then I started finding so many gorgeous covers for US books, or new editions of books and I want them on my shelves even though I already had a perfectly lovely copy. It tends to only be with my favourite books, but I have quite a few where I have several copies of the same book, including 'The Night Circus', 'The Scorpio Races' and 'The Seven Kingdoms Trilogy'. Lovely for the pretty lovely gorgeous books, less good for shelf space and my bank balance.

So there you have it, my top ten bad bookish habits. Are there any that we share? Let me know and link me to your top tens in the comments below!