Last year I made a post detailing what I felt was an enormous amount of books, games and DVDs on my ‘list’ that I felt I really needed to get through. It became a resolution or sorts, to shrink all lists in 2013. How did I go?
Books
I made great progress in this category, reading the majority of the approximately 50 volumes that were sitting on my shelf this time last year. The only one I haven’t yet found time for is In The Wake Of The Sea Serpents, the 800+ page magnus-opus by Heuvelmans. In addition to those I had this time last year, I purchased and read many new books during the year, mostly manga and fantasy novels. I try and read every single night before sleep at the least.
However – and to my delight since I love books – I have to admit my ‘to read’ list is hardly smaller than it was last year, replenished as it was by a large variety of other books. Heuvelmans tome is now accompanied by 3 other cryptozoology books, and they share a shelf with about 20 novels (mostly fantasy), a handful of manga (not much I am interested in is released nowadays), and a half-dozen or so RPG manuals such as the one pictured above. Add to this a couple of Doctor Who books, an art book or two and four books on video-game and pinball history and I should have enough to keep me busy well into 2014!
Movies & TV
As with my books, I made great progress on the DVD ‘watch list’ of February 2013. Ultraseven, Lexx, Claymore – all the box sets have been watched. In fact almost every single item we owned last year has been watched months ago, and many more have now filled their place.
In fact, the ‘watch list’ as of today is actually longer than it was last year. Two items alone: the Inspector Morse DVD box set and the Monkey DVD set sum to over 100 hours! Add to these several other anime DVD sets (Spice & Wolf, Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku Naritai!), another Japanese sci-fi set (Ultra-Q) and about a dozen assorted DVD movies (almost all sci-fi/fantasy) and we’ve got our watching cut out for us.
Games
As with the other two categories, I made bold strides into my piles of unplayed games. As of today I have:
– 8 unplayed PSP games, only one of which was actually purchased in 2013
– 8 unopened 3DS games, most of which are less than 6 months old
– only 1 unopened Wii U game (Pikmin 3, which I may start playing today!)
– 2 unopened PS3 games (both of which I owned last February as well…)
As you may recall from the blog post a month ago, I purchased much less games in 2013 than I usually do, which allowed me to play a lot more games I already owned. I expect during this next year to ‘finish’ the PSP games as well as possible the PS3. Since I currently have no plans to obtain a PS4, I imagine this section of the list will be much reduced this time next year.
Last time I looked at the piles of unopened/unread/unwatched media and thought “Why do I even buy more stuff?!”. Now I look at the smaller piles and think “I’m looking forward to opening that!”.
In other words, I think my resolution was a success 🙂