At last, a new year's resolution

Hey, it's something I like to take my time on, especially since many of the worthy items (being more organized in my business, writing more, eating better) are things I should do without any influence from a "resolution."

The answer came last week, as I scanned the two shelves full of books that I have bought -- many of them brand new -- over the last years that I haven't read. A quick count came up with more than 50 unread titles. Quite a few of which I really want to read. So, my resolution is to clean off those shelves over the coming months. Thankfully (well, sort of thankfully I guess) I don't have much in the way of money for fun stuff right now anyway, so it's not too hard to just plow my way through these books. I've already made a tiny dent, finishing up a couple of books I picked up recently (including Kim Newman's terrific oddball collection the Secret Files of the Diogenes Club; a couple of misc. Brian Lumley anthologies; and J.R.R. Tolkein's The Children of Hurin, not to be a crowd-pleasing epic anytime soon, but does include the Professor getting all Greek on us with an incest subplot). Books on the horizon include Neal Stephenson's recent trilogy, a China Meiville book for young audiences and George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire (though I may wait for book five -- George promises it will be out by this fall).

The resolution has cascaded to my other interests, so I'm staying away from new video games until I finish some of those I've bought (and since the last one was the Half-Life 2 "five games in one" Orange Box, that may take a while), while I've cut off most of the new miniatures until I finish some unfinished projects (there are five, plus some misc. ones that I finally put some paint on) that are hiding under the couch. We'll see how it goes.