Setting sights on new year’s goals

pointing out); travel to Sri Lanka, I hope; and wane myself off social media — the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) keeps getting to me.

Chipping away at my 2018 reading list has started well but my exercise journey has not.

I set an alarm to wake up at 6am Tuesday but didn’t get out of bed until 7.30pm — far too late to fit in exercise, and also get to work on time. It’s been a similar trend for the first few days of this year and I’m hopeful it will change. I’ve resigned myself to the fact I’ll have to become a morning person if I want to succeed with exercise this year. Reading-wise I’ve started in the easiest possible fashion and am four chapters into The Grade Cricketer: Tea and No Sympathy.

It’s a lighthearted take on a suburban cricketer who is pushed into fixing a game for a friend who is also a teammate, and the associated fallout.

It’s drawn a few chuckles from me so far and is a decent read for any cricket lover.

Next cab off the rank on my reading list will be The Ele

ments of Style by William Strunk — considered a bible by many for writing principles.

Hopefully some of the points the book raises will flow into this column and other pieces I write for the paper.

This year I’d also like to read journalist Peter Greste’s memoir The First Casualty; The Last Girl by Nadia Murad; To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

If you can recommend a good book for my list of 20 please get in touch: chad.vanestrop@news.com.au or tweet me: @cvanestrop.

And for that matter, also get in touch if you’ve ever got any comments relating to my columns through the year.

NEW year, new me? So far, not really. In the final days of 2017 I sat down and slowly compiled a list of resolutions in a Word document, a task I have completed annually since 2011. It’s something which has grown organically from that year when my...