Hello bookish friends!
I’ve had a really big year in my personal life – I finished my Library Science Masters and wrote my dissertation, then managed to get a full-time library job towards the end of the year which I’ve just recently started. These were my main two goals for the year so I’m really happy with how everything turned out and am somewhat amazed that I actually managed to reach my goals – it finally feels like my life is back on track! My reading year was also pretty great, although I will be making some changes for 2019 that I’ll be discussing more in my resolutions post for this year. Anyway, let’s take a look back at the bookish goals I set for myself and see how I did!
1. My first resolution, as it always is, revolved around the Goodreads reading challenge which I initially set at 65 books. I increased it a few times over the year and kept it at 120 which I just about managed to reach with a couple of hours to spare!
2. My second goal of the year was to read a Rick Riordan book each month. I had twelve to read so this was a perfect challenge for me. Unfortunately, I only managed to read nine of the twelve but I did read one of his books each month until about August, so I am pleased with how consistent I was for most of the year. I’ve got three more to go so I’m hoping to get all up to date by March.
3. My third goal was to read more diversely this year, meaning reading more books about marginalised characters and written by marginalised authors and also reading different kinds of books in different reading formats. I definitely did not succeed at the latter so much, but the former I did read more of. This is the type of goal that will be ongoing every year and now that I have a full-time job, I’ll actually be able to afford to buy more books, meaning I don’t have to rely on the library so much for new releases of books from marginalised authors.
4. My next resolution was to try to complete 10 series again. I had on my list of series the following:
Jackaby (1 book)Lockwood & Co. (1 book)Shades of Magic (1 book)- Throne of Glass (1 book)
Magisterium (1 book)The Dark Artifices (1 book)- Shadowmagic (2 books)
The Heroes of Olympus (3 books)The Kane Chronicles (3 books)- Magnus Chase (3 books)
I also managed to finish His Dark Materials (2 books) and The Conqueror’s Saga (3 books) and Strange the Dreamer (1 book) which makes 10 series! I’ve never managed to complete this challenge before, so I’m really happy that I’ve finally done it. Especially considering I also completed two more series that I re-read last year (The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices).
5. As always, I failed on the books to read challenge. Out of the twelve I wanted to get to, I read only one (The Lies of Locke Lamora) and unhauled/DNF’d two (The Manifesto on How to be Interesting and Ready Player One). So I failed miserably on this challenge. I’m not sure if I’ll continue doing this challenge for 2019, since I always fail at it.
6. My last goal was to blog more consistently on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday which I kind of did but also failed at. I tend to go through phases where I’m really into blogging and will stick to my schedule and read ARCs and write reviews and get involved in readathons and then there’ll be other times where I have no motivation to write whatsoever where I sometimes go weeks without writing a single post. I think next year I need to get better at not feeling so guilty about not posting anything and focus more on posting when I want to and not when I feel like I have to. I put out some posts last year that I just rushed and didn’t put much effort at all into, so I’d definitely like to change that for 2019.
So that’s it for today’s post. I really like reflecting on my bookish resolutions every year and seeing how much me and my reading behaviours have changed each year.
How did you feel about your reading year? Did you manage to achieve all of your bookish goals?
STARK REVIEWS 