A Few New Challenges 2014

2014 Reading Challenge
Hosted by GoodReads

Goal: 50 Books

A yearly challenge for me, and one fairly easy to keep track of. GoodReads does all the work for me. Still, I'm looking forward to reaching my overall goal of 50 different titles (instead of counting repeats for audiobooks) in 2014.

2013 Challenges Wrap-Up

2013 Reading Challenge
Hosted by GoodReads

Completed: 40/50

Well, isn't that a nice block of books there? So symmetrical and colorful.

I'm very happy to have read this many books this year. Much, much more than I managed to read last year. And because of the many duplicates I read (audiobooks along with print/electronic books), GoodReads actually says I met my goal! So while I may have re-read a couple books, and technicalities work in my favor, I'm still very happy to have accomplished all I did for this challenge.

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Goals For 2013

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted at The Broke and the Bookish.

Bookish goals. Pretty self-explanatory this week. So without further adieu...

10. Read More

Yeah, that pretty much explains itself. Too often I get distracted by all the other media available, or bogged down with other things... Some of it can't be helped, but I do hope to try and prioritize reading a little higher than it's been before. And I hope my new dedicated reading chair will help me in this endeavor.

9. Try Out Some Group Reads

Quite a few of my GoodReads groups have monthly book discussions. Unfortunately, as of yet, I've only participated in reading/discussing one. I'm hoping this year I can clear out my schedule a little and get my eyes reading some of these group reads. I love discussing books, I'm just horrible at working on a time crunch...

8. Complete Series/Trilogies

There are quite a few series out now which I've either neglected entirely, or read the first couple and neglected the finale. This year I plan on finally putting some of these series to rest.

7. Read My Own Books

Amazon is way, WAY too generous sometimes. There are SO many free books for Kindle, and more and more cycle through every day! I've already 'purchased' over 700 in the near-year I've owned my Kindle, and I just keep buying more! One of these days (maybe this year) I need to sit down with my Kindle and just get to reading them.

Plus, I own another few dozen physical books which I haven't touched. I'm hoping the one of my reading challenges will help me finally crack down on these too.

6. Author Requests

I know, I know, I'm a horrible horrible person. I still have four books sent to me for review, a couple I've won from GoodReads, AND another seven I need to review from NetGalley! I hope to get these off my shoulders by March at the latest (preferably done this month, if I can manage it!), and finally clear off my Review Policy hiatus message (which people seem to ignore anyway...)

5. Complete Reading Challenges

Even though reading challenges are more goals, not etched-in-stone promises, it'd still be nice to actually complete one for a change. Last year I took on a ton of challenges around March (some even later) and didn't complete even one. This year, no matter how tempting, I'm restricting myself to the five (six) challenges I've taken on. If I'm making a huge headway, I might allow myself to tackle another one... We'll see.

4. Attend More Author Events

Even if the YA2U tour doesn't hit up Portland, we still get a ton of various authors stopping in. I mean, next week we get Kevin Emerson, Martha Brockenbrough, Sean Beaudoin & Cat Patrick on the same night! Not to mention all those coming to LeakyCon (which, I can't, since they haven't been announced yet).

Problem is, I tend to hold myself to reading their book(s) before attending, and if I don't I totally stress myself out about not having anything to say or sign or getting spoilers...so I don't sleep, get sick, and don't go. I missed out on an entire convention last year because of that. Not this year. I will attend and I will enjoy myself.

3. No Breaks

No, I'm not a self-imposing slave-driver. At least, I try not to be. I'm talking about month-to-three-month-long breaks of absolutely nothing going up on the blog. It's horrible. Stop it. Just read/write something! So even if it's just TTT posts (hey!) I'll at least *try* to have something up every week, if not more. And the next goal should help greatly with that...

2. Prepare

I hope to have quite a few posts pre-written days if not weeks before they're posted. I already schedule posts for 5:30am (8:30am EST) usually for the following day, just so I can hit inboxes first thing in the morning. But I figure if I can get enough content generated beforehand, then I won't have to worry about slow times, like when I go to LeakyCon in June!

1. Stop Procrastinating

I'm a master procrastinator. Did it all through high school. Did it all through college. It's resulted in greatness...and it's resulted in massive stress, failure, breakdowns, and shutdowns. Even though all my Reading Challenges and such are my own goals and don't really mean anything, I'd still like to actually get them done this year.

And that means not leaving all of them until December when I get super busy with family, church stuff, and life in general. If I could have *all* of my challenges completed by November (before Thanksgiving even!), I'd be ecstatic!

But even on a smaller scale, I tend to leave my reading until last-thing. Book's due at the library next week? I'll read it tomorrow...this weekend...the day before it's due. An author's coming next month? I'll get to their book(s) next week...the week before...the night before their event/signing. STOP IT! Just pick up the book now!!! Hopefully I'll have less self-imposed stress and burn-outs, and more happiness, confidence, and blog content.

So, what goals do you have this year?
Are you trying to read more, less, differently?
Got any major plans for your blog?
Let me hear you howl!

Amazon Best Books Challenge - 2013

Hosted by Wickedly Delicious Tales

Basically, Amazon posts a list of the 100 Best Books of the previous year. Whether or not these are in fact the best is up to us to find out.

Since the majority of "Bests" aren't really in my usual genres... I'll be aiming for the Competent Level of 10 books:

10) The Fault in Our Stars by John Green ~ Amazon | GoodReads

15) Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie ~ Amazon | GoodReads

21) Quiet by Susan Cain ~ Amazon | GoodReads

23) Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt ~ Amazon | GoodReads

32) Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan ~ Amazon | GoodReads

40) How to Be a Person: The Stranger's Guide to College, Sex, Intoxicants, Tacos, and Life Itself by Dan Savage ~ Amazon | GoodReads

51) The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters ~ Amazon | GoodReads

53) The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey ~ Amazon | GoodReads

56) Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo ~ Amazon | GoodReads

59) America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't by Stephen Colbert ~ Amazon | GoodReads

The challenge host, Cassandra, also decided to include the YA Top 20 Listin the challenge, since only 1 or 2 YA books made the main Editor's list. Of those, I'll probably be picking up...

2) Reached by Ally Condie ~ Amazon | GoodReads

6) Dodger by Terry Pratchett ~ Amzon | GoodReads

7) Insurgent by Veronica Roth ~ Amazon | GoodReads

9) Seraphina by Rachel Hartman ~ Amazon | GoodReads

10) Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor ~ Amazon | GoodReads

11) The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater ~ Amazon | GoodReads

12) The Diviners by Libba Bray ~ Amazon | GoodReads

13) Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver ~ Amazon | GoodReads

16) Cinder by Marissa Meyer ~ Amazon | GoodReads

17) Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas ~ Amazon | GoodReads

I figure between the two lists, I should be able to get at least 10, if not even 15 (or 20 if I get really motivated!). Overall, I'm pretty excited to give this another go. And thanks again Cassandra for hosting this challenge for us!

Any others on the list you think I need to check out?
Leave a comment below, and wish me luck!


Keep track of my progress on my Reading Challenges page.