Happy New Year!

I thought I would once again post my reading goals for the year. It’s always fun to think about and to make lists. A lot of these goals are repeats or similar from last year, because I really want to continue to stick to these goals this year as well.

2019 Goodreads Challenge. I set my goal this year to 60 books. By time September came around, I had already completed my 2018 Goodreads challenge of 50 books. I decided to increase it by ten books for this year. I didn’t want to go too big or too little with my challenge. I don’t want to get too overwhelmed. I think it’s manageable though, because I read (and listened) to over 70 books last year.

Read 40 of my own books. I went through all the books that I read in 2018 and a lot of them were either ARCs or library books. I am drowning in unread books that I own, so I want to try to read at least 40 of my own books. These books will not include any books that I buy in 2019, it will not include any library books I check out, and it will not include any ARCs that I receive. It also didn’t help that the majority of my books are currently packed up. I am hoping by the first few months of 2019 I’ll finally be able to unpack them.

Reading the Alphabet. I did a book tag last year called “My Blog’s Name in Books“. You basically spell your blog’s name out with books on your TBR. It inspired me to do this, but with the alphabet. I have so many older books that I haven’t read and have been collecting dust. I want to read one for every letter of the alphabet and that’s where “Reading the Alphabet” came along. I’ll have a blog post up for that later with all the books I plan to read for each letter. It will also help with my previous goal of reading 40 of my own books. I’ll have a post about this coming soon!

Read more adult books. I read a lot more adult books in 2018 and I want to continue to do so this year as well.  I love YA, I always gravitate more toward YA, but I also enjoy adult books too and I do own quite a few I haven’t read yet. There are also a ton that I don’t own that I want to read as well. Don’t get me wrong, I will still and forever love YA, but it’ll be nice to branch out more. Hopefully I will be able to branch out even more this year with reading more books that aren’t YA. Even more non-fiction would be great too!

Read my unfinished series. I didn’t do very well with this goal last year. I have started a lot of book series over the last four years and haven’t finished them. I want to finish the completed series and catch up to the newest books in the uncompleted series that I’ve started. In the last couple of years I’ve gravitated toward more standalone books, because I feel so guilty starting a new series when I have so many that I haven’t finished yet. So I want to get to more of those, so I can finally start some new series that I’ve been dying to read and have yet to start. I used to read an entire series (if it was an older one and had all or most books out) before I even started a new book/series. I need to do that again, which brings me to my next thing.

Binge read any new series I start. If I start a new book series and it has more than one book out (or all the books), I want to binge all the available books instead of putting them on hold and reading other books. Before I started my blog in 2015, I used to do that like I mentioned above. I never even bought a new book until I finished the one I was currently reading; unless it was a series that I was loving, then I bought all the books and binge read them all. Not going to lie, as much as I love blogging and everyone I’ve met here, it’s kind of changed my reading habits A LOT. Now I’m drowning in unread books and unfinished series.

Continue to buy less books. In 2018 I did a pretty good job with not buying so many books. It was so hard though, OMG. There are so many books out there that I really want and am still dying to get my hands on. I used my library a lot if I was dying to read something that I didn’t have. It helped me with finally reading more of the older books I’ve had on my shelves that I hadn’t read yet and kept neglecting due to buying more and more books every month. So I want to continue to not buy so many new books and continue to read my older books.

Get rid of books I didn’t like or plan to reread. I had this as a goal for 2018 and while it did work out for the most part, I’m sure there are still more books that I can donate/trade. Currently almost all of my books are packed away though, so I know that I won’t be able to accomplish or really work on this goal until toward the end of the year.  I continue to run out of bookshelf space, #bookwormproblems. I want to put an empty box next to my bookshelf (once I buy new shelves, because currently I have none! *cries*), so if I don’t like a book or it was just “okay” and I don’t have any real connection to it, I plan to drop it in the empty box instead of putting it back on my shelf. Once the box is filled, I will donate the books or give them away and continue again. I want to try to own books I REALLY love versus having a ton of books taking up space that could be used for new books.

Don’t fall behind on ARCs. I usually do really good with my ARCs at the beginning of the year, but toward the end of the year with the holidays always coming up quick, I always seem to fall behind. I want to try to figure out a good schedule and work around this, so it doesn’t happen again this year. I also don’t plan to request too many ARCs this year, so that should hopefully help with that as well. I love ARCs, I love to review them, but falling behind totally sucks! It takes all the fun out of it, which is never good.

These are pretty much my main focus for 2019 as far as reading and books go. I also want to have fun with this, so I am not putting any pressure whatsoever, because then that just sucks the fun out of it and I’ll not want to try anymore. I don’t really have any set goals for blogging, because I struggled in 2017 with it becoming a chore rather than fun. I changed it up in 2018 though, so I am going to continue to post the content that I want to post (whether books, photography, travel, etc.) and post when I want to this year as well. I don’t want to feel like I have to or it’ll again not feel fun to me and I may not be around much again. I also have a ton of things happening in 2019 that I haven’t talked about yet, so that may take up some of my time as well. It’s all about balance and I have to find something that works for me.

What are some goals you have for this year? Feel free to link me to your posts if you have one! 

I have a few more blog posts that I am hoping to post over the next week or so. One being my 2018 reading stats and my five star reads of 2018! Be on the look out for those. 🙂

In case you missed it;
Wrap Up|| December.
Book Haul|| December.
Christmas 2018.

I hope you have a great day!