Tag: 2020

2020 Wrap Up Post

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2020 was a crazy year. I don’t think that’s a stretch of the imagination for absolutely anybody at this point. It also, strangely, ended up being one of my busiest years personally. Unfortunately, not as much in terms of blogging and reading as I had hoped, but that’s okay. I’ve come to the realisation that in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter.

Before I get into my blogging and reading progress of the year, I’d like to tell you a little bit about the other things I ended up doing in 2020 as well. Ultimately, this played a part in the amount of time I had to commit to blogging and reading.

 

Background

At the end of 2019, I decided that I wanted to move house. I’m not going to go into the ugly details, but let’s just say they were external forces that drove me to that decision. Moving house is a huge undertaking at the best of times, but I ended up moving in May 2020, during the middle of lockdown here on the island. We were delaying the move as per guidelines, but unfortunately again, other factors meant it had to go ahead. That meant my family couldn’t help me as they had planned to, and whilst I was able to use a removal firm on the day, the rest was up to me. There were many tears on the day and my parents had to watch me bawl my eyes from the doorstep (unable to come in but dropping off some food) once I got here, but with the help and advice of my mum and dad I got it together and within a couple of weeks of moving in I had everything straight.

But that’s where the rest of the work began. The house I ended up moving into had some very interesting decoration, to say the least! Pretty much none of it was to my taste, so within a couple of months of moving in I started redecorating. What can I say, I had holiday to take from work and nowhere to go with it!

Whilst I had anticipated moving, I hadn’t really considered that I’d end up spending so much free time working on the house after I moved in. It’s not a problem, and ultimately I’m happier because I’ve spent the time making this place mine. It does mean, however, that it ate into my free time for reading and played a part in my not reaching my goal of 80 books last year.

What I also didn’t expect was how lockdown would affect me. When it was first announced, I was obviously upset that I couldn’t see anyone. But, I stupidly thought to myself, right I’ve got all this time to kill – I’ll read more. How I can laugh at myself in hindsight. What I didn’t expect was how much of a distraction lockdown would be and actually… I couldn’t concentrate on reading all that much. At least, not to start with. Some days were better than others.

So you see, there were multiple factors that contributed to my not reaching my already very ambitious goal of 80 books last year. I thought I would be disappointed with myself if I didn’t, but strangely I’m not. I know I read at every opportunity I could and wanted to, and equally, I didn’t force myself to read things I didn’t want to either. When I wanted to do something different I enjoyed other hobbies… saw my friends and family (sorry, feel bad for saying it but it’s true) and did the things I wanted.

My other challenges also flopped a little. Whilst I started off well, reading less also took its toll on my attempt to read more of the older books on my TBR. I was still signing up for blog tours and such, and so these took priority and my challenge fell off the radar. My final challenge was to read more from my local library. Ha! With covid, that went down the pan too. I did check to see if I could borrow electronic editions, but most of the time they weren’t available at my library. Maybe I’ll be better at this throughout this year (once it re-opens again)? 

Anyway, there’s the background. And now, onto the books I read last year! My final end of year stats are:

I think I DNF’d the highest number of books I have ever recorded in a year in 2020. I think this is in part because I started to go through my TBR and my reading tastes have changed since I added the books several years ago. That’s not always the case… in fact, some of the best books I read last year were added to my TBR four or five years ago!

There were definitely more hits than misses. All in all, I think there was a pretty good proportion of books that I knew I was going to love and some more adventurous read that I want to try. Some of those worked, but those I put down definitely fall into that category.

To summarise this year wrap up post, here is a list of all the books I read last year and their star ratings: –

 

2020 Books

Have you read any of the books on this list? Or any of them on your TBR? Let me know in the comments!

 

 

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2020 Resolutions – Mid Year Review

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Although it’s a little past the midyear mark, I knew I wanted to have a look at my progress towards my reading goals halfway through the year. It’s a good opportunity to see how well I am doing and to see if I need to make any changes over the coming months to achieve my goals.

If you need a refresher of my 2020 Resolutions you can find that post here, however, I will touch on the key points in this post.

 

Reading Goal #1 – Goodreads Challenge

I have set myself a reading goal every year since 2017. I like having the challenge of a certain number of books to read before the end of the year. Most years have been started off quite conservatively and I have revised my goal later… I didn’t want to do that this year. I also wanted to attempt to set a new record, even if it is only by a few books from my previous one.

Admittedly, this year isn’t as much of a roaring success as previous years. In part, that’s because I set myself a target that was actually going to be a challenge from day 1. In addition, I’ve also made some pretty big undertakings outside of reading and blogging. The most significant of these has been moving house. It’s a big task anyway, but the way covid-19 panned out, I ended up packing up, moving out and unpacking again all by myself. My parents really wanted to help and didn’t want me to have to deal with it all alone, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way.

Although I have moved now, I am still doing a lot of stuff with the new house. I’ve just spent the last week redecorating three rooms and I still have halfway to go. That’s not the only thing, however. When I set my goals at the beginning of the year, I didn’t even know that I was going to get sponsorship to sit exams relevant to my job. I hadn’t even considered it. I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity though.

Is my reading goal in light of the above ambitious? Yes. But is it unachievable? No. I think I can still do it. To date, I am 7 books behind schedule. It’s enough, but I could claw it back. Even if I don’t, I’m not going to kick myself over it. It’s still a lot of reading to do in an already busy period. Even if I manage to keep pace and still finish the year 7 books behind schedule, I’ll still complete the year having beaten last year’s record. It’s still something to be proud of!

 

Reading Goal #2 – Beat the Backlist

I feel this challenge has fallen off the wagon a little bit, but I have and will continue to try and read the earliest books on my TBR to beat the backlist. The full list of books I wanted to read by the end of the year is on my 2020 Resolutions post if you want to check out what they are.

To date, I have completed 5/25 books on the list. It doesn’t sound like much, but I think it’s fair to note that I have also started and DNF’d an additional 3 books on that list. At the beginning of the year, I was good to religiously ensure these were added to my TBR, but since moving house I’ve not been so good at it. I do have one of these books on July’s TBR, so it is still in mind to complete. I’m sure I could make more of an effort to step it up though. This might not be achievable by the end of the year, but so long as I am trying to read and take books off the TBR then it balances out the new ones I’m adding!

 

Reading Goal #3 – Borrow from my local library

Covid-19 firmly put a spanner in the works with this particular challenge as well. The library I have registered with and borrow books from is actually near to my work. I haven’t been going into work since mid/late March, so I’ve not had the ability to pop in even when they did re-open a few weeks ago! I did make an effort to use their digital library to see if they had copies of the books I was interested in, but unfortunately in every single case I looked, they didn’t have what I was after.

All being well, I should be going back into work soon and be able to make use of the library (and their physical collection) more. The lack of progress on this challenge to date is entirely circumstantial. Should we be in the unfortunate circumstance where covid-19 comes back, I will be back in the same boat and honestly, I won’t want to borrow during that time anyway. Sorry, hygiene comes first! I’m not stressing about this particular goal, I’ll be honest. My justification for this goal in the first place was to try to save some money for the house move, but I’ve managed just fine as it is.

 

So, that’s where I am up to with this year’s resolutions. What are your reading goals for the year, and how are you doing with them?

 

 

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My 2020 Resolutions

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A new year and a new decade are upon us! 2020 is finally here, and with a new year comes new opportunities. I’ve been considering my New Year Resolutions for a few weeks now… it’s time to share my plans with you all!

I’ve decided I want to take part in a few challenges this year. I have taken part in one of these challenges since 2017, the year my blog began. That’s not the only challenge I am setting myself, however.

 

Goodreads Reading Challenge

As I mentioned above, this will be the fourth year I take part in the Goodreads Reading Challenge. I will be going into the challenge with a larger goal than previous years though. Every year so far I have massively underestimated myself and set myself a goal that I achieve easily.

Year Original Goal Revised Goal Total Read in Year
2017 20 60 62
2018 40 – 50
2019 50 70 72

Fair enough, in 2017 I went from reading rarely to almost every day, without fail. Naturally, that goal ended up being really unrealistic and I revised it to 60 books at the end of April that year. That doesn’t really excuse the fact that I have underestimated myself in subsequent years though.

This year, I am going to be more ambitious and set myself a target that I have not reached yet. I came pretty close to it in 2019, but it means trying to set a new personal best.

In 2020, I want to try and read 80 books.

Up until the last couple of days of 2019, I’ve had 75 in my head. However, I think it’s too close to 2019’s final count to pose as a challenge. I don’t want to go too much higher than that; I don’t want to put myself in a position where I feel inclined to deliberately choose shorter books just to complete the challenge. That’s cheating a bit. This is where my second challenge will come into play and prevent that, to an extent…

 

Beat the Backlist

My TBR (To Be Read) list is seriously out of control. Often, I find myself swept up in new releases, blog tours and the like. Consequently, the older books on my TBR get neglected, and they really need some love right now. I’ve been hovering at around 200 books for a long time now and I need to work on that.

That’s why I am taking part in the Beat the Backlist challenge this year. As part of that challenge, I want to take on my TBR by reading, at the very least, the oldest 25 books on it. Sounds very abstract as it is, so to quantify it, here are the 25 books that I am challenging myself to read this year:-

  • Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson
  • City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett
  • The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson
  • Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson
  • Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson
  • Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson
  • The Talisman by Stephen King
  • Good Omens by Terry Pratchett
  • Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel
  • The Psychology Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained by Catherine Collin
  • Age of Myth by Michael J. Sullivan
  • The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson
  • Dune by Frank Herbert
  • The Women’s Room by Marilyn French
  • The Thief Taker by C. S. Quinn
  • The Feedback Loop by Harmon Cooper
  • Red Sister by Mark Lawrence
  • The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan
  • Hild by Nicola Griffith
  • The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm
  • The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
  • The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  • The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
  • Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

If I can squeeze in some more recent TBR additions as well as the above list, then that’s great. I want to have a lot fewer than 200 books on the TBR this time next year!

 

Borrow From my Local Library

Despite having a library membership, I’m not that good when it comes to making the most of it. I’ve only borrowed three books/e-books from the library in 2019. Dreadful right?

I want to step up on this in 2020 for two reasons. Firstly, I’m conscious that I am going to have to be mindful of my finances this year. There are some pretty big (and expensive) changes planned for this year and I don’t really want to be careless with my money. I won’t begrudge myself the odd book, but don’t be expecting mass book haul posts because it’s not going to happen.

Secondly, the advantage of using the library is that you can branch out of your comfort zone. I’m only really happy to buy books that I really like the sound of, or those by authors I have read before. However, if you’re only borrowing books you can try something new. There’s no obligation to like it and if you really don’t, you can take it back!

Those are my resolutions for the new year! Have you set yourself any resolutions? I’d love to compare them with mine!

 

 

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