2018 Blogging/Reading Goals

2017 wasn’t a particularly great year for me. A lot of crappy things happened, but when I look back on some of them they were for the best. As a result of so many negative things happening in 2017 my reading and writing life suffered. I wrote my first short story in a long time a week or so ago for Friday Fictioneers and found it cathartic – even though I always kill off one of my characters at the end.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about my 2018 personal and blogging goals. I’m still working through the logistics of my personal goals, but one of them is to head back to school and get my teaching certification in secondary education. Yes, I want to teach to teenagers.

I have a few blogging goals. One is to revive my short story blog and am thinking about reviving my personal blog, but not sure about it as yet.

As far as this blog is concerned I have a few things planned. My goal is post more consistently and with content that is more engaging.

I’ll take part in a few reading challenges and read-a-thons to help keep me on track. If you want to see how I’m coming along you can follow me on Goodreads and/or check out my 2018 Reading List bookshelf.

Tsundoku Bingo – A reading challenge created by yours truly. It’s all about reading the books you already own. Feel free to join in.

Winter TBR (ARCs) – I have a lot and I mean a lot of ARCs that I procured from work and I need to get them read over the next 3 months.

1. Swing Time by Zadie Smith
2. Amatka by Karin Tidbeck
3. The Wangs vs. the World by Jade Chang
4. Every Last Lie by Mary Kubica
5. American War by Omar El Akkad
6. The Thirst by Jo Nesbo
7. Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich
8. The Cuban Affair by Nelson DeMille
9. A Twist of the Knife by Becky Masterman
10. The Fallen by Ace Atkins
11. Lies She Told by Cate Holahan

2018 Official TBR Challenge

1. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
2. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
3. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
4. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
5. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
6. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
7. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
8. Waiting by Ha Jin
9. Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
10. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
11. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis
12. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Back to Classics – I’ve attempted this the last two years and have yet to finish it; so I’m going to give it another go.

1.  A 19th century classic
   Turn of the Screw by Henry James
2. A 20th century classic
   1984 by George Orwell
3. A classic by a woman author
   I Know Why the Caged Bird by Maya Angelou
4. A classic in translation
   One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
5. A children’s classic
   Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
6. A classic crime story, fiction or non-fiction
   The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
7. A classic travel or journey narrative, fiction or non-fiction
   Beowulf translate by Seamus Heaney
8. A classic with a single-word title
   Candide by Voltaire
9. A classic with a color in the title
   The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
10. A classic by an author that’s new to you
    Rosanna by Maj Sjowall
11. A classic that scares you
    Ulysses by James Joyce
12. Re-read a favorite classic
    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Reading Assignment Challenge – This seems a fun challenge. Create a reading list for the first half of the year and another for the second half. Creating and sticking to this list may will be hard because I may start reading something, then BAM squirrel moment and I’m to reading something else. So, I may be flying by the seat of my pants on this one.

Goal:

• Reading Level 2, which is reading 24 books for the year.

Book Blog Discussion Challenge – One of the reasons I started this blog was to discuss books and that hasn’t been going so well, so I joined this challenge to do just that.

Goal:

• Chatty Kathy Level at 21-30 discussion posts, but the reality is more like the Creative Conversationalist at 11-20 discussion posts

Writing Review Challenge because I totally suck at writing reviews in a timely fashion. I’ve lost count of how many books I’ve read and didn’t write a review for.

Goal:

• Write a review for every book I read within a week of finishing it