At the beginning of the year I posted about my 2019 Reading And Blogging Goals. I listed ten things I wanted to do this year. Wow ten. I didn’t realize it was that many until I just counted it. Huh. Anyway, I listed ten things I hope to accomplish this year:
- Get caught up on my reviews
- Open the blog to review requests again
- Read more Self-pub/Indie Books
- Another Self-pub Fantasy Month?
- Finish up series I’ve started
- Dragonlance
- Warhammer 40K
- Star Wars
- Clean up the blog
- Reduce the size of my TBR
Because this isn’t simply a book review blog (I mean mostly yeah but not completely), it’s also my thoughts on books and reading and the blog in general, I’ve decided to take some time to address each one in more detail because I know you’re all riveted by it. OK, truth be told this is really to help me keep on task. Anyway, here’s the first deeper dive into my goals…
GET CAUGHT UP ON MY REVIEWS
This is one I’ve wanted to do since early last year when I started really getting behind. Yeah I know, this is a goal all of us probably have, but some of you write multiple reviews a week (which I’m insanely jealous of btw), and I really can only manage about one a week. The problem is I never stop reading so even when things are going smoothly I run the risk of getting behind. Last year though was a whole other story. I had whole months where I might only write one review, or none. If you’ve followed me for a while you know the story, life got busy and the reviews took a backseat. Now I want to make up for that.
There’s a bunch of books I read last year for which I didn’t get around to writing a review. I’ll list them below. My goal is to post at least one review a month for a book I read and didn’t review in 2018. So far I’m off to a good start. In January I reviewed Kingshold by D.P. Woolliscroft, and this month I reviewed The Wolf of Oren-Yaro by K.S. Villoso.
These were both books I read during Self-Published Fantasy Month here on the blog in September. They’re also books I recommend you read. I thoroughly enjoyed both.
Like I said, so far I’m off to a good start. Let’s see if I can keep it up. One downside to this goal is it means I have one less review to post each month about a new book I’m reading. That’s because I read about one book a week, and I only really manage one review a week which usually happens on the weekend. If you’re a math genius you can see the problem. I’ll probably end up with at least one book a month I don’t review. Won’t this leave me with the same problem next year? Eh…not really. Because I also admit I don’t feel like I have to review EVERY book I read. I accept there will be some I choose not to review for one reason or another. For this same reason I may not do a catch-up review every month if I get to a point I don’t feel like I need to review any more books from 2018, or if I just don’t want to.
Here’s a quick list of books I read in 2018 which I didn’t review (and for which you may see a post this year) in no particular:
- Arm of The Sphinx
- The Tethered Mage
- The Nine
- The Art of War
- The Armored Saint
- The Black God’s Drums
- Artemis
- Gunpowder Moon
- Ancillary Justice
- Binti
- Anno Dracula
- Frankenstein
- NOS4A2
- The Haunting of Hill House
- Horus Rising
- False Gods
- Galaxy In Flames
- Ready Player One
I won’t review all of these I promise you, but I hope to do some of them. Hopefully I’ll keep on track. What about you? Any reviews you need to get caught up on?
Personally, I love these kinds of posts, so I’m actually really glad you wrote it! And, I’m not sure if you even want this input, but I’d love to see your review of The Tethered Mage. 😀
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Well I’m glad someone likes them! Feel free to give me your input too. I’ve got The Defiant Heir here on my shelf next to me and I’m considering writing a review that combines the two after I read it. We’ll see.
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A combined review also sounds awesome, too (I’m thinking about doing a combined book + film review for a couple of things coming up, so I get that doubling up appeal!).
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Definitely behind over here. 😳
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Is writing hard for you? I ask because you mention only writing one review a week on the weekend. I wondered if you could sit down for an hour and just bang out both reviews all at once each weekend? I used to be a mood writer and it’s taken me almost 2 years of focusing on writing purposefully to work around that. And if you’ve seen my reviews, you know that they aren’t lengthy (typically anyway) masterpieces 🙂
Anyway, I too like reading posts like this and I hope you can review more. I’m ALWAYS wanting more reviews. That way I don’t have to read the books 😀
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My problem is I’m usually just too tired after work to write a review. Add the family stuff in the evenings and I’m just too worn out. Reading usually relaxes me but I have a hard time writing. And my reviews tend to be long no matter how hard I try. So I just work on them on the weekend after I’ve rested up.
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Gotcha. Yeah, long reviews are hard.
Well, best of luck in however it turns out 🙂
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I just read Binti last night. I really enjoyed it. Would love to hear what you thought. But no pressure.
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I really hope you would write all that reviews because in that list there are some titles that make me really curious! And I am with you with the “being behind with the reviews” affair. I know that I can’t write a review for every and each book I read, it’s impossible, but I’d like to write way more reviews than the ones I wrote so this year I would try harder, too, maybe I would choose a number to reach and see how the things develop from there..
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