Wrapping Up 2018, Looking Forward 2019

Welcome to my ninth annual ‘Wrapping Up, Looking Forward’ post. In this post, I take a general look back at how I did with my goals in 2018, and set some new goals for 2019.

Posting and Reading Overview

I posted 82 times in 2018. I met my goal of posting 5 times/month in each of my busy months (February, March, October and November). Sometimes I overshot and sometimes I undershot my goal of 8 times/month in the ‘ordinary’ months. Disregarding the number of posts per months, 82 posts means I only fell two posts short for the year! I only posted 34 pure review posts, but I also shared my thoughts on books in other ways, such as via Family Reads, “I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Read That Yet”, and a few discussion-like posts. I’m happy with the variety of posts I wrote in 2018.

I read 97 books, easily cruising past my goal of 75 back in the summer. Wouldn’t it have been nice to hit 100! 😉 But I’m pleased with what I read. When I set the goal of 75, I thought about having two semesters of grad school (so less leisure reading time) but I didn’t think about taking three children’s literature courses (so leisure reading time built into course work!).

Reading Challenges

• 4/7 books by or about J.R.R. Tolkien (not including rereads) – One title less than last year. I thought I would finish The Fall of Gondolin by the end of the year, but I wasn’t up to it.
• 5/6 books by Indigenous people who grew up in Canada – Just about made it. However, I only read male authors who I knew of before this year.
• 0/3 books about Japan or Japanese spirituality – There must be a word for a goal you keep setting for yourself, even though you know you won’t achieve it…
• 26/20 middle grade speculative fiction books (not including rereads) – A success!
• 3/6 rereads – Meh. Two of those rereads were for a kids’ book club I hosted.
• 10/10 graphic novels – I used this goal to knock off some graphic novels that had been on my TBR for awhile. I don’t count graphic novels or comics in my Goodreads challenge, so having them as their own mini-goal motivated me to tackle them.

In total, I read 42 out of 52 books on my personal goals lists. Not bad!

2019 Goals

I will be keeping my personal reading goals largely the same this year. I am expanding the middle grade speculative fiction goal into something larger (more details coming Sunday!). I have also decided to sign up for a few official challenges.

• 7 books about/by Tolkien (not including rereads)
• 6 books by Indigenous people raised in Canada (including three women, trans or gender non-conforming authors and three authors I’ve never read before)
• 52 middle grade fiction novels, including 3 Newbery winners and 3 Newbery honours to reach the L’Engle level of the Newbery Challenge hosted by Julie @ Smiling Shelves
• 8 graphic novels
• 10 rereads (not including the usuals)
• 88 posts (8 posts/month, with one month’s grace for the inevitable big move I will have to make sometime after graduating…)
• 90 books books read

I also have some new blogging goals stewing in my mind. 2018 made me realize that it’s easy to stagnate and do the same things over and over. I’ve been inspired by both new-to-me bloggers who are doing neat things on their blog and on Twitter and by old friends who continue to put out fresh, high quality writing. I want to try new things too! Most of my ideas regarding what I’ll read and post and how I’ll interact with the book blogging world are up in the air, but I’m making notes in a big Word document. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

• Finesse my blog design (I’ve just done a ‘soft’ redesign, but there are more things I want to tweak and try to give it a fresh look)
• Incorporatemore graphics into my posts
• Write 8 discussion posts as part of Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight and Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction‘s discussion challenge. (I’ve been collecting ideas for discussion posts over the past year and now I need a kick in the pants to actually write them.)
• Share my reading goals progress in my monthly wrap-ups (thanks to Destiny @ Howling Libraries for this idea)
• Keep a Twitter thread of all the books I read in 2019
• Stay on top of things by creating a post schedule every two months
• Utilize suspended holds to avoid having big piles of unread library books and to help meet my reading goals

2019 will be a year of significant change for me, as I graduate from an MLIS program in the spring and seek work as a librarian. For the first time in my life, I’m not sure where I’ll be after April! It’s exciting and terrifying. I plan to rely on book blogging as an element of stability throughout the year. How was your 2018 reading year? What goals or challenges are you undertaking in 2019?