Happy New Year you book dragons, fire bugs, whatever you are! 🙂
Cliche but wow, it is 2019 already, can you believe it? Which to me means I will keep wiritng 2018 instead of 2019 for the next few weeks while I adjust, I have a piñata party to finish preparing for, and big things coming for this year.
But before plunging headlong into this New Year, all shiny, I wanted to recap on my 2018 and do a super speedy summary.
I launched my 101 for subscription boxes and it was a good hit (mostof it still works, however I do not subscribe to the same boxes anymore). Also, yes I know that wasn’t in 2018 but wait, there’s a reason.
Someone tagged me in a “how many subscription boxes did you buy this year?” kind of Tweet, and lo and behold, I counted. Want to guess how many I bought this year? (It is a rough number because I may have missed a few special edition boxes).
I bought over 65 subscriptions boxes. 12 Book Box Club, 12 LitJoy Crate, 5 Illumicrate (this includes the Shades of Magic/Vicious special box), about 6-9 Fairyloot boxes, around 6-8 Yume Twins, 12 Stickii Club (plus one advent calendar), 3 or 4 Owlcrates, one Holiday special crate from Spearcraft, one or two Junior boxes from those that do Junior version, 3 or 4 Wildest Dreams boxes… And seriously I have lost count.
On my last post I hinted of reducing the number, and this is why! I have bought so many boxes, have not caught up with reading all the book in them and decided I want to catch up and also bulk less. So I am sticking with LitJoy, Illumicrate and Book Box Club, with a top up of Owlcrate and some Fairyloot boxes, and maybe a few special ones, but definitely going to try to be more picky about it.
What else did I do in 2018?
Preorders! Loads and loads of preorders! I preordered over 150 books during 2018 (some where 2019 books, but I only decided to start counting properly per year in the last week, so yeah some overlap there). Which meant I bought 4 new bookcases and I have now run out of places where I can put bookshelves (oh dear!)
And the blog has kept mostly to a post every other day (with some contributions from Bea, just to make it more interesting).
And finally, my goodreads goal was 100 and I read 145.
So, let’s jump to 2019!
My goals are relatively simple:
- Keep blogging, reviewing books.
- Goodreads challenge of 120 books for the year.
- Keep preordering and supporting authors, but be selective.*
- Try to love my body more, as I tackle body dysmorphia (which didn’t affect me as a teenager but has it’s claws on me as an adult)
- Do a monthly giveaway on Twitter (which I have done for at least half of 2018)
- Loose 1-2 stones to help my joints deal better with HMS (Hyper Mobile Syndrome)
- Write the stories I start then stop then start again and never properly finish because I am tryng to adapt them to please everybody. I am going to write for one reader only, or at least just one in mind.
*I am compiling a spreadsheet of all my 2019 preorders, which you can view here if you’d like to check it out. I made it for my own record keeping but people were interested so I decided to share because sharing is caring!
That’s all from me today. Hope you had a good 2018 (or as good as it could be) and here’s to a 2019 that’s a little bit better than 2018 (hopefully).