Category Archives: year end/beginning review

Moving forward for 2016

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I’m a day late posting this. It was written yesterday and then computer drama happened. I thought it was going to be a localized digital apocalypse, but happily just turned out to be time consuming, with no lasting effects. *deep, relieved breath*

Anyhow, as with every year lately, I cannot believe it’s a new year already! Unfortunately, it would appear that my belief is not required. It is 2016. So, what will I do with it; hopefully lots of things (not all of them relevant to this blog).

hale-cropWriting-wise, I’m about 50% into first drafts of two projects. In fantasyland I’d finish both of them. Here in reality, I’m aiming to have one ready to go out to betas and an editor by year-end (hopefully before).

In terms of reading, I’m laying off the challenges this year. I signed up for Goodreads’ reading challenge, aiming for 250 books. But this should be looked at a little skeptically. I’m starting 2016 as I ended 2015, with a broken arm that makes typing (and therefore reviewing) laborious. So, until my cast comes off, I’m concentrating on cleaning off my novelette/novella shelf. This has the obvious result up artificially inflating my ‘books read’ number. So, 200 books is my true goal. The rest is just padding.

2016 Reading Challenge

2016 Reading Challenge
Zarah has read 5 books toward her goal of 250 books.
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I quite enjoyed the alphabet soup challenge last year and will do it again. Basically, this just means I’ll read at least one book by an author whose name starts with each letter of the alphabet (yes, even X). I also liked the TBR challenge I did in 2015, in which I tried to read books that had been on my To-Be-Read list 2+ years. So, I’ll do that again. But I think that’s about it and I’m not signing up with anyone else for these. I’ll just be accountable to myself.

I’ll still keep myself open to review requests and try to read at least one a month, same for Netgalley. And I don’t even need a challenge to read Indie or SP books, that’s the majority of what I read nowadays. So, that’s about it.

readingI have decided to try and read better books. One thing that came out in writing my 2015 wrap-up was that I read a lot of books that were just so-so, last year. This, I think, largely comes down the fact that I read so many freebies. I don’t mean that as any sort of horrible generalization about books offered for free, but I am going to try and curb the urge to go, “Well, it’s free. I’ll give it a shot.” Because it’s often a failure. So, I plan on being a bit more discerning.

In the real, not book related world I’ve got yoga, tae kwon do (I’m a mere yellow belt, at least for now), family, friends, life, etc. So, there are plenty of distractions and reasons things could go astray. But as far as reading goes, this is my plan. What’s yours?

Wrapping up 2015

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wrapping-up-2015

I set so many challenges for myself this year! What was I thinking? Arggh, not so much for the challenges themselves, but because that leaves me so much to cover now. I guess the only thing to do is dive in.

GoodReads Challenge

goodreadsThis was my primary challenge in 2015. I set a goal of 200 books on Goodreads, not including short stories, and I succeeded. Good old Goodreads did a cool graphic this year. Feel free to click on it and explore mine.

I read a solid 200 books, but (as I’ve mentioned in previous posts) on December 16th I broke my wrist and since then I’ve been reading only short stories and novelettes, which skews me GR number toward more like 250 ‘books.’

I don’t use stars here on the blog, but if you’re curious, 2015 breaks down like this when I cross post to sites that do. Plus, 55,363 pages isn’t too shabby, though it’s about 20k short of last year. But I managed a lot more writing this year than last year. So, I’m not disappointed.

all books

I appear to have what statisticians would likely call a central tendency bias (at least if this was a true likert scale). But I also read a lot of pretty middle of the road books this year and this is one of those moments when a picture is worth so much. It really brings that point home.

Blogger Challenges

I did an Author Alphabet Soup challenge and succeeded. OK, X got read on Dec 30th, but that counts. So, at least one author for every letter of the alphabet, success. You can double check me here, if you really want to.

I also challenged myself to clear off some of the books that had been on my To Be Read list for more than two years, not including shorts. This last bit was added in two weeks ago, when (again) I broke my arm and concentrated solely on short stories and novelettes in order to avoid having to type anything longer than a sentence or two in review. (Like this post.) A lot of the short stories had been on my shelves for a long time, but they weren’t counted in the challenge. Several reads this year were close to qualifying for this challenge, but short by a mere month or so. I didn’t count them either, though they’d be 2+ years old now (in Dec.).

I wasn’t great about going back and checking in with the Evie-Bookish blog, where the challenge originated, but I feel like I was quite successful in this challenge.

tbr challenge

I signed up for the Mad Reviewers review challenge to read & review at least 104 books (not counting audiobooks). I finished with more than 150, so I’ll call that a success.

Lastly, I signed up for two challenges with  book r3vi3ws: Indiefever and Firstreads. I was good about tagging these, but failed miserably at keeping the list on book r3vi3ws up to date. I did however, succeed at both challenges, reading indie books and authors new to me. In fact, the vast majority of the books I read were either indie or self-published.

Requests

I’m a bit disappointed in the number of requests I got to this year, though I shouldn’t be. I started the year with a goal of 3 a month (36 total), but later opted to concentrate more on my own writing (which I did) and cut it back to one a month. I read 25 books sent to me by authors. There were a couple that I didn’t finish and not everyone was reviewed on the blog, or at least not in an individual post. I tend to cluster shorter works. But here is the list.

2015 requests

Sorry the list and pictures aren’t in the same order. I couldn’t be bothered to redo it all.

Netgalley

It addition to the books I took on request, I also accepted a number of books from Netgalley, meaning publishers offered them free in exchange for a review but I had to request them. This wasn’t a challenge per se, but it didn’t feel quite right to include them with the requested reviews either. There were and additional 19 books here.

Netgalley 2015

Pop-up Challenges

I like to mix things up on occation and sometimes mini-challenges grab my attention. I did two this year. In March, I noticed that I had 4 books titled Blood Lust. So I opted to read them all back to back. It did not go well. The average star rating didn’t even reach 2! But here they are. I just basically find it amusing to see four of the same titles in a row.

Blood lust coll

Then, later that same month, I noticed that I kept scrolling past the same unattractive picture in my TBR list on Goodreads and realized that I had four books with essentially the same cover. Thus was born the Annoying Close-up Guy Challenge. I read all four of them back to back. It went a bit better than the previous challenge and seeing four almost identical covers in a row really tickles me. (I Know, I’m easily amused.)

Annoying closeup guy

Top Picks

Lastly, and I think most importantly, what were my favorite books of the year? This is a difficult choice. After agonizing and hair pulling, I chose the following as my stand-outs of 2015:

They are in no particular order and I did a list of six, rather than the standard top-five, just because it makes a better box. See?

I would eagerly recommend any of these books to fellow readers. In fact, I do. Go, go forworth and read them.

Edit: You guys! You guys, I owe the Mad Reviewer a huge thank you. I forgot to report back to the challenge page at the end of the year and she went above and beyond to track me down for my final review count so that I could be entered in the drawing for a prize. And in the end, I won a $50 Amazon gift card and paperback copy of The Carnelian Legacy by Cheryl Koevoet, an ebook of The Carnelian Tyranny by Cheryl Koevoet and an ebook copy of Aranya by Marc Secchia. That is super cool. Thank you!

 

Looking forward to 2015 and reading challenges

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2015 treeOk, so it’s apparently 2015…and where’s my hover-board, McFly?  2015! This is mind-blowing to me, but hover-board or no, I do have a whole new year ahead of me…we, we have a whole new year ahead of us. It’s a blank slate, just waiting with unlimited potential to be… well, something, anything.

For me, it will undoubtedly be full of books, books and more books. Then of course, these pages will be full of me pontificating about said books, because that’s what the space is dedicated to—me, books and my opinion about books. Makes me sound a little megalomaniacal, but it is my blog.

So, 365 days and probably several hundred books are in my immediate future. I need a plan. I need to share that plan with you, so you know what to expect and I’m held to some manner of accountability…and, frankly, so I can pretend to have accomplished something.

I’Screen Shot 2015-01-01 at 18.06.30m breaking it down like this. On the broadest, most general level, I have committed to read 200 books, with no limiting factors, as my Goodreads challenge. Honestly, I’ve committed to 200 books the past two years and upped it partway through both times—to 225 the first year and 250 the second—and still surpassed it both times. So, 200 is probably on the low side. However, like the past two years, I hope to stop reading so damned much and concentrate more on my own writing. I always seem to fail at this.Screen Shot 2015-01-01 at 16.55.12

Anyone who claimed reading can’t be an addiction is full of horse caca. I need the emotional fix as badly as my caffeine and considering I practically need to be surgically removed from my tea or coffee cup (depending on when and where), that’s saying something.

I’ll also be participating for a third year in book r3vi3ws‘, Indie Fever IndieFever15challenge. I consider this an easy challenge, really, since the vast majority of the books I read these days are Indie/SP. But I’ve signed up at the Fanatic level. This requires I read 75 or more Indie/SP books in the coming year. I don’t anticipate a problem on this front.

Unexpectedly, I’ll also being doing book r3vi3ws’ First Reads FirstReads15challenge. I say unexpectedly because I accidentally signed up for it, meaning to register for Indie Fever. But in the end, I figured I might as well stick with it. I read plenty of new-to-me authors and I really like letting fate have it’s way on occasion. I’ve committed to the Expert level, or 51-75 books written by authors I’ve never read before.

Next, I’ve also signed up for Samantha Lin‘s Author A-Z challenge. Last year, I made a point to read a book by an author for each letter2015-authors-banner of the alphabet, but I never officially signed up for a challenge. This year, I’m getting credit for my effort. I think this challenge is fairly self-explanatory. No levels or anything like that, just trying to make sure each letter of the alphabet is represented by the last name of an author.

I’m also signed up for Evie-Booksish’s TBR pile reading challenge. xSWiAe6Lord knows I need this. I buy books so much faster than I read them. As the name would suggest, the goal here is to read books that have been sitting on your To Be Read pile for a while. It isn’t specified, but I’m setting my limit at two years or more. I’ve signed up for the ‘First Kiss’ level, which requires I read 21-30 such books.

the-mad-reviewer-reading-challenge-2015

I’ll also be participating in The Mad Reviewer‘s Reading and Reviewing challenge. I signed up for the Mad Reviewer level, which means reading and reviewing 104 books. They can be Indie, SP or Traditionally published. Again, I anticipate no difficulties in achieving this goal.

Lastly, though not really a challenge per se, I’m committing to read at least 36 review request books. By this, I mean books I’ve received from authors requesting reviews. That’s three a month.

I’ll be starting the year with Liberty and Other Stories, followed by There Will Be Phlogiston, which is an Amazon freebie, BTW. They’re both by Alexis Hall and constitute Prosperity, #2-5. I’ve had these books for a while, but saved them to read in the new year. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by Hall and wanted to ensure I gave myself a good chance at starting 2015 on the right foot. Here’s hoping!