Friday, January 1, 2016

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2016 and Two New Challenges.

 

It's 2016!  Hopefully a better year for everyone, whether you had a good or bad 2015.  I'm planning to get more organized with my blog this year, and I was already doing  pretty well this past year.  But along with the organization, I'm going to do a couple more Challenges, and part of that organization will include keeping track of how I'm doing with those Challenges at the end of each month.  I already posted about doing the TBR Pile Reading Challenge, as well as my own It's New to Me Series Starter Challenge.  Today I'm going to share two other challenges I've decided to join in on, the 2016 Netgalley Reading Challenge, and the 2016 Bookish Resolutions Challenge.  

2016 Netgalley Reading Challenge:

2016netgalleychallenge
The purpose of this is to get your feedback rating on Netgalley up to 80%.  I was there at one time.  But I've since dropped to 70%.  I'm going to start out easy on my goal with this one for this first year I'm trying, and try to give feedback on 10 books, new or old requests, on Netgalley.

 


2016 Bookish Resolutions Challenge:


I usually try to do some resolutions for my blog, and when I came across this challenge, it sounded like the right way to go this year.   

Blogging goals:
  •  Subscribe to comments - I always make sure to reply to comments on my blog, and I do go comment on other blogs, but I rarely go back and see if I got a reply from the owner of the blog.  So this year, I'm going to subscribe to replies to my comments and be sure to go back and join into any conversations that may start when I post a comment.  
  • Only download 2 e-galleys per week - In order to keep myself from ending up like I did at the end of this year, with having to give up and not read everything before it expired, I will only allow myself to actually download 2 e-galleys a week.  In fact, I may only write if they are ones I can download, and only download them when I get to the point where I'm ready to read them. That will help on Netgalley, with not dropping my feedback average anymore.  
  • One goal I had last year was to post every day of the week.  I'm not going to keep that up, it just got to be too much.  Not that it won't ever happen, it's just not something I have to do.  In order to help with this, I will not sign up for more than one tour a week, unless, of course, one that I cannot skip comes around.
  • This year I will have an end of the month post EVERY month, where I check in with all of the challenges I'm doing and keep track of them.
  • I will keep one of my same goals from last year, at least two reviews every week.  I feel that is an important thing, as my blog is supposed to be about book reviews mostly, and that is why I started it.
Reading goals:
  • I have several books that were recommended to me, and are actually YA books.  So my goal this year is to read more of my recommended books.  I won't set this one too high, as a lot of my recommendations aren't ones I would normally read.  I think I'll set it at 3 or 4.
  • I used to have a goal with classics.  I still have a few on my shelves that I had planned to read before I got stuck on the last classic I tried.  So I will set a goal to get to those this year.  Maybe 3-4.
  • Of course my Goodreads goal is 140 books.
Personal goals:
  • First, I have GOT to start walking again.  I'm paying for membership at Planet Fitness, which is only $10 a month, but still.  Plus I need to lose weight, and that is the only way to really get it going.
  • Save money to fix/replace my air conditioner.  That should have been done last year, but I was able to get through this summer with my A/C working okay.  
  • Keep house organized/clean.  Now, part of this has to do with dealing with my dogs.  So that is something I'll have to figure out completely. But my dogs are staying with a friend today and tomorrow, so that I'll have all tomorrow to get at least a start on that.  
So those are my goals.  I plan to check back in at the end of every month to see just how I did this time!