January 2019 Wrap-Up Post and Looking Ahead to February

I'd like to do better about wrap up posts this year as another kind of blog resolution.  So let's start out that way! I recently was pointed to All About Books for spreadsheets she already had made that could help with organizing.  I'm using the first one to keep track of my year-long reading.  I've gotten more familiar with Google Documents since I used another blogger's spreadsheet last year for my ALA convention plans, and then created my own based on that for the Book Bonanza the following month.  So hopefully, this will be a big help for me in doing wrap-up posts, at the end of the year for sure!

Let's start by talking about my Challenges and any progress I've made. 

1.  For my Blogging resolutions, I've been doing really good so far for the posts I wanted to do that listed the upcoming books to be published that week.  I've titled that post "Lisa's Looking Forward To".  I've been doing them on Sundays, but I think in the next month or so I'll maybe switch it to Wednesdays, and tie in with the Can't Wait Wednesday Meme.  Here are links to the posts I did this month.
January 8th
January 13th
January 27th

There was one week this month that only had one book on my list to share, so I ended up not doing it that week. 

Another part of my blogging resolutions was to comment more on other blogs, and I've got a little planner where I'm keeping track of that.  In the 2 weeks that I've been keeping track, I've commented almost every day on at least one blog. 

There's a third goal I want to add to blogging.  I'm going to do the Clean My TBR Pile post hopefully about once a week. And along with that, I'm doing giveaways each week.  Unfortunately since they are books I actually own, they've only been US so far.  I'm still trying to come up with a way to make them International, yet still cost-effective for me.  Here are my posts from this year so far:

January 12th
January 19th
January 26th - Giveaway open till midnight tonight!

2. For my reading resolutions, I had kept my goal from the year before, that I didn't meet, to read books recommended to me.  I have completed one of the five I picked, just finished reading Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo this week.  Won't get a review posted till February some time though.

3.  For my writing resolutions, nothing.  Nothing done. Although, I had to figure out with my short story how I could change it so that it wasn't actually based on real people in my life, and I did figure that out, so now I can start going through it again and changing those things as I edit.  Plus, I went to seasonal at my part time job at the bookstore, so there should be lots more time to write this month!

My main goal with this was to get the ARCs I picked up at ALA convention last summer read, 12 of them.  So far, I've finished a big fat 0 of them.  One of them will fit into a new challenge though that I'm doing in February, so I'll talk more about that in a bit.

Nothing yet.  But I only plan to do 4 for the year, so I've got 2 more months before I'm technically behind.


For the First in the Series Challenge that I'm doing, which has no button or banner yet, I've read one of my six choices, Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo.  Only 5 more to go!

On Monday I signed up to take part in the Catastrophe Read-a-Thon sponsored by Olivia's Catastrophe.  You can check out my sign up post for that HERE.  It doesn't start till February 14th, so I've got a bit on that.


January Stats:
 So far this month I've finished - 20 books (although one or two were actually started last year).  To make my Goodreads goal of 215 for the year, I only needed to read 18, so I'm ahead!  I've definitely done a lot more reading so far this year.

I've posted a total of 40 times, which is more than the one post a day I want to try to shoot for, 16 of those were reviews.   According to the stats spreadsheet I'm using, the average rating so far this year is 4.5 stars.  



Looking forward to in February:
As I mentioned above, the Catastrophe Read-a-thon is half of February.  

Here is my proposed TBR, according to blog tours and review requests I've signed up for this month:

1. Courting Darkness by Robin LaFevers - currently reading, review on the 4th.
2. Unlucky in Love by A.J. Renee - review on the 5th
3.  Teaching Tucker by Jillian Quinn - currently reading, review on the 6th
4. The Secret to Falling in Love by Victoria Cooke, review on the 9th
5. My Life in Shambles by Karina Halle, review on the 13th
6. Unsteady Heart by Keira M. Belle, review on the 24th
7. To Best the Boys by Mary Weber, review on the 27th
8. (Maybe) The Boyfriend Whisperer 2.0 by Linda Budzinski, review on the 18th, 28th, or 29th
9. The Everlasting Rose by Dhonielle Clayton
10. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
11. Rabbit and Robot by Andrew Smith
12. Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley
13. Riot by Jamie Shaw
14. Moonlight Sins by Jennifer L. Armentrout
15. Hot Winter Nights by Codi Gary
16. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
17. Within These Lines by Stephanie Morrill
18. The Last 8 by Laura Pohl
19. The Sweetest Match by Abby Tyler
20. Diary of a Bad Boy by Meghan Quinn

 Whew!  That's a long list.  A few of those are ARCs I got sent from the publisher, and will hope to get to, but won't be stressed. Some at the end are ones that I will review in March, and so may not get to by the end of the month.  I may have to see if there are any of the non-new ones that I can do as audiobooks!  Like the Jamie Shaw book maybe.  We'll see.  And since I haven't heard for sure if I'm on the tour for The Boyfriend Whisperer, that one might be cancelled out!


Okay everyone, that's my January wrap-up post!  I linked above to the giveaway I've got going on until midnight tonight. And I'll be posting one tomorrow as well for my Clean off my TBR post, so be sure to check back then too.  Maybe by next month's wrap-up I'll get some graphics made for a couple of the ones I've talked about above.