🌟 my ambitious 2019 reading goals & challenges + judging 2018 goals! (judgy week part seven) 🌟

Hi, gang!!! I am so excited to share with you my reading resolutions goals for 2019! Today I’m full of emotions because 1) what do you mean my judgy week is ending today??? 2) I’ve been blogging every day for a week now and I feel amazing! and 3) I have some very cool and exciting things to share with you!

This year was a great year for me in terms of reading. Which is making me even more excited to start 2019 in full force and do even better! There are so many reading and blogging challenges/events I want to take part in!

I will be splitting this post in two parts. First, I’ll go over what my 2019 reading resolutions/goals are. Both for blogging and for reading. Then, I’ll show you how miserable I was at sticking with last year’s resolutions.
Although I am not proud (!!!) of how bad I am at keeping my resolutions, this won’t stop me from being thrilled about my 2019 resolutions. NOTHING WILL GET ME DOWN!

my 2019 reading goals

I have a lot of goals this year and this time I hope I actually get to conquer them. I am telling myself that if I accomplish 75% of the goals for 2019, I’m treating myself to something nice.

🌿 Read less young adult books: I find that at least 80% of young adult books I read I don’t loooove. I rarely feel anything other than “meh” about them — and that’s not how I want reading to feel like. I think I’ve gotten over my YA phase now and that it’s time to move on.

🌿 Read more adult books: Most of the books I fell head over heels for during 2018 were adult books. I have found that I really love literary fiction and nonfiction books, which tend to me almost entirely adult books. Here’s to branching out and growing up! I even made a post with my most anticipated releases and most of them were adult books 🤷🏻‍♀️

🌿 Read more nonfiction books: This year I realized how much I love nonfiction books. A big part of it was participating in the Nonfiction November challenge and finding amazing nonfiction bloggers (especially What’s Nonfiction!!!). So this upcoming year I really want to read more nonfictions books!

🌿 Write a review for e v e r y book I read: Whether that is a review on Goodreads (and I mean a proper one — not a “this was cool, review to come”) or on the blog, I want to review all the books I read.

🌿 Update Bookriot’s super awesome reading log sheet religiously: Bookriot came up with an amaaaaaazing excel sheet you can use to track your reading. And it seems super simple to use! You just fill out all the fields for the books you read and the sheet will automatically do the stats and pie charts for you. How awesome is that???? I know I definitely want to keep up with it, and you should to!!! (check out the sheet + instructions on how to use here).

🌿 Tackle my ARC list: I love getting ARCs and I feel very grateful to be granted the opportunity to read new releases for free. But I also have a tendency to let ARCs pile up and not read them in time. So this year I want to up my NetGalley score to 80% (at the very least, shouldn’t be too hard) and blog about these ARCs when I need to!

🌿 Read at least 50 books: Of course, the traditional Goodreads reading goal is going to come up. This year, I set myself to read 40 books and ended up reading 60. Next year, I want to challenge myself and read at least 50. Should be doable, right?

 

Of course I also have some blogging goals. I feel like these will be the hardest ones to keep up but I really want to push myself to keep blogging. It brings me so much joy!

 

🌻 Blog (at least) twice a week: For the past two months, I have kept my schedule of posting twice a month. In 2019, I want to keep this schedule up for as long as I possibly can (while still writing quality posts). However, I don’t want to do posts that are just pictures of books I want to read/have read without going into depth about them. I feel like that’s kind of cheating — it works for other people, just not me! So my mission is to schedule posts in advance, pump out book reviews, do tags…

🌻 Write more discussion posts! I’m a very opinionated person, so I really don’t know why I don’t write more discussion posts. I guess it’s a mixture of not thinking anyone would be interested in reading them and also fear of getting backlash for them. I know I have some controversial opinions when it comes to reading, and so I don’t want to alienate myself from the community. But in 2019, I will try my hardest to take part in the 2019 Discussion Challenge (hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction and Shannon @It Starts at Midnight) and become a Creative Conversationalist!

🌻 Post lots of book reviews: I want to review all books I read, and I want most of those reviews to be here on the blog. There are so many kinds of review posts I want to make. Full-post, in-depth reviews, bullet point reviews, GIF reviews, and so much more!

🌻 Continue to blog hop: My favorite thing about blogging is blog hopping. I love seeing what posts other bloggers are doing and love getting involved in conversations. You know that feeling you get when you read a book and think “oh wow blog x, y and z would love this book!”? I love building connections with fellow bloggers. It makes blogging so much more fun! So in 2019 I will continue to blog hop as much as I can.

 

exciting reading challenges & readathons + news!!!

I love taking part in challenges! So I’m making sure that in 2019 I’ll be all over challenges, book bingos, readathons — you name it!

 

☀️ The 2019 Popsugar Challenge! Okay this is the one thing I’m the most excited for in 2019. I have never participated in the Popsugar challenge but this year I will be doing it!!! Since there are a lot of boxes to check, I will allow myself to use the same book for up to three challenges. Wish me the best of luck! On January 1st I will post my preliminary Popsugar TBR — it will most likely change over the course of the year, but I want to at least round-up some of the books I want to read for the year-long challenge.

☀️ January Late-A-Thon: You know how I said I wanted to read all my ARCs as soon as possible? Destiny @ Howling Libraries does too — and so she put this readathon together! It’ll go on for the whole month of January and I’ll try to read at least a fourth of all the ARCs I have on my shelf right now. My TBR will go up in the first week of January — so keep your eyes peeled for that!

☀️ Asian Lit Bingo: An amazing month-long reading challenge I did in 2018 was the Asian Lit Bingo challenge. I only read Asian authors and I actually completed the bingo! So this year, if the awesome bloggers who hosted it last year host it again, I will go hard on it once more.

☀️ Nonfiction November: This was one of the most fun challenges I’ve done. There were weekly blogging prompts and the challenge was to read as much nonfiction as possible. I really hope that in 2019 there’s another Nonfiction November so I can join once more! Seriously, I met so many cool bloggers thanks to this challenge!

☀️ Booktube-A-Thon: For the third year, I want to participate and do all the challenges again!

🌞 CALL TO ALL CHALLENGE-LOVING BLOGGERS! 🌞 I would love to host a readathon or a monthly challenge like the ones I have mentioned. Would you be interested in doing it with me and with maybe some other people? It would be so much fun!!! If you’d like to host something like this, leave a comment below, send me an email to rita23cunha@gmail.com or DM me on twitter (@bookishr_)! Let’s talk!

 

🌻 personal goals 🌻

Not everything I want to accomplish next year is related to blogging and reading! I have a few personal resolutions I would like to share with you…

 

🐱 Write my first manuscript! Creative writing isn’t what I want to do with my life. I don’t want to become an author or anything of the sorts. But children’s books are something that really interest me. And every year there’s a great writing challenge in my country in which I really want to participate. I have until the spring to put this really awesome idea I’ve had into paper and submit it. Even if I don’t win (likely), I’ll at least be able to say that I gave it a shot!

🐱 Get my nails to finally look pretty: This might be a little TMI, but I’ve been a nail biter for as long as I can remember. I must have been biting my nails for at least 15 years and that has to stop! I’ve gone a month without biting and now I feel like I’m succumbing to the urge more. But since I want really beautiful nails, I want to make not biting them an absolute priority. Wish me luck!!!

a look at my 2018 resolutions…

Last year, I also wrote a bookish resolutions post. I failed some and won some. But let’s take a look at each resolution and see if I accomplished it or not…

❄️ Read 40 books: Done! I even ended up reading 60 books.

❄️ Review every book read: Massive fail — maybe in 2019!

❄️ Write a monthly wrap-up every month: Sort of a fail? I forgot to blog for most of the year, but when I was active, I always wrote a wrap-up post.

❄️ Read more ARCs: I’d say I kind of did it. I think I did read more ARCs in 2018 than I did in 2017, but that isn’t saying much since I barely read ARCs in 2017.

❄️ Do more beta reading: Nope! I decided to launch my freelance career through the proofreading/editing/writing route rather than the beta reading route. However, if you’re a blogger I follow and you’re looking for betas — get in touch with me!

❄️ Branch out (genre-wise): Success! I read a lot more nonfiction and literary fiction than ever, so I’m considering this a win.

❄️ Participate in a book club: I did, for a few months!!! I participated in Zuky @ The Book Bum‘s monthly book club and I loved doing it! I really hope that in 2019 she starts it up again. If you have any virtual book club recommendations, leave them in the comments!

❄️ Participate in the Booktube-A-Thon: Check! But this year I didn’t read as many books as I wanted to. I think I read maybe 2 out of the 7 I pledged?

❄️ Interact more with the community: Success! I loved blog hopping this year and found so many awesome book bloggers. In 2019, I will keep doing this and now also interacting with people on twitter! Have you followed me yet? It’s @bookishr_!

❄️ Write every week: Hurrah! For most of the year, I have been working as a freelance writer. This means I write thousands and thousands of words every week just as part of my job. Not to mention essays for school and these blog posts!

What are your resolutions for 2019? I hope you have an amazing year full of awesome books, lots of blogging accomplishments, and all the luck in the world!