I’ve been doing these resolutions for the past couple of years and found that it’s a really nice way to keep track of some goals for the upcoming year. I’ll be honest when I say that generally “resolutions” or the “clean slate of a new year” isn’t my shtick, but sometimes the marking of a new year just helps when setting new goals. It’s an easy marker of time and that’s about it. You can find 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 resolutions as well. Continue to not feel pressured to read and enjoy other hobbies | As usual, this stays on my list for the next year! I always want to make sure I balance out my days/weeks with reading, audiobooks, podcasts, YouTube, other TV shows, and spending quality time with Chris. My goal of 120 books was super manageable last year because, as usual, I got a little ahead during certain months and it balanced out for later months with less reading. Read 50% or less contemporary novels | Yet again, can I make this one work?! I really hope the challenges below help me read more mysteries and other genres. I got VERY close in 2019 with reading other genres. Curate a monthly TBR with a lot of variety | I’m planning a post for this in the new year as an update to last year’s Anatomy of a TBR Post. I want to do a better job of really adding variety, including backlist titles and other genre requirements, to make my […]

Welcome to the kickoff for the All I Want For Christmas is You Readalong that I’m co-hosting with Forever Romance! Like last year’s read of Jenny Hale’s Christmassy book, we’ll be reading and sharing thoughts on Twitter and Instagram. I wanted to take a minute to remind you all that we are starting TODAY and hopefully you’d like to join us! Schedule ?December 9: Chapter 1-5 ?December 10: Chapter 6-10 ?December 11: Chapter 11-15 ?December 12: Chapter 16-20 ?December 13: Chapter 21-Epilogue Interview with Miranda Liasson What was your inspiration for the Angel Falls setting? What are some of your favorite restaurants or establishments to write about in the small town? There’s a village about an hour away from where I live in Northeast Ohio called Chagrin Falls. I  got to know it a little better a few years ago when I had to drive my kids there for SAT prep classes. I would drop them off and then take my laptop to the local coffee shop and hang out there while they did their thing. In the process, I got to explore the Main Street, see the pretty old homes, and check out the falls which are in the middle of the downtown. There is a beautiful park next to the river where they hold art shows and other events. It’s probably the prettiest small town I’ve ever seen, and it’s filled with theater, arts, activities, etc.—very vibrant. I was excited that my editor let me locate a small town in […]

I know that I usually talk about my upcoming year-long challenges in one big post, but I’m inventing this one for myself and wanted to give my idea a full post! Inspired by the following lovely bookish people: RAINBOW READING: Chelsea @ Chelsea Dolling Reads has been doing a rainbow challenge each month, where she spends a week reading books off of her shelves from a specific color family. It’s way for her to read from her physical TBR and get some focused reading time in. TRY A CHAPTER: I originally saw the idea for a “try a chapter” tag or unahul at Bekka @ Lock and Rose. There’s also a Bustle article about linking the original creator (Book Paradise, who appears to be inactive on their YouTube channel). This “try a chapter” thing is a way to read the first chapter of a book on your shelves. If it doesn’t grab you right away, you unhaul the book and move on. For 2020, I’ll be combining some of the ideas above into my own unhaul / reading from my shelves challenge. The idea is that each month I will have a specific color that I use to pull books from my shelves. Once the books are pulled, I will read the first chapter in each one and decide if I want to keep it or unhaul it. The idea is that if the chapter DOES pull me in, I will continue reading that book immediately. I can’t just decide I want […]

Original post HERE Hi friends, just wanted to pop on here quickly to remind you that today we are reading in the memory of Grace at Rebel Mommy Book Blog, who lost her battle to cancer over the summer. Today is her birthday. She was one of the brightest lights and sweetest people in our community, so we are reading books she loved or books she had left on her TBR to honor her. Consider joining us and please consider making a donation to one of the following: Her breast cancer charity of choice was Metavivor – donate here Her husband and family are participating in Making Strides for Breast Cancer on 10/20 – donate to their team here Today you’ll find some photos on Instagram or messages on Twitter using the hashtag, sharing our reads and memories of Grace. Please check them out and share if you’d like! I made sure to post a classic Grace picture on Instagram, where she was always found with a Kindle on her lap and a coffee in hand. I’m excited to get started on this book today.   View this post on Instagram   Happy birthday to Grace ?☕️ Today I wanted to honor her memory with a classic coffee-and-kindle-in-lap picture, which she was well-known for! I’m starting TWICE IN A BLUE MOON from Grace’s TBR (and it’s by one of her favorite author duos) to #ReadForGrace today. More details on the blog. ?? ——— #book #read #reading #books #currentread #currentreads #igreads […]

Here we are – somehow in the final three months of the year. Feels like just yesterday I was listening to Weezer’s version of Africa on repeat with my friends on New Years’ Eve and eating way too many tacos. I digress… I’m here to do my usual “holy shit I need to finish my challenges ASAP because they year is almost over” post. I had the realization that I should really try to push through in October/November: Random goal I need to tweet now to put out into the universe: finish all of my 2019 reading challenges in November so I can read 90% Christmas books in December — Lauren (@bookmarklit) September 20, 2019 I’m obviously a huge fan of a good ol’ holiday romance, so unless those fit in with some challenges, I’d love to get my challenges out of the way as soon as possible! I’m going to talk about my current status for all of the 2019 year-long challenges I signed up for, plot out when to read certain books, and decide if I still even care about meeting certain goals. Spoiler: probably not. Monthly Motif Challenge This one is realistically the easiest to track what I might want to read because each month is a specific prompt to follow along with. I’ve been aiming to read two per month, and have succeeded so far, but we’ll see what happens for the rest of the year. Status: 2 books completed per monthly motif Left to complete: 1-2 books […]

In July of this year, we lost a beloved member of our bookish community. Grace at Rebel Mommy Book Blog was an absolute light in our corner of the internet. She left positive, sweet, and thoughtful comments on ALL of our blogs. I could always count on kind words from her on a post. We spoke a lot via blog comments and on Twitter, and I grew to really cherish her friendship. I can’t emphasize enough how genuinely lovely she was as a person. When I had the unfortunate task of sharing the news of her passing, after a long and extremely hard-fought battle with breast cancer (twice), my feed was flooded with love for her. The word “kind” was the most common word to describe her, and I wholeheartedly agree. Despite the challenges she faced in the last year or two, she was always positive and bright across our community. She shared her journey and struggles with us and genuinely kept fighting until the VERY end. She sadly left behind a devoted husband and three young children, including her youngest who was only just over a year old at the time of her passing. She was the epitome of what the good in our community can look like and not a single day has passed since she left us that I haven’t thought about her or missed her. In honor of Grace and all the good she brought, I wanted to put forward a simple challenge for those of […]

Information Despite the fact that I never need motivation to read contemporary fiction, I’m hoping that this read-a-thon will just be a fun reading boost within my favorite genre! I’ve come to really love Chelsea’s channel (video announcement below) and watch literally everything she posts, so I felt very compelled to join in. This read-a-thon goes from Monday 9/23 to Sunday 9/29, and the liveshow on Chelsea’s channel will be Saturday 9/28 at 6pm PST / 9pm EST. I won’t be able to watch live, unfortunately, as I’ll be up at my sister’s college for family weekend and various birthday happenings in Maine, but I still plan to read my buns off. Goals There are seven challenges, which I’ll discuss and plot out below, so my goal is to read seven books during the read-a-thon! I don’t mind if the seventh one is incomplete as long as I manage to start it and make a good dent by the end. My other goal is to read MOSTLY review copies, as that’s an area I always need help in. If it’s not a review copy, it should be an owned book that’s on my shelf and would hopefully apply to my Picky Pledge and/or other challenges I have to complete. I’m also reaaaaally hoping that I can post an Instagram picture for each of the days/challenges. Challenges & TBR I’m basing my TBR completely off of the challenges for this round. A lot of them were pulled from my September TBR but […]

As I shared in my August TBR, I’m participating in Disney-a-thon! More information can be found in this thread on Twitter. It goes the entire month of August and is based around joining specific teams, reading a set TBR, and moving through other teams’ TBRs if you have the chance! Despite The Lion King and Mulan being my top two favorite Disney movies, I went with Team Tangled because the TBR most closely aligned with my own plans for ARC August. Truthfully, the “team books” that needed to be read were the biggest deciding factor. Team Tangled is reading A CURSE SO DARK AND LONELY, which is my book club selection for August and is an old ARC I desperately want/need to read. It was the only team read that I had on my TBR, period, let alone for ARC August. So there we go! TBR   Rapunzel – Read a book with glowing reviews (10) For this one, because all of my books are review copies, there are plenty that haven’t been published yet. I went onto Goodreads and found which book had the highest rating and most positive reviews that I was able to reasonably see. WELL MET doesn’t come out for a little while but many friends have loved it already and it has a 4.27 rating on Goodreads. Yes, there are only 184 ratings, but it counts when most friends rated it 4 stars. Flynn Ryder – Read a dark/mysterious book (10) I originally put IRONSIDE for […]

I’d heard of Booktubeathon on and off over the years, but definitely assumed it was more for Booktubers. With the recent name change to Reading Rush (learn more and sign up there), I decided to finally investigate and participate! The gist is that you just try to read as much as possible during this week. The coolest part of the challenge, in my opinion, is that there’s a website you can sign up for and track your reading progress. All of your stats will populate and you can really see how much reading you got done during the readathon. Add me as a friend HERE! I’d love to hang out and track with ya 🙂 More information is here in the video: Goals This Reading Rush readathon will be taking place from July 22nd through July 28th, so I am trying to mold my July TBR into this challenge without having to skip books I’m supposed to read, or read too much outside of the initial TBR I picked. I can’t imagine that I’ll read 7 books for this one because I do have weekend plans that will hinder reading. I’d love to finish 4-5 books during the readathon and only finish/read books that meet challenges below. A few books from my July TBR will likely get read this week to finish off the month, but I’m hoping to sneak in a few other books I’ve been meaning to read (if I finish everything else in time!). The reason for this is that ARC August […]