Search Results for: spreadsheet

Simplification

Posted March 12, 2020 / Discussions, Features / 1 Comment

I’ve been thinking about this word a lot lately, both in my reading life and in my personal life. I spoke a bit about it in a recent Five on Fridays post but I’m really trying to find ways to SIMPLIFY. I know I said my word of the year would be SAVE, but I’m adding this one too. (I think I mentioned in that post that saving wasn’t just about money, but also about saving time and frustration. The same thing as simplifying if you ask me!) When it comes to reading, I sometimes enjoy being incredibly organized and scheduled out. But, as my tweets say above, that only helps me when I’m in the mood to read. When I WANT to read. If I’m behind or not in the mood to read, having TBRs and reading schedules absolutely does not motivate me to read. When I’m in a reading rut due to my schedules and TBRs, the only thing that can break me out of it is reading a book I REALLY want to read. When I finished KING OF CROWS, I knew it was going to linger and ruin some other books for me. On top of that, I didn’t finish a book *before* its pub date, so I ended up being quite behind on my monthly numbers by the time I finally finished it. I slogged through a couple of reads afterwards and really struggled to find the desire to read. I started going to the […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #270: Discoveries

Posted January 14, 2020 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 8 Comments

Best Bookish Discoveries of 2019 Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. This week’s topic is so fun! We’re looking at the best bookish discoveries we made in 2019. I’m going to broaden this a little beyond just discoveries, but bookish or reading-related THINGS I started doing, found, or changed from 2019. Reading Bullet Journal I enjoyed working on my bullet journal for the vast majority of 2019. I think I got burnt out and uninspired after a while, but I still fully completed it for the year! I hope that the new year has increased my interest in it, but it’s still a fun and creative way to mark progress on books. Booktube I obviously didn’t DISCOVER booktube in 2019 but I did find a lot of new favorites and spend a LOT of time watching it! I was recommended some great channels and found a few more on my own, plus loved watching “old favorites” that I would watch even before this year’s new obsession. TBR Cart My cart is a little less TBR-oriented right now because of how I have it arranged and where it’s located. I use it to store planner supplies and my bullet journal, my iPad, […]

2020 Reading Bullet Journal

Posted January 9, 2020 / Goals & Planning, Personal / Information / Etc. / 8 Comments

I tried to share some bullet journal posts last year and got lazy for the final pages of the year. I think I was not giving myself enough ability to be creative with it and just lost steam. I ended up putting a lot of thought and effort into my layouts for this year, so I thought I would share my bullet journal setup for 2020! This includes all of the yearly pages (reading tracking overall, challenges, etc.) but not the monthly layouts. I kept some layouts the same, moved stuff around, and came up with brand new ideas for my new challenges. I also ended up using the same bullet journal from 2019 and just setting up a 2020 section because I barely made a dent in it last year haha. So, here we go! 2020 Divider Because I’m continuing in the same bullet journal from last year, I decided to make a 2020 divider page so I know where the new year starts. I’m keeping the little bookmark there as well. Year in reading and dates completed/read These pages are similar from last year’s setup as well. I made a large book where I color in one stripe/line across for every five books I finish. By the end of the year, the book should be full of stripes and colored in! The second page here features a year-long calendar. If I finish a book on a specific day, I circle that date in the calendar. If I finish […]

2019 Reflection / Wrap-Up

Posted January 1, 2020 / Features, Wrap-Ups / 2 Comments

I usually do a few end-of-year bookish surveys to mark the end of another reading year, but I decided to swap one of those out, keep Jamie’s EOY survey, and do something different. I’ll share stats and highs/lows from both my reading year. I participated in the Statistics Survey in years past (2014, 2015, and 2016), created and hosted by Brittany and Andi, two of my all-time favorite bloggers and friends. They didn’t move forward with hosting it for this year and I decided to make some adjustments to their questions for my own purposes. I always share stats and EOY information at this time anyways, but there are bits and pieces sprinkled in from their survey as well! Monthly Reads and Stats, Book Buying Habits Average book rating for 2019: 3.8 stars Average number of pages per month: 3,757 pages Average books acquired per month: 11.3 books Most books/pages read in a month: March, July – 14 books (5,568 pages, 4,422 pages) Least books/pages read in a month: September – 7 books (2,562 pages) I usually read the most in January because I tend to get reinvigorated by a new reading year. I like being able to get ahead of my challenge early. However, this year’s biggest reading months were March and July! Looking back at my monthly recap, it seems like I was just excited to read in March for some reason. I got into a groove, listened to a lot of audiobooks, and enjoyed my reading. July was another solid reading month where I met […]

2019 End of Year Survey

Posted December 30, 2019 / Uncategorized / 4 Comments

I loved filling out Jamie’s survey in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. This is the 10th time she’s hosted this survey and it’s so fun to see what everyone chooses for the categories. Last year, I didn’t allow myself any duplicates. I’m going to try to keep them to a minimum for this survey, but it feels impossible. I’ll need to have a few. To learn more about it and see a blank set of questions, check here! It was so fun to reread my answers for last year, since I copied that survey here to clean out and fill out. Number of Books You Read: 123 Number of Re-Reads: 4 | Number of DNFs: 7 Genre You Read The Most From: Contemporary 1. Best Book You Read In 2018? Totally cheating and adding multiple categories! (Not including rereads.) See a full list of my “best reads” of the year (5 stars and 4.5 stars) here if you’re curious. Best of the best: Red White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston Best contemporary: The Bride Test by Helen Hoang Best non-contemporary: Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo Best adult fiction: Meet Cute by Helena Hunting Best sequel or companion: The Map From Here to There by Emery Lord Best diverse read: There’s Something About Sweetie by Sandhya Menon 2. Book you were excited about and thought you were going to love more but didn’t? I feel like I had quite a few books that disappointed me this year or didn’t live up to what I was expecting them to be. The biggest disappointment overall was probably […]

Spotlight: Calendar of Crime Challenge

Posted December 20, 2019 / Book Challenges, Features, Spotlight / 0 Comments

My new Spotlight feature highlights anything within the bookish world that I feel deserves a spotlight for a few minutes – publishers (or more specifically, imprints!), new or old favorite authors, bookish people/bloggers, covers or cover trends, topics/genres within books, and anything else that should be on your radar. Calendar of Crime Challenge I thought it’d be really fun to put a spotlight on the Calendar of Crime reading challenge, hosted by My Reader’s Block. You can read their post about the 2020 challenge HERE for more details and to sign up, but I wanted to highlight why I think this is such a worthwhile and intriguing challenge. If you’re someone like me who LOVES researching things, plotting highly specific TBRs, and enjoys scheduling their reading, you have to take a look at this challenge. Challenge Rules/Premise The basic idea of this challenge is to read at least one crime-related book a month (mystery, thriller, police procedural, cozy mystery – you name it) that fits one of the prompts on the Calendar of Crime. Each month has a number of challenges that you should follow for your mystery book of choice. “To claim a book, it must fit one of the categories for the month you wish to fulfill. Unless otherwise specified, the category is fulfilled within the actual story. for instance, if you are claiming the book for December and want to use “Christmas” as the category, then Christmas figure in some in the plot. Did someone poison the […]

2020 Resolutions and Challenge Sign-Up

Posted December 13, 2019 / Book Challenges, Features / 14 Comments

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 […]

In Which I Get Ridiculous About Reading Goals and Scheduling (Readalong-Style)

Posted October 16, 2019 / Discussions, Features / 7 Comments

Maybe it’s the large amount of readathons and – more importantly – readalongs I’ve been doing lately, but I’ve gotten into the habit of reaaaaally scheduling out my reading. I set small reading goals per day or week and plan my TBR (and other things) at a super detailed level when I really need some motivation. My reading mojo has been down the tubes since late July/early August and I just can’t get myself to care about reading sometimes. However, I simultaneously want to read all the things??? Like, ya girl can’t stop adding books to the “currently reading” shelf and thus never actually finishing anything. I spoke a while ago about the schedule I developed for how I try to balance all of the audiobook-listening, YouTube/TV-watching, and podcast-listening I want to do on a weekly basis, so this isn’t a foreign concept to me. Sometimes setting weird goals and schedules makes me MORE satisfied and interested in reading. Following along with a basic concept from readalongs, I decided to make some kind of reading schedule for myself in October. I’m currently participating in the Diviners Readalong and FaerieAThon, where the hosts plot out one week(ish) per month to read the next book in the series or author’s backlist. They further determine how many pages or chapters need to be read each day, so everyone is having fun reading along with each other. I love the idea of setting highly-specific reading goals on a daily basis to get books DONE within […]

#ReadForGrace

Posted September 19, 2019 / Book Challenges, Features / 39 Comments

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 […]

Lauren Lately | July 2019

Posted July 17, 2019 / Features, Lauren Lately, Wrap-Ups / 1 Comment

Because my Bookmark Lit Bulletin wrap-ups got out of hand, I wanted to break up my monthly wrap-ups into two posts: one personal and one bookish/bloggy. I created Lauren Lately here to highlight all of the personal happenings in my life: events, activities, shows I’m addicted to, things I’m obsessing over, recipes I’ve loved, and goals for the next month. I decided to space them out so this wrap-up happens around the mid-point of the month and the bookish one happens at the end of the month. ✨ Check out my most recent bookish and bloggy wrap-up HERE ✨ What I’ve Been Up To Lobster rolls and local exploring | Chris and I went to a local lobster roll and ice cream shop when exploring into a new county near us. We had great food and walked through the woods to see their fairy gardens! They also sold nice plants and just had a great vibe in general. We went down to a skatepark nearby Chris was meaning to try too. Jen’s Mystic bachelorette | Chris’s sister chose Mystic for her bach location because she wanted something near the ocean and relaxed. It was perfect! I’ve never been on a bachelorette trip with such a small amount (meaning ZERO) of drama. Everyone was a virtual stranger to everyone else and there were no cliques at all. We got along great and had a fun/relaxing time! Book club, grad party, and the beginning of porch time | I’ve been going to book club at a local […]