Search Results for: spreadsheet

2019 Mid-Year Reading Statistics & Goals

Posted July 3, 2019 / Book Challenges, Features, Wrap-Ups / 1 Comment

I always do a middle-of-the-year recap to see how I’m doing on my goals, challenges, statistics, and TBR plans. Sometimes it’s the kick in the pants I need or the moment when I decide to let myself off the hook for once. Either way, today’s post is about all of the books I’ve read and their related statistics, as well as my general goal progress based on the resolutions I created at the beginning of the year. Next Monday, you’ll see my challenge progress and potential TBRs/plans for me to finish things up. As you see in my monthly wrap-ups, I keep my stats updated each time. The spreadsheet I use is definitely the reason for my organization. I use this time of year (in addition to the end of the year) to REALLY go all-out with my stats. It also helps me create new goals or update existing ones. I may decide I really should read more fantasy or more books from my own shelves. I’ll highlight all of the books I’ve read so far in general too. All of the Books Read So Far I always make a resolutions post to explain the reading, blogging, and personal (but somewhat bookish) goals for the year. I usually don’t revisit these too much but I hope this midpoint check-in is enough to make them top of mind again. I’ll talk about my “progress” on each of these goals/resolutions and let you know if I consider it a pass, fail, or […]

Lauren Lately | May 2019

Posted May 15, 2019 / Features, Lauren Lately, Wrap-Ups / 3 Comments

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 We are officially in the busy section of 2019 for me! Starting with my friend’s bachelorette trip to Charleston last month, through May and into June, we will be quite busy. We have another wedding we’re in (both Chris and me!) in August but luckily there isn’t a whole lot going into it. We had a little birthday celebration for my friend Cassie during Easter weekend, where we got new cartilage piercings and tacos for lunch. We also went shopping to get the matching Easter outfits that Natasha and I always wear for my family! I snuck in some reading time before Easter while everyone else was sleeping and then we had a nice day at my mom’s house. We don’t have a reason to celebrate Easter but we do it anyways? lol. I’m super busy with birthday things in April, as you all probably know by now (five super important people in my […]

2019 State of the ARC

Posted February 15, 2019 / Discussions, Features / 10 Comments

State of the ARC is hosted by AvalinahsBooks Current/Recent Approach I recently spoke about where I get my ARCs, how good (or bad) I am at reading them, and countless other things under the “how I deal with review copies” umbrella of conversation. I’ve learned that I’m really not terrible about keeping up with them overall, but there are still plenty I leave unread at the end of the year. I don’t want to ignore my review copies from previous years completely, but I need to figure out my new approach to reading ARCs from 2019 to stay on top of things. I am the person who reads a book and writes the review within the next 1-12 hours at most. Yes, every single time. This is partly because my memory is garbage but also because I’m just DETERMINED to do it. I like to be on top of things. This is why I don’t have a problem reading books super early – I end up with posts scheduled months in advance. It feels good to have a more full blog post calendar; I love getting to the next month and realizing I already have at least a few things on there, scheduled and ready to go. I read the book and write the review immediately. Period. No matter the pub date. I’ve been trying to be better about reading my ARCs early enough, mixing in some backlist ones while getting ahead on future ones. One day you’ll see me reading […]

2019 Organizational Methods: Books + Life

Posted January 17, 2019 / Goals & Planning, Personal / Information / Etc. / 3 Comments

As usual, a new year brings new planners and spreadsheets! It’s my favorite thing to organize and get settled. I’ve talked in the past QUITE a bit about my planners and spreadsheets (bookish and otherwise) because they change every year AND whenever I’m in the mood to try something new. Here are all the ways I plan to organize my 2019, now that we’re about a month in! Happy Planner As you’ve seen before, I use a physical planner for most of my life and work-related planning. I’ve tried mannnny types over the years and am still continuing to try new ones! This year I’m using a Happy Planner again. The “socialite” one I picked offers many of the things I’m looking for in a planner. I was really looking for something where boxes were customizable in some way. I prefer to label things on my own because my life has a few different elements to incorporate. I don’t have a bookish planner this year, so I knew I’d need a box to track books or blog things. Otherwise, you can see how I organize above. The top box is about bills or things due that day. Box two is a mini to-do list and errands I’ll run during lunch. There are two boxes for AM and PM, in case I have time-specific things to do before, during, and after work. Next is the book box and last is a meal planning box. The top left picture also shows the pen color […]

Lauren Lately | January 2019

Posted January 16, 2019 / Features, Lauren Lately, Wrap-Ups / 2 Comments

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 ✨ Holiday party and festivities with friends | We went down to southern Connecticut for a holiday party with my friends. We always do a secret santa (last year was awkwardly pushed to March) and hang out for the night. We had good food and played games, as usual. Alaina had me and got me bath bombs, my favorite candle, and some chocolate covered cherries. Christmas Eve and Day | We have a big run-around between the two days, since our family tends to host things on the same day unfortunately. On Christmas Eve we split up for the first time in a while. I went to my dad’s to see his family while Chris went to southern Connecticut to his uncle’s house. Usually the parties are hosted within 20-30 minutes of each other so we can hit both but that didn’t happen this year. On Christmas Day, we bounced from my nana’s house in the […]

2018 End of Year Statistics

Posted December 31, 2018 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 2 Comments

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 2018: 3.7 stars Average number of pages per month: 3,504 pages Average books acquired per month: 12.8 books Most books/pages read in a month: January – 14 books (4,765 pages) Least books/pages read in a month: June – 7 books (2,343 pages) These are definitely not surprising to me. I always try to get ahead on my Goodreads challenge in January. Signing up for new reading challenges, participating in Bout of Books, and just being excited for a clean slate of reading? Those things all lead to an increase in January to get me on the right foot. I’m also not surprised about having a low reading month in June. It was super busy. We packed in EVERYTHING we could during our last month in Maine, including a trip home for a wedding AND a trip to California for a wedding/vacation. I knew I wasn’t going to get a lot of reading done that month, which is why I tried to read a little more […]

Lauren Lately | November 2018

Posted November 15, 2018 / Features, Lauren Lately, Wrap-Ups / 2 Comments

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 ✨ Friends’ wedding | Two of my friends got married in October and it was a gorgeous ceremony! They had it outside in front of a waterfall with a lot of fall-time accents, like pumpkins. It was in the middle of nowhere though; the bus from the hotel to the venue was 30 minutes! We had a lot of fun celebrating with a bunch of my friends and the afterparty involved a lot of Domino’s pizza in the hotel conference room. Lazy, rainy Saturdays and sports | This entire fall season has involved too much rain to really do anything fun and outdoorsy. We had a few Saturdays in a row where we would hang out at home, with me reading and Chris playing video games. We also had a period where we were watching way too many sports at once! Between the World Series (go fucking Red Sox!!), football games, and wrestling shows/PPVs, we once […]

No Spend November

Posted October 26, 2018 / Goals & Planning, Personal / Information / Etc. / 5 Comments

I attempted No Spend April a few years ago and it wasn’t the most successful thing ever? I like the sound of No Spend November and genuinely think I can make this happen. My weddings are officially done for the year but I do have some general spending to do for next year’s weddings and Christmas. This November I am aiming to not spend money on myself at all and limit my spending on other people, food, etc. I just developed a monthly calendar that shows all of my expenses, so I’ll include that here. Here’s my plan of attack. Budget / Expenses I didn’t disclose the dollar amounts here but I put them in order from most to least expensive. Yes, my student loan costs more than my half of our monthly rent. I otherwise have various payments for my car, streaming services, and more. Student loan Rent for the house Car loan Car insurance Credit card monthly payments Internet Sling TV and Netflix Blog hosting Wrestling-related streaming services Dropbox Premium Weight Watchers Rules (1) Only spend money I have on hand – nothing goes on a credit card I actually don’t have many credit cards in general: one store card, one regular one, and a Paypal Credit account that I use mostly for airline tickets and other expensive items like that. I hope to not use any of my credit accounts and focus on using my savings from the month on paying them down. (2) Dining out is […]

ARC Analysis

Posted September 24, 2018 / Discussions, Features / 10 Comments

I have always felt like I’m ~bad at ARCs.~ I request books and never want to read them, or I read them super late, or I forget to email the publisher with my feedback… the list goes on. I’m ashamed to say that I have quiiiite a few old ARCs around that I still want to read but just haven’t done it yet. At the time of writing this, my Netgalley ratio is 75%. That’s really not bad, considering how terrible I THINK I am with reading ARCs. I recently – finally – developed a spreadsheet to track my books for review (more on that in a second) and was able to do some major analysis about my ARCs, where they come from, and if I really am as bad at reading them as I think. If you like stats and random analysis like that, keep on reading! The Spreadsheet This spreadsheet concept very randomly came into my life. I loved reading about Nick’s review copy spreadsheet and thought about making my own for a couple of weeks. Later in August, Shealea commented on my TTT post and I went to check out her blog and TTT, which was about 10 spreadsheet hacks for book bloggers. It was a great post and linked to her “owned book” spreadsheet. Because I have an app for that, I decided to revamp her spreadsheet and turn it into my “review copy” spreadsheet instead! I basically reworked some of the formulas and formatting, added some […]

How I Make My TBRs (Organized Mood Reading)

Posted September 7, 2018 / Discussions, Features / 1 Comment

I loved Nick’s post about her organized mood reading a while back and decided to share something similar here! As you’ve noticed, I’ve been curating and posting monthly TBRs here for over a year now. I love having something to guide my reading, for the most part, without making me feel too pressured. I have nothing to lose if I DON’T follow my TBR, but it’s the perfect thing to get me on track if I’m losing ideas of what I need or want to read next. I am a mood reader for sure, but those tendencies have faded a little now that I have (a) some semblance of organization and (b) deadlines I can’t get around sometimes. When I pull together my monthly TBR posts, there are a few factors I take into consideration and a handful of places I look to get ideas. I should also mention my life would be a MESS without Crini’s book spreadsheets each year. The pictures you see below will come from that SS. Here’s how I develop my monthly TBRs… Step 1: Look at upcoming deadlines Deadlines here can mean just about anything – self-imposed due dates, book club meetings, library book due dates, and blog tour posts. I always have at least 1-2 of these per month, so that’s the first thing I check when developing a TBR list. What is coming due? I use my book spreadsheet and add a tab for some of these due dates. This tab is […]