bookstagram – Abi of Pellinor

2023 Bookish Goals! 🎯

The new year is almost upon us! How on earth has it gone so fast?! And this means that it’s time to think about my bookish year and how I want it to shape up. I’ve set myself some goals and tasks, as well as a few books I’d like to read. And because I create content I’ve also made a few goals for myself there

I want to read 50 books next year. As of writing this blog post I’ve read 116 books, so it’s a lot less. But I’m so burnt out and I have been for months. I’ve barely been reading anything and it’s a struggle to pick up a book. I want to bring joy and fun back into reading again for me. If that means slowing down and forcing myself to take my time with my books? Then that’s what I’ll do!

And for those 50 books, 12 of them will be from the Goldsboro GSFF book box because I want to continue reading those books the month after they arrive. It means I stay on top of them, and don’t let them build up, as well as reading a new release each month. Because most of my books are back list!

I’ll also be taking part in a few different book clubs next year, but the one with defined books is the spiritual successor to the Dead Famous Readalong and this will be for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series! We’ll be reading all 5 books from Douglas Adams as well as the 6th book from Eoin Colfer and I’m excited to dive into this comedy sci-fi!

I’d also like to finish the Lord of the Rings trilogy by the end of next year, but I’m not making that a hard and fast goal. It’s just more of a vibe I’m putting into the universe 😂

Then we come to my tbr. By 2359hr on 31/12/2023 I was my physical tbr to be below 100 books. As of pre-Christmas it’s sat at 146. This will probably be the most difficult of all my goals I’m setting myself, as I always have books coming in. I’ll probably have to look at unhauling books. But I would LOVE to start 2024 with less than 100 books to read and really work on making my tbr as small as possible!

And finally, my content goals. I’d like to hit 1000 subscribers on YouTube. I’m at 860 now so it’s attainable, but I’ll have to keep working at my content! I’ve got a few ideas so I just hope I can execute them in 2023.

For Instagram I’d like to hit 2000 followers. I’m at 1500 now so again this is attainable, but I specifically want to work on changing up my content this year. I’ve been doing the same thing for a while now and I want to keep it fresh and still enjoy the photos I’m putting out.

And finally TikTok. I’m pretty new to this platform but I’ve got almost 1000 followers already, so I’d like to aim for 2000 by the end of 2023. Is this too high? I’ve got no idea. I’m so new to the platform 😅 but I’m enjoying making the silly videos and looking forward to seeing where this goes next year!

And that’s it, those are my bookish goals! Keeping it nice and simple for this coming year so that I don’t overwhelm myself, but I’ll still be really pleased if I’m able to achieve them. Most importantly, I just hope that I enjoy myself next year!

Let me know what goals you have for your reading next year! It’s always fun to learn what challenges people have set for themselves.

Almost regretting an unhaul!

I read Clockwork Angel in August (I think) and I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would! So much so that I was actually regretting that I’d unhauled Prince and Princess!!

I had read the first 3 books in the Mortal Instruments series and they were… fine? So I thought it was fine to unhaul these and I just kept Angel for a reading challenge I had that month. But I enjoyed Angel more than I expected!

It turned out all good in the end though, because I no longer actually want to read these 😅 let me explain! These books (including the original mortal instruments trilogy) are like junk food. They’re fun reads, and they’re definitely enjoyable! But it’s not something I’m ever going to reread and now that there’s been a little bit of time since I read the last book I have no real desire to go back and read books 2 and 3. Also if this does change in the future then I can always borrow them from my library!!

So essentially I felt a lot of regret and then no regret, happy ending!! 😂

Mid Year Goal Check-In

At the beginning of 2021 I set out some goals that I wanted to reach for this year. Mid year seems like a good time to see if I’m on track!

If you want to see my original post on these you can check it out here! I sectioned my goals off so lets go section by section

READING

Read 50 books – DONE! As of writing this blog post I have read 60 books so far this year and I’m in the middle of my 61st! I’ve absolutely smashed this goal. I have no idea how but I’m not complaining!
30+ read from my TBR – DONE! What the hell?! I’ve read 32 books from my physical TBR shelves so far this year! That’s insane! Why did I set my targets so low?!
1 book over 500 pages – DONE! I read over 500 pages of Long Walk to Freedom, but I did start that in 2020 so if you want something that “counts” I read The Mask Falling which comes in at 514 pages, as well as The Death of Evelyn Hardcastle at 513 pages, Dead or Alive at 597 pages, and a reread of Mortal Coil sitting at 572 pages. I think I’ve done pretty well on that goal!
2 contemporary books – DONE! I’ve got 5 books marked as “contemporary” on my spreadsheet which is a lot more than I had expected. I think some of the “literary fiction” I read can be marked as contemporary which has helped.
1 classic – DONE! 5 classics read so far this year! Some of them are from a set of teeny tiny books, so perhaps they don’t count. But I’ve still read Frankenstein and Pride and Prejudice!
5 books continuing in a series – DONE! Even if you only count a series once (as in I’ve read 2 new Skulduggery books this year) I still smash this goal!
1 buddy read – DONE! I’ve buddy read with Kari, Caitlyn and Bekka, as well as my still ongoing buddy read with Olivia! (more on that later)
Diversity! – this is one that will never be “done”. But I am content with what I’ve managed so far. I’ve brought in quite a few diverse books as well as reading a minimum of one a month. I’ll definitely be keeping this up!

Returning to my buddy read with Olivia, War and Peace! We’re doing so well! We’re half way through the year and around 70% of the way through the book, which is amazing. We’re enjoying it too which is the most important thing. I’m really loving reading this book with Olivia and I’ll be so sad when we finally finish it! I’m anticipating finishing this around October rather than December which is really exciting.

BOOK BLOG

expand past just book reviews – done? I think done. It’s a very recent done though. Until pretty recently non-review posts were few and far between. And yet somehow I’ve managed to up my game in the past month or so. I don’t know how, but I’m not complaining. I just hope that I can keep it up!
non-bookish posts – I definitely haven’t written as much as I had wanted from non-bookish topics, I’ll give that one more push in the second half of the year but if I don’t do it then, well then it’s clearly not that important to me

BOOKTUBE

more fun videos – I think that this is a “work in progress”. It’s not done, I still mainly create the same sort of content I did before. Primarily because this is something I’m used to and can manage on semi-autopilot whilst working a full time job. But I have made some fun videos, I’m thinking about my Måneskin video here, that I really enjoyed and that I want to do more of!
quality over quantity – big fail. I wanted to post less to be able to post better content but instead everything has pretty much stayed the same. This is making me realise that I need to really focus in on this.

BOOKSTAGRAM

engage with other posts – YES! This is never “done” cause it’s continuous but I’m definitely doing this and enjoying it! I love actually interacting on the platform and getting amazing ideas from other people!
post almost daily – DONE DONE DONE! I have posted every single day in 2021 and I’ve got no plans to stop now! Scheduling has been my biggest life saver with this!

Wow! I’ve done so much better than I would’ve thought mid way through the year! Reading wise I’ve absolutely smashed it, and I’ve actually changed my goals a bit, moving away from number of books read to instead the number of pages, and that’s really helped me with my “reading bigger books” goal. Blog wise the success has been pretty recent so I need to keep that up, and if I don’t post about non-bookish things I don’t really mind. Bookstagram has been a roaring success. The biggest disappointment has been booktube. I’ve just really not put as much effort as I had wanted into filming. I know part of it is because filming is so much harder to do. Other people live here, there’s more prep and it takes more time. But I’m hoping that I can really knuckle down and make it a priority in the coming 6 months.

How has the first half of 2021 treat you bookish-wise? I hope you’ve been doing well and hitting all of your targets! But most importantly I hope you’ve been enjoying the books you picked up!

2020 Bookish Goals!!

I’m really excited to make progress on my goals this year!! Which is kind of odd as they are a little restrictive but I’m looking forward to it non-the-less.

My main goal this year is to read my tbr books. By that, I mean the books that I physically own which I have yet to read. There are almost 200 books which fit in this category in my bedroom alone and I really do need to get through them. Along with this I have another goal to not buy any new books. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, as if any new releases come out that I’m anticipating (hint, there will be) then I can pick them up, and gifts are obviously fine. But I’m not going to actively go looking in charity shops for books and I hope that I can stick to this throughout the year and manage with the decent size pile I already own!

Because of this main goal, I can’t really aim to read more diverse books etc as it depends on what I already have. It’s definitely something I want to keep in mind for 2021, but for now I’m going to be monitoring how diverse the books are that I already had and then go from there. I’m sadly expecting it to be predominantly white but I’ll see in a years time.

In terms of my content, I’ve also created goals. I’d like to spend more time making my videos and being more proud of them, so I am likely going to be posting less frequently due to that. However, I hope that their quality increases and that I enjoy the outcome even more. For my blog, I’m going to continue with the book reviews and how the blog has been for a while, but also I want to occasionally write thought pieces. I’m quite an opinionated person about many topics, but I don’t have the opportunity to share that anywhere as it doesn’t fit in with the books that I read (as I read mainly articles and scientific journals about my passion topics) so being able to write posts on here would be great. I’ve posted one so far about the Australian bushfires and although it wasn’t exactly a masterpiece (it’s a bad piece of writing) I really enjoyed the process.

Lastly is on my instagram. I also want to keep a high quality level on here, which means only posting when I have good enough photos to post. But it also means trying to prepare enough pictures in advance and also I’m hoping to pick up/find more little knickknacks to put in my photos.

This has been a long rambley post about my plans for next year, and I don’t quite know how entertaining that will have been for you, so please do let me know any improvements or alterations you would like me to make. Thank you for a wonderful 2019 and here’s to a great 2020!

How’s Your 2020 So Far?

How has January been so far for you? Both in bookish and non-bookish ways!

Staying bookish to start with, I read 5 books in quick succession at the beginning of the month! Woohoo! I’ve not really read much since then, but considering that was my whole tbr I’m content with that for now and I’ll keep pushing to see what else I can read.

I also haven’t bought any books so far, I’ve avoided second-hand shops and bookshops entirely to avoid the temptation!! And I am also happier with the editing I’ve been doing on videos, they aren’t out yet (depending on when you read this) but I’m happy with the little changes I’ve been making and plan to keep it that way and keep changing. A similar thing has happened with my insta, I already know roughly the quality I want and I’m mostly keeping to it. I didn’t post for a little while but it just wasn’t my priority for some reason and I made the decision to not post sub-quality content just to post something.

In my non-bookish life I’m still currently jobless (if you saw yesterdays post you’ll know that isn’t fun for me) but I have been chatting with old friends via PS4 chat more and playing a game I’ve been meaning to get to with them. So it’s 6 and half a dozen, I’ll take what I can get! I’ve also booked my train tickets to go and see my partner, as he doesn’t live in my city, at the end of the month so I’m excited for that!!

What are your accomplishments or happy moments so far for 2020? If we can keep up this positive momentum we’re more likely to hit our various 2020 goals!!!

The Mystery of Three Quarters, an homage to classic mystery

I adore classic mystery stories. I’ve loved the original Sherlock books for as long as I can remember, as well as Agatha Christie’s writing, so when I spotted this little gem on NetGalley I just had to request it and luckily my request was granted!

This is the third book in this new installment by Sophie Hannah in the Hercule Poirot series and follows Poirot investigating an apparent murder where a forger has pretended to be him and has accused individuals of the crime via letters. This, of course, intrigues him and he begins to delve deeper into the mystery that has been laid out.

The writing style is done very well, and really gives you the feel of a classic Christie book. There are obviously imperfections in the writing, however, it is a well written piece and incredibly enjoyable. I found myself speeding through the book, and it was finished in no time at all. Always a sign of a good book for me. I definitely want to go back to the first two books Sophie Hannah released and delve into those too, as I can only imagine how much I’ll enjoy them. If you enjoy a traditional mystery then definitely pick this up. Great fun, enjoyable plot twists and all-in-all something that fits in well alongside Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman, a review

My boyfriend read this book, incredibly quickly for him, and then brought it along when he came to visit (we’re long distance) in order for me to read it! So I decided this was going to be my 2nd book for the 7in7readathon. I am so so grateful that he did as I absolutely loved this! I have only read one of Gaiman’s works before, The Ocean at the End at the End of the Lane (click here for my review!), so I was excited to get back into some of his writing. I also haven’t read any Norse mythology before, and I absolutely love mythology from Romans and Egyptians so I was excited about expanding my horizons within this area! Due to me never having learned anything about these myths before, I can’t attest to their accuracy so if that’s what you’re looking for here you might want to try a different review. However, if you just want to know about the book itself then please stay! I’ll tell you more!

This book is told in shorter stories, which I didn’t realise at first, and they all link together really well. They create one larger story overall and follow on from each other well. It also meant that I got through this book pretty quickly, as I always tend to do with short stories, and made it absolutely fly by. This is unlikely to be a long read!

The book introduces you to every single character and doesn’t assume you know anyone, which is great for a newbie like me, but it also doesn’t linger on them for too long. As a Marvel fan, I know about a few of the Gods such as Thor, Loki, Odin and some more, but the explanations and introductions given to them didn’t feel overly long or imposing, so if you’re already acquainted with these individuals you shouldn’t have to wade through much unnecessary backstory.

Each story comes from the mythology already present, passed down through history, and Gaiman explains where he took liberties and his reasons for this. Again, allowing more knowledgeable readers to understand his process a little more whilst also explaining to newcomers what is happening here.

If you couldn’t tell, I really enjoyed this book. The stories were written beautifully and I love how they flow into one another, also this book cemented my dislike for Loki! However, I also absolutely loved how this book was put together, with the narration style, the explanations, the flow and more. Sadly there wasn’t the little spark I get with some books, so this book is “just” a 4.5/5* read for me. There is literally nothing wrong with it that I can think of! I definitely recommend and hope that you enjoy this book as much, or a little bit more, than I did!