Return and 2024 Blog Goals

Greetings! As you saw from my most recent post, I’m back. This will be a slow return, with no more than one post per week for a long while. I need to build up some reviews again before I can commit to more than that. Posts will be on either Wednesday OR Friday. I won’t be checking comments often so it may take some time before they are approved and appear on the blog. Please know I do still appreciate dialog and hearing your thoughts, it’s just going to be a slower process.

Frequently at this point I would do a review of goals and favorite reads from the past year, but since I only blogged for a few months last year and circumstances significantly affected my reading, instead I’m just going to review my blogging goals for the next year. 

2023 Blogging Goals

This year I’m keeping it very simple and quantifiable for my goals.

Review ten board books.

This probably seems like a stretch given that I just went two years without posting any board book reviews! But in years past I did about ten a year. That’s one per month considering that I plan to take two months off from posting.

Review ten picture books.

Again, I haven’t done that for two years either, but that was more pandemic-related and not having access to good cameras. The photography situation has cleared up now so I think this is a reasonable goal to consider. I’m not particularly looking at fiction or nonfiction, I just want to get back in the habit of reviewing these as well.

Review ten or more graphic novels.

Yes, there’s a theme of ten here! That’s because now that I’m trying to routinely take two months off each year, ten fits easily and manageably into my posting schedule. For each of these first three I’m hoping to post approximately one a month.

Review at least 25 books for my next diverse MG fantasy novel list.

Considering that I’ll only be posting during about 42 weeks, but also that I have many continuing series to keep reviewing, this works out to roughly one MG fantasy review per week. We’ll see if I can keep that up even with planned breaks! I’m not going to attempt to post my next list in 2023, as it seems that every other year is a lot more reasonable – it’s a lot to review 40-60 books in a year, even if they’re middle grade novels. If I get 25 done this year that will put me on track to post the next list at the end of 2024.

Take two months off from blogging (not necessarily consecutive).

This has been a goal of mine for a while, I think taking off June and December would be idea, but it has yet to work out quite that way.

Review ten works of nonfiction.

Left to my own devices, I often tend to go for fiction. I’ve gotten back into the habit of reading nonfiction again in 2022 and want to keep that going. This can overlap with the other challenges that are format- but not genre-specific, so I will count nonfiction picture books or graphic novels.

Do you have any blogging or reading goals for 2023? I almost never do reading challenges anymore, although they are fun at times. These days my reading has to be very flexible to adjust to changing life plans.

2022 Goals

Most years I’ve had this blog I’ve made some sort of goals post. It is mostly an exercise in futility (as I rarely follow them throughout the year) but I still like to look back and see what my goals were and which, if any, I actually worked on during the year.

Often I post my year in review, but I’m not planning to do so this year, until perhaps 2023 when I’ll take a look at the past two years. This year I’ve also made more modest goals than usual as events in my personal life make it likely that I may be blogging less.

Year(s) in Review and Goals

So not only was 2020 a mess, I never really did a wrap up from 2019. I’ve gone ahead and updated my Review pages (2019, 2020) so let’s look at a few other things before getting into my favorites of the last two years and goals for 2021.

Middle Grade Mondays

For 2021 I am going to start a new occasional post, Middle Grade Monday. Towards the end of 2020, my Fiction Fridays were almost entirely diverse middle grade fantasy novels. I have a LOT more books in that category to read, review, or post about and am hoping to put out a second round up at the end of 2021 or beginning of 2022. But I also read a lot of other books including adult novels, YA, picture books, historical fiction, realistic stories, and even middle grade science fiction, all of which I would love to discuss on Fiction Friday.

I don’t want the diverse middle grade fantasy to overwhelm the blog, so sometime in the next few months I’ll be switching to posting that on Mondays and hopefully doing other fiction reviews for Fiction Fridays.

Reflections

So a pandemic happened.

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I Didn’t Meet My Goals and That’s Okay

In the beginning of 2018 I set a whole bunch of goals.  Blogging goals, and goals for the Nonfiction Challenge.  Then my real life happened.  Here’s the breakdown of how I did with all of those different goals, and the ONE surprising goal I actually completed! 

The Book Addiction Tag

I saw this book tag over at the Borrowed Bookshelf and thought it would be fun. 

Hello Again

First, I just want to thank you for your patience.  The plan was to be away for only a month, however some health complications kept us in the hospital longer than I planned so everything was delayed.  That also meant my careful schedule of posts went out the window…

Many thanks to everyone who continued to read even as I missed several weeks.  It appears that some external links to my reviews went up while I was gone, so a warm welcome to any new readers!

For new readers, I review anything diverse from board books to academic works.  If you’re looking for a particular topic, reading level, or format then your best bet is to check the page with my tags.  I tag all of my reviews with the reading level, diverse content included (the only exception being black main characters as that is the majority of what I read), how I got the book, genre, and any other topics that apply.

If you’re here for board books, they have their own page as well as a tag.

If you’re looking for a particular book or an author who doesn’t have a tag, the search page is probably your best bet.  I also keep pages for all the books I review in a particular year (roughly sorted by fiction/nonfiction and picture/chapter) and a master list of all my reviews by author and illustrator, but those are only updated as I have time.

For continuing readers, thanks again for sticking around.  I’ll probably be fairly quiet on the blog, and liking and commenting less than usual as we adjust to our newest family member, but I’m trying to finish a few theme weeks and Fiction Friday is back again.

I appreciate every comment, view, and like.  It’s brings me great joy that my reviews are of help or use to others.

Changes

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Currently Reading

I saw this tag on whatthelog and decided to give it a try! It was short and easy to answer.

1) How many books do you usually read at once?

This is going to really bother some people…  At least five.  I always have three nonfiction (or short story) books going – one for work, one for the car, one for bedtime reading.  I actively participate in 2 nonfiction book groups every month and occasionally participate in two others.  Usually there is at least one book that’s required reading for professional development at one of my jobs.  I try to average at least one novel a week.

Acts of Faith by Eboo Patel.

A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park.

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.

Dalai Lama, My Son: A Mother’s Story by Diki Tsering, edited and introduced by Khedroob Thonup.

I consider a book to be “currently reading” if I’ve read something from it in the last three days OR the last time I had access to it.  (For example, the book I leave at my workplace for lunch reading once a week).