Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.
The rules are simple:
Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post. Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists. Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.
This week’s topic is Bookish Discoveries In 2019. My list is a combination of changes in my reading and some new authors I discovered last year. Links from the book titles will take you to my review.
Restraint – Whether that’s not over-committing to blog tours, turning down new review requests or not requesting more titles from NetGalley than I can handle, 2019 was the year I tried to bring balance to my blogging and reading life. Let’s be honest, it’s a work in progress.
Memoirs – Some of my favourite reads last year were personal memoirs such as Where The Hornbeam Grows by Beth Lynch, In My Life by Alan Johnson and The Outrun by Amy Liptrot.
New Genres – Thanks to Pushkin Press, I discovered American noir through the work of Margaret Millar and her novel The Listening Walls.
Audiobooks – I listened to more audiobooks than in any previous year but that still amounted to only a handful. I’m not one of those people who can multitask and listen to a book while doing other things; I need to give them my full attention. However, I found it useful for consuming books I might have found challenging in a standard format, such as The Long Take by Robin Robertson, winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2019.
Reading Challenges – I was forced to come to the conclusion that I’m pretty bad at reading challenges. I documented some of the reasons in this blog post. I’m attempting to follow my own advice and sign up for less this year or set more realistic targets.
Blogging is hard work – Although I’m not driven by stats and I blog for fun, I was disappointed to see my blog received less views in 2019 than the previous year. However, I’m still massively grateful for every visit, comment or like. It proved to me that making your blog stand out from the crowd – if that’s important to you – requires perseverance and constant promotion and sharing of blog posts. And as for Instagram…Well, that’s even more work.
Finally, Four New To Me Authors:
Fiona Kidman, author of This Mortal Boy
Meg Keneally, author of Fled
Heather Cooper, author of Stealing Roses
James MacManus, author of Ike and Kay and The Woman With Wings
What bookish discoveries did you make last year?
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