Tag: books

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 Reading Goals I Still Want to Accomplish Before the End of the Year, which is also an invitation to update our previous post from back in January, Bookish Goals for 2023. Perhaps it’s my previous life as a project manager that means I like setting goals for myself. But when you go back to review them, what a way to bring you down to earth and confirm once again that you were wildly overambitious. (Not all my projects overran, honest!)

1. Achieve my Goodreads target of reading 120 books – 87 books read so far so just about on track
2. Read at least 50 books that have been in my TBR pile for longer than two years, i.e. acquired prior to 1st January 2021 – only 13 of the books I’ve read this year fall into this category so it looks unlikely to be achieved
3. Attend Henley Literary Festival and, if possible, at least one other literary festival in person – I’ve already attended three events at Henley Literary Festival which is taking place this week and have a couple more coming up. And the stars have aligned so a planned holiday in Falmouth, Cornwall the week after next coincides with Falmouth Book Festival
4. Take part in – and complete – the following reading challenges: When Are You Reading? Challenge 2023, What’s in a Name Challenge 2023, 20 Books of Summer, Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2023 – I have one more period to match to complete the first, two more categories to match for the second, I failed miserably again on the third (owing to my own stubbornness) but I’ve already exceeded my target (50+ books) for the last
5. Read all the books on the Walter Scott Prize 2023 shortlist – if possible, on the longlist – before the winner is announced – I read eight of the twelve books on the longlist but not before the shortlist of seven was announced and I still had two of the shortlisted books left to read when the prize was awarded… and I still haven’t read them
6. Complete my own Backlist Burrow challenge by reading two books from the backlists of each of the six authors I’ve chosen – I’ve been spectacularly unsuccessful with this one. I’ve only read one on my list and seven of the books I don’t even own copies of yet! That might change as I wandering around Henley-on-Thames this week…
7. Read and review all new NetGalley approvals (from January 2023 onwards) by their publication date. (Yes, I know, haha!) – Haha, indeed. So far I’ve read 50 NetGalley titles that were approved since the beginning of 2023 but only managed to review eighteen of them before publication, although some were only one or two days late. At the moment, I have nine books on my shelf with future publication dates. And on the positive side, I now have a 94% feedback ratio 
8. Be a better blogger pal – leave comments on posts, share posts on social media, etc – A work in progress but I’m trying… 
9. Refresh my blog – new theme, archive old posts, etc – Given you’re looking at the same old blog, that will be a no!
10. Be more active/creative on Instagram – Another work in progress but I have increased my followers so I must be generating some things of interest 

I’m going to give myself 5 out of 10 but with the possibility of 7 out of 10 if I apply myself over the next couple of months.

If you set yourself any reading or blogging goals for this year, how are you progressing? 1