Ceri Louise Reads

Happy New Year!

Last year ended up being a really busy year for a lot of reasons. There were some very happy occasions and some really tricky moments. I moved, got married, started a new job, with all the excitement and stress that all those things entail. This meant that once again my ambitious plans to reduce my TBR came to nothing, as I have a slight tendency to buy books when I’m stressed… in addition to this, all my books came out of storage so I made a real effort to ensure all my books were actually listed on my physical TBR.

The other big change, although maybe not quite as big as the others, was the switch from BookTube to Book Blogging. Adjusting to all the new things has meant that I have struggled to find a rhythm that works for the blog so far, but I’m hoping that I can work on that this year and get into a routine with it.

All that being said, last year was A LOT. And this year has a real feeling of settling, putting down roots and establishing healthy patterns for my life. This has led to me thinking long and hard about how to maintain reading and blogging as enjoyable hobbies that bring me energy rather than pressures that drain me.

So I’ve decided this year I am keeping it as simple as possible. I will not be making TBRs this year or setting myself any reading challenges. I probably won’t be taking part in any Readathon with specific prompts, I may change my mind on that if something takes my interest. I will be mood reading, picking things up as I fancy and (hopefully) DNFing anything I am not enjoying.

I have given myself a couple of goals, but they are not massively ambitious so I think they are achievable. There are four:

1) Reduce my TBR – I am willing to admit that my TBR has gotten a little out of hand, and we are running out of shelf space for my physical books. So I do want to try and decrease it. I ended last year with 1040 books on my physical TBR and 177 on my digital. That makes 1217 in total. I’m not setting a goal for how much I want to reduce it by, just ending the year with less books I haven’t read than when I started will be a big achievement for me if the last few years are anything to go by.

2) Write reviews within a month of finishing the book – A large amount of my digital TBR are review copies, mainly from netgalley. I didn’t do too badly at reading review books last year – I finished 16 – but I haven’t actually written the reviews for most of them yet, and the longer I leave it, the less I remember about the book and the harder it is to write. So I’m trying to incentivise myself to write the reviews more quickly, and I’ll explain how later.

3) Write blog posts consistently – My blog posts thus far have been a bit irregular, partly because I was struggling to set a schedule for myself, and partly because I was trying to do too much. My goal this year is to consistently post once per week, most likely on a Friday. There will from time to time be additional review posts if I have to have them up on a specific day such as for the book’s release or for a blog tour (if I decide to sign up for any)

4) Stick to my book budget – I created a book budget a few years ago to try to encourage me to buy less books, and it kind of worked but various things got in the way, mainly stress… but the principle is a good one so I’m going to give it another go this year, but in a simplified form. I’ll be writing a post in a few weeks going into more detail, but the basics are I’ll earn a certain amount for each book I finish and for writing reviews quickly, with other occasional bonuses possibly.

For the last couple of years I’ve also had a really elaborate spreadsheet tracking all sorts of stats and things, and it just got too much and too complicated trying to track so many things. So this year I am going back to basics. I was given a year planner for Christmas, but as I already have a diary for work I’ve decided to use it as a book journal. I’ll be noting what I’ve read, what blog posts I’m planning for when, and making notes for reviews. Then at the end of the year I’ll be able to reflect on what stats I’ve actually missed having and can redesign a new spreadsheet for next year!

So that’s my reading plans for the year. Have you made any goals?