There are still a lot of reads from last month that I'm desperate to get to, so I'll be putting them on this month's list! I do also have a couple of other reads this month that I'm looking forward to getting into!
Sara Holland's 'Everless' has been on my TBR forever, and I know the friend that is desperate for me to read it is so disappointed in me for keep putting it off so enough is enough. I am not reading anything else until this book is read!
As soon as I'm done with 'Everless', I will be moving straight onto Leigh Bardugo's 'Crooked Kingdom' which I have been super excited about reading forever. I can't wait to finish this duology and hopefully love this book as much as the first one!
I received this next book as a gift for Christmas and am absolutely head-over-heels in love with the cover. A book about the undead and necromancy with a sugary sweet pink colour scheme is absolutely my aesthetic! 'Reign Of The Fallen' by Sarah Glenn Marsh looks amazing, and I'm particularly excited about this one.
This is also hopefully the month that I'll get to read two of my most anticipate 2019 reads - the first being 'Enchantée' by Gita Trelease! The french revolution, mixed with magic? Amazing! I'm all about the court intrigue and dash of romance that I'm sure to find in these pages!
The second hotly anticipated 2019 release is of course Samantha Shannon's 'The Priory Of The Orange Tree' because everything about this book looks breath-taking. Epic fantasies are my jam and this one is written by a woman so I'm excited to read this!
'Rubyfruit Jungle' by Rita Mae-Brown is deemed to be one of the coming out books, and it was suggested by a friend of mine, whom I record a podcast with. It's actually one of our chosen reads. I'm certainly intrigued, and definitely in the mood for something classic to bury my nose in.
I love Sara Barnard's books. We all know this. 'Fierce Fragile Hearts' is actually a sequel (of sorts) to 'Beautiful Broken Things', her debut! I really adored that first book and look forward to continuing Suzanne, Caddy and Rosie's stories!
I love a good mystery now and again and so Kimberly McCreight's book 'The Outliers' looks awesome! It involves telepathy, being on the run, cryptic clues and a missing friend, but other than that I don't know an awful lot about this book. I have to say though, it has some pretty mixed reviews so I'm hoping it's as good as it sounds!
I also thought I'd take the time to highlight Pretty Deadly Blog's new Bookish Bingo card! Running from March to May there are some awesome categories here! I look forward to joining in.
This year is going SO quickly and it's unnerving me a bit. It's also time for another round of Bookish Bingo! I'm hoping the weather won't go too cold too quickly, as I'm not the biggest fan of the cold. That being said, Autumn is great for blankets and hot chocolate and reading. The Bookish Bingo challenge is, as always, run by Pretty Deadly Blog.
I'm an especially big fan of the design for this quarter! There are some great categories too, I look forward to filling it in!
Oh my goodness, it's already Summer? That means it's time for another round of Bookish Bingo! The hot weather is finally coming, after a ton of thunderstorms, and I'm looking forward to seeing more sun and filling in this card! The Bookish Bingo challenge is, as always, run by Pretty Deadly Blog.
There are some exciting categories here. I'd best get started!
So...supposedly it's Spring? Here in the UK right now we have a pretty big snow issue and it's so cold but I'm so excited for this anniversary, spring themed card! The Bookish Bingo challenge is, as always, run by Pretty Deadly Blog.
I'm so excited and I can already think of a ton of reads that I've been wanting to get to that fit in these categories! Hopefully, Spring reads will inspire the weather to start changing!
The time has come for a wintery themed bingo card! Yay! I love this challenge so much and always look forward to seeing Bekka's newly designed cards at Pretty Deadly Blog!
There are some great opportunities for fantastic reads here and I've already chosen a few for December! I'm looking forward to reads themed around the holidays, winter, snowy weather and nature!
I love Bookish Bingo! It really makes me excited every time a new one is released because I get to think of a ton of books I'd like to read to fit the categories!
I managed two bingos on my last card, and this one is themed around Autumn! Anyone who likes a bit of fun while reading, should definitely take part in this challenge hosted by Bekka at Pretty Deadly Blog.
What a lot of cool categories! Plenty of school-themed and Halloween related choices for September and October, I'm excited to see how well I do.
I love these challenges, they help me focus my reading a lot. On my last card I managed two bingos but came so close to more, and I put it down to the reading slump I had. Anyone who likes a bit of fun while reading, should definitely take part in this challenge hosted by Bekka at Pretty Deadly Blog.
What a gorgeous card Bekka has made for this trimester! I love the Unicorn, and there's some great categories too! I can't wait to sort my reading for the next few months and try to get as many Bingos as possible!
Challenges such as this and the Story Sprites challenge are really helpful to me because they help me to decide what I'm going to read next of the many books there are to choose from! Last 'trimester' I managed two bingos, but this time I want more! Bekka from Pretty Deadly Blog, the host of this challenge, picked some great categories too!
A gorgeously designed card this time round, I'm loving the blue theme. If you guys have the time, I'd definitely recommend a challenge like this to get you motivated! I love the diversity of categories here too.
I've been looking forward to this post, though this year I'm not going to join so many challenges. I like to use them as a guide to help me pick my reads, but I was beginning to feel like they were dictating it a little too much last year, so I've picked some of my favourites but I'm planning to be a lot more relaxed about them.
The first I've picked is the 2017 Key Word Challenge.
I adored this challenge last year and there are some interesting new picks this year round, so I look forward to being involved!
Next up, the 2017 Monthly Motif Challenge.
Another book challenge that I participated in and enjoyed last year, and just like the Key Word challenge, it's received a bit of a new look. These challenges really help me to narrow down the book pile when I choose each month, so I wanted to keep them around!
Thirdly, I chose a challenge that helped me out a lot last year by allowing me to keep up with some newer reads rather than just sticking to the old ones: the 2017 New Release Challenge.
I have really enjoyed this challenge during 2016, as during the first two years of my blog's existence I've mostly been catching up with my TBR pile from years before. I've still a long way to go, but it's nice to board the hype train and read what everyone else is reading now!
I am going to aim for the Newbie level (1-30 Books) because I'm trying not to pressurise myself too much.
My next chosen challenge is the Netgalley & Edelweiss Reading challenge.
Again, this challenge has been a big help in increasing my Netgalley ratio and I'd like to use it to do so even more. I'm currently on 45% so I still need a lot of work!
My aim is to reach Silver level (25 Books) because that will be a good half of the books I currently have lined up to read. Phew!
I'm trying hard to become a more diverse reader too, so I'm joining a couple of challenges that will help me do that. The first is the LGBTQIA Challenge which I saw but didn't sign up for last year.
This is a challenge that I want to take part in because this year, I'm interested in reading more fiction that is representative of minorities, including the LGBTQ+ community. The few titles I managed last year I really enjoyed, so I'm hoping for more like that this year.
I'm aiming for at least Orange (6 - 12 Books) so that a good fifth of my average yearly reads will involve LGBTQ+ characters!
I'm also joining the 2017 Diverse Reads Challenge for similar reasons!
This challenge is aimed at promoting all kinds of diversity: ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and both physical and mental health. Challenges like this is what is going to get books containing these things noticed and help them to become more frequent. I am very excited.
And that about wraps it up for year-long challenges I'll be joining. I'm also excited to announce that the Story Sprites Challenge is back, which involves a three-monthly board being released and I am most certainly joining in, so here is the board for January - March (Round Six)!
Gorgeous, right? This is going to be a really great board, I can tell! I can't wait to see how many I manage!
I didn't do too badly in the last three months' Bookish Bingo challenge. I adore this game, as you all know, so I'm extremely excited to be onto the next board and try to get more bingos all over again!
This is a gorgeous board! I'm very late in posting this but I already have a ton of ideas on books for each security. Exciting!
I like this challenge a lot, but sadly I didn't fare too well with the last card, only managing two lines when I know I could have done better. I'm determined to do a more satisfactory job with this next three moths, so let's see the card...
Man, just look how pretty it is! Wowee! I'm really loving some of the categories too, with some obvious autumnal, Halloween and Thanksgiving themes creeping in there. I'm looking forward to getting into this card and hopefully doing a lot better!
I really enjoy playing these boards so I'm excited to be writing this post! For those that don't know what this is, the Story Sprites challenge is run by Great Imaginations and is a really fun game with some adorable Sprite prizes! These are the ones I won in Round 5!
These are the four I managed on the last board and I'm pretty pleased that I managed 4 out of 5! The only path I managed to guess correctly was Yael from 'Wolf By Wolf'.
Here's the next board!
These categories are pretty tough and guessing the characters that will spring from them is even tougher. I have three months to figure it out now!
So I realised that I've been spending the last half a month planning my Bookish Bingo reads, but had totally forgot to actually sign-up for the challenge! Whoops! So here is my official post for joining the challenge. Better late than never, right? Let's check out Bekka's (Pretty Deadly Blog) new card.
I adore this month's card! Some of the books I've already decided for each category are ones I've wanted to read for ages!
It's time for another board of Great Imaginations Story Sprites game! This challenge is so much fun, I thoroughly recommend it for people looking for some inspiration on what to read next! Here are the three sprites I won from Round 3!
I am so pleased with myself! I'd actually guessed that the YELLOW path would be 'A Game Of Thrones' related and PURPLE would be about 'Winter' so I'm glad that I made a special effort to finish those paths! I was so close to getting all five paths this time guys, I only needed one GREEN and one BLUE! Maybe next time?
Here is the board for the next three months!
There are some really great categories on this board so I'm pretty excited to get started! I already have some reads in mind...
How exciting! It's time for yet another round of Bookish Bingo! It's also Spring which is my favourite time of the year, though you wouldn't really know that in the UK at the moment. Bekka at Pretty Deadly Blog has put together another board on that exact subject and I'm pretty excited about some of the categories!
This is definitely a challenging card! I think I'm going to have a tough time over the next few months, but I look forward to the challenge!
I am completely obsessed with this challenge over at Great Imaginations, it's so much fun. As the Round 3 board has now been posted, it's time to sign up and get involved! But first, here are the badges that I won in Round Two. I'm very happy with them!
I am completely gutted that I was just one book off of grabbing myself a Hermione Granger badge, as she is my favourite character of all time! If only I'd read 'The Lovely Bones' just a teeny bit quicker! I'm super pleased with these two though, and am pretty pleased to announce that I guessed the paths correctly! So here is the new board:
I'm fairly certain I've guessed one of the paths but this board is much harder! Still, I'm looking forward to the next three months because there are some amazing categories! The board will run until the end of March, so if this challenge looks cool to you, head on over to the sign-up post. I promise you won't regret it!
