#ReadingMyLibrary Challenge – My Sign Up Post

Hello, lovelies! As you may know, I am co-hosting the #ReadingMyLibrary Challenge with Amy at Read What I Like next month! You might also know that I am the Circulation Clerk and YA Librarian at a small library in Mississippi. Each month I order between 10-20 new YA and Middle Grade books for my library, though I’m only able to read a very small number of these (because of time, ARCs, life), so Amy and I started the #ReadingMyLibrary Challenge to fix that. We want to read ONLY library books for the month of April (though if you participate, you are only required to read ONE library book). I hope to get caught up on the books I’ve ordered but haven’t read – partly so I can be even better at recommending titles to my patrons and partly because I ordered those books for a reason! 🙂

So here is my (tentative) TBR for the #ReadingMyLibrary Challenge (definitely subject to change based on my mood, and also in no particular order whatsoever). Also, a few books/audiobooks are not pictured but linked below. I’ve only chosen books that I have ordered for my library since I started working. Yes, the TBR is a little overambitious, but if you recall, I’m a mood reader, so I need options!

The Sin Eater’s Daughter / Made for You / Shutter / Vivian Apple at the End of the World / The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley / Red Queen / I’ll Meet You There / Beautiful You / Atlantia (on CD)

NOT PICTURED (aka waiting on holds/hoping the new books come in soon!)

I’ll Give You the Sun (on CD) / Jackaby (on CD) / We All Looked Up

My TBR is obviously VERY ambitious, and I’ll be lucky to get to even half of these, BUT I’m excited for all of them, so I just went ahead and checked them out. It gives me options!

I would LOVE it if you would join us next month. As I said earlier in the post, you only have to read ONE book to participate in the challenge (did I mention there were TWO giveaways?!), and I hope it’ll be a lot of fun to show your support of your library. So if you do want to participate, head over to my sign up post to learn more and enter your link!

Bout of Books 12 – Goals, TBR, and updates post!

It’s here! Bout of Books 12 has officially started. I hope you’re all signed up and ready to get reading. I know I am. After (or before, whichever) you read this post, make sure you go enter my challenge for Bout of Books 12 – The Bookshelf Scavenger Hunt! I mean, there’s a giveaway. Why wouldn’t you participate?

Bout of Books isn’t doing a specific goals link up this go around, but I still want to lay a few out for myself. I’m not going to stress if I don’t meet them or give myself a headache reading too much just to make sure I read my whole TBR. This is supposed to be fun, you guys! So here are my goals:

– Read the four books, one graphic novel, and seven single issue comics on my TBR
– Post (or schedule) reviews of at least two of the things in my TBR
– Participate in at least one, but preferably two, Twitter chats (FYI, they are on Monday at 1 p.m. CST, Wednesday at 8 p.m. CST, and Saturday at 10 a.m. CST)
– Participate in at least four Bout of Books challenges (You can see the schedule for the challenges HERE)
– Have as much fun as I possibly can, meet some new bloggers/readers, and READ

My TBR:

I plan to read (order based on mood) Forever by Maggie Stiefvater, Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, The Iron Trial by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare, Girl Online by Zoe Sugg, Batman R.I.P by Grant Morrison, and these single issue comics: Thor #2, Superior Iron Man #2, Gotham Academy #3, Batman and Robin #36, Arkham Manor #2, Gotham by Midnight #1, and Memetic #2.

Monday

Number of books I’ve read today: 1
Total number of books I’ve read: 1
Read today: Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares
Pages read today: 260
Total number of pages: 260
Challenges participated in: I hosted the Bookshelf Scavenger Hunt challenge today! As of writing this, you have two more hours to participate! The challenge (and the giveaway) end at midnight CST tonight.
Notes about today: I had an absolute BLAST hosting one of the first two challenges today. In addition to reading one book, I checked out and responded to every single one of the entries (over a hundred), which was super fun! I loved seeing which books everyone found to fit the categories. I also participated in the first Twitter chat of Bout of Books 12 which was just as insane, fun, crazy, and amazing as I was hoping. My eyes went a little cross-eyed at the end though. Looking forward to day 2!

Tuesday

Number of books I’ve read today: .5 books and seven single issue comics
Total number of books I’ve read: 1.5 + seven single issue comics
Read today: Thor #2, Superior Iron Man #2, Gotham Academy #3, Batman and Robin #36, Arkham Manor #2, Gotham by Midnight #1, and Memetic #2. I also started The Iron Trial by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare.
Pages read today: 265 (168 = 7 comics x approx. 24 pages each + 97 of The Iron Trial)
Total number of pages: 525
Challenges participated in: I did the Top 10 Recommendations challenge hosted by Trees of Reverie. This was really fun because I got to use books that I’ve actually recommended to my patrons at the library! There’s still time to participate if you want to join in. 🙂
Notes about today: So I read maybe half of what I was hoping to read today because my mom’s bird (which usually sits nice and quiet on my shoulder if I go out on the porch) decided to FLY OFF into our TEN ACRES of land. I spent roughly three hours looking for the darn thing which was supposed to be spent reading. Thankfully, I found the idiot bird but lost valuable reading time. Hope you had better luck than I did!!

Wednesday

Number of books I’ve read today: .3? I didn’t read as much as I wanted to.
Total number of books I’ve read: 1.8 + seven single issue comics
Read today: Part of The Iron Trial
Pages read today: 113
Total number of pages: 638
Notes about today: I was a little busier at work than I thought I’d be – we had a good amount of patrons but I also did my YA book ordering, my time sheet, and our AV order for the month. So, not as much reading. BUT I did participate in the BoB Twitter chat last night and found a few new awesome people to follow. Check them out: @caseycassidy (I was already following her, but she deserves a shout out), @gnarly_marly, @bookpubreads, @alibrarianslib, @SarahSaysRead. I could go on and on, but this is a start. 🙂

Thursday

Number of books I’ve read today: Part of The Iron Trial and one comic
Total number of books I’ve read: Almost 2 + eight single issue comics
Read today: Part of The Iron Trial and Feathers #1
Pages read today: ~64 (40? of The Iron Trial and 24 pages – Feathers #1)
Total number of pages: 702
Notes about today: I reviewed Feathers #1 over on WatchPlayRead. I had another busy day at work so I didn’t read hardly anything at all. But we had a soup fundraiser at my library and it was a lot of fun! I also had to make up a lot of flyers for some events – which I also enjoy. Hope you guys had a good Thursday!

Friday

Number of books I’ve read today: .4 of The Iron Trial and .5 of Girl Online
Total number of books I’ve read: 2.5 + eight single issue comics
Read today: Part of The Iron Trial and half of Girl Online
Pages read today: 226 (49 of The Iron Trial + 170 of Girl Online)
Total number of pages: 928
Challenges participated in: I did the Describe Your Book in Pictures challenge hosted by The Book Monsters, in which I described The Iron Trial in a series of four pictures. It was a lot of fun!
Notes about today: I worked at the library by myself. We are a really small library, with only three employees – one was off (she’s part-time) and one was at a branch managers meeting, so I was alone. I did have a bit of time to read and finished The Iron Trial. I know we’re not supposed to stress about how much we read, but stressing is just who I am. However, I feel pretty good about how much I’ve read and I’m having a lot of fun. 🙂 Only two days left though. 😦

Saturday

Number of books I read today: .5 of Girl Online, nine single issue comics, 22% of Never Never
Total number of books I’ve read: 3 + 16 single issue comics
Read today: the last half of Girl Online, nine comics (Batman and Robin #37, Robin Rises Alpha, The Walking Dead #135, Memetic #3, Superior Iron Man #3, Thor #3, Wild’s End #4, Arkham Manor #3, and Fiction Squad #2), and the first 22% of Never Never
Pages read today: 428 (182 of Girl Online + 216 = 9 comics @ approx. 24 pages each + 22% of Never Never – approx. 30 pages?)
Total pages read: 1,356
Challenges participated in today: Today, I did the Literary Quote challenge hosted by Gone with the Words. This was fun, and I got to put another quote in my Book Memories Jar…er…can. 🙂
Notes about today: So after I finished Girl Online, the plan was to start rereading Forever by Maggie Stiefvater. But then I decided I felt more like comics and raced through NINE single issues I was behind on. Then I wanted to start Never Never by Colleen Hoover and Tarryn Fisher because one of my favorites (Rachel at Confessions of a Book Geek) was gushing about it to me on Twitter along with Bradie (at Brandie is a Book Junkie – a new friend!), and I HAD to read it. It was amazing. Should be doing a joint review with those two ladies soon. So I ended up having a GREAT Bout of Books Saturday – even though I missed almost ALL of the last chat.

Sunday

Number of books I read today: 78% of Never Never and 25% or so of Forever by Maggie Stiefvater
Total number of books I’ve read: 4.25 + 16 single issue comics
Read today: The rest of Never Never and the first quarter or so of Forever
Pages read today: 212 (110 pages of Never Never + 102 pages of Forever)
Total pages read: 1,568
Notes about today: It’s the last day of Bout of Books 12. 😦 Other than being super sad about that, I had a pretty great reading day. I finished Never Never while still laying in bed this morning, had a break from reading, and then dived into a reread of Forever, which I’m loving even more the second time.

I hope you all had a wonderful Bout of Books, and I look forward to seeing you all on here or on Twitter! Hope you’ll all join Bout of Books again in May, everyone!

Happy New Year! My Reading Goals/Challenges for 2015

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Here’s the pic I made for my display at the library of new books for the new year.

If you celebrated, I hope you had a fun and safe New Year’s Eve. I celebrated by reading and watching Once Upon a Time, which was definitely fun. As it’s the new year, I’ve seen a lot of people posting about the challenges they’ll be participating or their reading goals (along the lines of this week’s Top Ten Tuesday on our 2015 bookish and not-so-bookish goals). I’ve been invited to A LOT of reading challenges for 2015, some of which seem fun but a lot of which are overwhelming and almost ridiculous in their complexity.

Because of that, I’m not participating in any except four.

1. My own personal challenge: I own WAY too many physical books that I haven’t read. The books I own but haven’t read currently take up THREE full shelves on one of my bookshelves. I created a Goodreads shelf for all of these and found out that I owned 61 books I haven’t read. In case you weren’t sure, this is CRAZY. Therefore, I’ve been put on a self-imposed book buying ban until I read at least one full shelf of the three. I’ve printed the shelf from Goodreads and will be crossing books off as I read them. Here’s my physical shelves and the printed shelf (yes, that does say “Read the books you own, dummy!” Gotta keep myself in check, right? 🙂

     

2. The Popsugar reading challenge: Popsugar has come up with a challenge of 50 (technically 52) books to read this year. I’m not going to stress to try to read all 52 or feel bad if I don’t read them. Mostly I think it sounds like a lot of fun (where am I going to find a book set in my hometown?). I’m excited to find a book that scares me or read a book that came out the year I was born. I’ve also printed this challenge at taped it onto the side of one of my bookshelves. I’ll be checking them off and writing the name of the book next to the prompt. Want to do the challenge with me? Print it and let’s keep each other accountable. Maybe we can throw in a buddy read or two?

3. The Goodreads challenge: I’ve seen several people who’ve decided they no longer want to participate in the Goodreads challenge this year. They seem to be doing it for a variety of reasons, but mostly because they feel obligated to read or it makes them anxious when Goodreads tells them they are ____ books behind schedule. I completely agree that the reminder from Goodreads that you aren’t reading as much as you “should” sucks, but personally, I like the Goodreads challenge because it helps me to keep up with what I’ve read this year. Just like the Popsugar challenge, it’s mostly just fun for me. I don’t feel stressed to complete it. I’m challenging myself to 120 books this year. For 2014, I began my challenge in March and challenged myself to read 100 books; well, I read 158 books, including a few single issue comics, some children’s books, lots of comics volumes (Saga and The Walking Dead making up the majority of those), and many, many novels. I’m pretty confident I can read 120 books, but I don’t want to make it too high – that’s when the anxiety would kick in. I think that’s why I don’t feel stressed. I make it an amount I am pretty sure I can reach. If you make it something like 300 books but you only typically read 100, that’s bound to make you feel stressed out. It’s supposed to be fun! Read and have fun. Don’t get crazy.

4. Bout of Books: This isn’t a year-long challenge, but rather a week-long challenge that happens every few months. I’ve participated in two so far, and I have loved every minute. I’ve already announced I’ll be participating in Bout of Books 12, which is kicking off this Monday. I’m currently figuring out my TBR and my own personal challenges for the week (BoB isn’t doing a link up for challenge this year but I want to have a few for myself). I’m also hosting one of the first two challenges for the week – a bookshelf scavenger hunt – on Monday! You should totally come back on Monday to participate. If you haven’t already, sign up for Bout of Books 12 and let’s have some bookish fun!

So what about you? Are you participating in any challenges this year?

Also, why not start your year off with a chance to win My True Love Gave to Me or $15 to The Book Depository by entering my giveaway?!

Bout of Books 12 – Sign up announcement

Hi guys! I’m super excited to say that I’ll be participating in Bout of Books 12! This will be my third time participating in Bout of Books. You get to read (a lot), meet readers and bloggers from all over the world (virtually, of course), participate in fun challenges, and the Twitter chats are crazy awesome. If you’ve ever thought about participating, or you’re interested now, I encourage you to sign up. It’s super low-key and you get to set your own goals!

If you decide to sign up too, I would love to know what you’re goals are and what you plan to read! Link me up, Scotty! Go sign up on the Bout of Books blog!

If you don’t know what Bout of Books is, here you go:  

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, January 5th and runs through Sunday, January 11th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 12 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team

I haven’t picked a TBR  or goals or anything yet. I’ll be deciding on those a little closer to the start date (January 5th). Let me know if you’ll be participating too, so we can encourage each other and talk about our progress!