A new year and a new ton of reading to get through.
I'm really hoping this year that I can get my To Be Read pile down to under triple digits. Because seriously having 500 odd books in my wish list is probably getting just a wee bit out of hand. Even for me.
So this year's goal is to get it under 100... and try and keep it there. I just have to stop browsing Goodreads and Book Riot and other bookie websites and avoid going into to Whitcoulls for 'a browse'. Oh and reading bookie catalogues and brochures that come to me in the mail. And then there's visits to the library...
Mmm this is going to be harder than I thought.
Still I am determined to give it a go and finally try and get those piles down to a more manageable one.
In the spirit of that I've already had a bit of a purge and gotten rid of some books that once i re-read the blurb and had a bit of read inside I realised that they really weren't for me so out they went. It actually felt kind of liberating in a way to finally throw out books that I'd been hanging onto for ages but hadn't yet gotten around to reading. And by throw out I mean hitting the delete key on my keyboard.
In between all that purging there was also some reading going...
I quite liked The Drowning despite it being "oh my God can this man's life get any worse" thriller scenario. As for the next two I kind of loved both of them. Reader I Married Him was a chick lit with a difference which I totally loved while House of Dreams was one of my many To Be Read books which had been sitting around waiting for me to get to it for absolutely ages. I'm glad the waiting was worth it.
From there it was two very quick reads with a chick lit novella and a YA by an author I've enjoyed before and whom I now realise I haven't read everything by her. Can I just resist temptation and not add any new books onto my list?
The quick reading continued with a marathon reading of the Giant Days comics.
All 54 of them.
Which pretty much explains how my new year's went. Seriously though this whole series was highly addictive so it's no wonder I just had to read them all. I'm totally blaming this one on my friend Kelly. Because yes. Book recommendations are yet another way I keep adding to my every increasing To Be Read pile.
Pumpkinheads was also another Kelly recommendation which I totally loved by the way and really wished this too was a series.
After all that comic reading it was time for something a bit different so a book on growing tea and herbs for making tea seemed like just the thing. I now really want to make a tea garden. So that's another thing on the list.
Rounding out this lots reading was the excellent I Am Not A Number by Lisa Heathfield, a sort of YA Handmaiden's Tale read and like that book will certainly make you think.
Overall a pretty good reading session for the beginning of the year.
With all the reading and a some TV watching I did still manage to watch a few movies. In fact quite a few movies if we count the first half of the year when I was madly working my way through 365 Movies in 365 Days.
The second half of the year definitely much slower, mostly because I was a little burned out from watching so many movies so quickly which meant that I only watched a handful of movies in the past 6 months and these were generally made up of Hallmark movies and Indie movies. Weirdly there was also a trend this year with lots of movies based
around music with Yesterday (the Beatles,) Blinded by the Light (Bruce
Springsteen) and Last Christmas (George Michael) which was kinda nice if
a little odd.
This year I'm hoping to take a more even out approach rather than the whirl wind that was last year's viewing.
Disappointments...
Avengers Endgame
Vita & Virginia
Aquaman
Favourite Movies That I Watched This year
Downton Abbey The Movie
Top End Wedding
Blinded By The Light
The Best of Men
Parched
Populaire
The Abduction Club
Dumplin
Hacksaw Ridge
Not only was my reading down but so was my watching. I'm not sure if it's because TV shows are getting too predictable and samey or what's being made just isn't our kind of thing or if we are just getting fussier as we get older. Probably it's a combination of all three which means that for us at least that there aren't many shows that we watch. Hunting out new things to watch was kind of fun even if there was a lot of hit and miss.
So what were the shows that I did enjoy last year... well there was a mixture of old favourites and newbies, bad ass women and pissed off dragons, brotherly love and betrayals galore.
As for next year's viewing I'm looking forward to Star Trek's Picard and Belgravia as well as marathoning Dickinson, Bosch, Cardinal and Supernatural plus the return of Vera and Unforgotten.
Okay then I read less books this year AND the year before so it seems I have a life after all. Despite appearances to the contrary. How that happened I have no idea. I am though kinda glad that I didn't hit the big 365 or even 300 because this was scarily looking like a thing that could happen and that it didn't is a bit of a relief.
Book nerd I might be but it's nice to know that I do do other things beside just reading. So how many books did I actually read? Well looking at my stats courtesy of Goodreads I read...
52 Chick Lit
49 Crime fiction
27 Non fiction
26 YA
9 Contemporary romance
7 Children's fiction
5 General fiction
4 Graphic novels
4 Science fiction
3 Audio books
3 Thrillers
1 Historical fiction
Making a grand total of 190 books.
Compared to last year - Chick Lit went up a little bit while Crime went down a little bit while Non fiction, YA and Audio books all dropped down quite a lot. I am though still quite pleased that my non fiction reading was still over 20 books for the year. Everything else stayed kind of much the same. On the plus side I added a couple of new reading genres to the mix with some graphic novels and children's books rounding out my reading year.
Overall I'm pretty happy with the year's reading.
Disappointments this year were pretty much the same as in the past - YA novels that still think that doing a love triangle is the way to go to bring in some angst (please can we just stop with this already), trilogies that really should have stopped at the 1st book and a few big hitters that just didn't work for me in any way at all - I'm looking at you Daisy Jones and The Six.
Favs of the Year... as always it's hard to pick as I liked so many books but a few do stand out...
I don't really have any goals for 2020 but if I did I'd like to add a few more graphic novels and children's books to my To Be Read pile and audio books too. I was seriously down on them last year and kinda miss having a decent audio book to listen to when I'm doing mundane tasks like folding laundry etc.
So if anyone has got any to recommend I'd really be grateful. In fact recommendations for any kind of book is always gratefully appreciated. In the mean time I'll keep slogging away at my TBR pile and trying to get it down to something resembling a manageable level instead of it being the beast with 5 heads kind of deal. Maybe dancing will help...
Well hello 2020. I can't say that 2019 was a bad year, at least on a personal level, but it does feel nice to have a fresh new year to look forward to.
I managed to achieve quite a few of my plans last year despite the odd set back such as a family death and a couple of minor but annoying health issues. Life though on the whole has been good.
So what did I get up to and what have I got planned for the future...
Reading
This pretty much never ceases. I am a book nerd. And I own it. So reading is also going to be a thing that I do. No real goals with this one except to keep trying to get that To Be Read pile down to a more manageable level.
365 Movies In 365 Days
I did it! I may have gone a bit insane while doing it but I still did it. Definitely not something I would do again... I think? But I do like the idea of setting myself a challenge. Especially as I got a bit slack after and watched only a handful of movies and quite a few of them were cheesey Hallmark movies.
This year's goal is to mix it up a bit and try and watch a few more documentaries. Even if it's just to stop my brain from turning into mush from all the rom coms I generally watch. I'm also going to do another marathon TV series watching...
Supernatural
The end is nigh with one of my all time favourite TV shows. So it seems like a fitting time to do a marathon watch starting right back at the very beginning and ending it all with the sob fest finale on May the 18th. With 15 seasons and 320 odd episodes to get through until then I've got a lot of watching to do.
Tissues and hot chocolate are pretty much going to be order of the day.
Get Out and About More
Homebody that I am I did manage to go out a little bit last year. First with a couple of unexpected trips to Auckland and the South Island to deal with a death and a funeral. The rest of the year was taken up with just a handful of local trips - Wellington for Armageddon, Martinborough for the fair, a couple of nice lunches at nice cafes and the occasional cinema visit.
This year I really do want to try and get out a little bit more - the Redwoods Night Forest Walk is still on the agenda as is the Gallipoli Exhibit at Te Papa. And I'm also keen to visit Zealandia the ecosantuary in Wellington.
Get Fit and Get Healthy
Going pretty well overall. I'm walking regularly, doings lots of gardening and generally eating healthier.
No specific plans with this one except maybe to try and drink more water, something that I know I could do a lot better at.
Gardening
Going so well. The green house is being super productive at the moment and churning out lots of tomatoes and lettuces and peppers for us. I've also been picking a bit of rhubarb too and the fejoya trees are full of blossoms so we should have a good crop come the season for them.
I'd like to try and grow some watermelon next summer as well as some sunflowers. As for the rest of the year it's mostly weeding and composting and generally trying to keep on top of things though I'd like to start a herb garden too - I just have to clean out the area I want to have it. So that's a project for cooler days.
Crafting
Other than sorting of thread and wool etc and collecting patterns I've been super bad at this. I really want to at least do a little bit of this year so I'm leaving it on the plans list as something for me to tackle this winter.
Being Frugal
Generally Other Half and I are pretty good at this but after a little bit of spending leading up to Christmas we've made the plan to not spend any money (other than food and household bills) for the months of January, February and March.
We're also going to be doing some major tackling of TradeMe sales so that we can clear out some of the stuff we have accumulated (as you do) and which we really don't need or even use.
If we can do a bit of saving etc then we might be able to treat ourselves to a small holiday... maybe.
Learning a Language
I really enjoyed doing the Japanese Beginners course last year so I'm hoping that the library will offer some more language courses throughout the year.
Learning a language was fun, a good way to meet new people and another way to use the brain. All of which are good things to do.
Kondoing My Way
Still ongoing. I am however slowly getting there. Selling some things will definitely help.
Writing
And finally writing. I'm fairly pleased with how it has gone last year. I've written and posted 72 blog posts and have typed around 12,000 words on a story I am working on. I'm really hoping I can write a lot more this year. I can even feel a possible book in the works.
