2017: Blog Goals

Hi everyone!

I have not written a review of 2016, largely because I have still been finding my blogging feet and my posts have been sporadic to say the least! The last few weeks of 2016 have been spent redesigning the blog, creating a simpler cleaner look. And reading. Lots and lots of reading. My Goodreads challenge for 2016 looked impossible to achieve at one point, but having some time off work has really helped 😃

I have decided to reduce my reading challenge for 2017 as I have found that it became very tempting to ignore some of my big books in favour of short, easy reads that would help me achieve the numbers I needed. So my reading challenge for 2017 will be 52 books. A week per book is a comfortable challenge for me, although I will still have to fight that competitive side of me that will want to read more books than I have this year.

I have also been trying to come up with a bit more of a plan for my blog. This may come as a surprise to none of you, but I have been totally winging it up until now 😊Now don’t get me wrong, I have not scheduled out my posts for the whole of the year or anything, but I do have a bit more of an idea of what I want to achieve:

For a book blogger I noticed that my blog is surprisingly light on actual book reviews, so I intend to write at least 40 book reviews this year. I intend to mixup the format of my reviews a bit – mini reviews will definitely be used where I am afraid of revealing spoilers.

‘Off the Shelf’ will continue, but on an actual fortnightly basis. My first one for the year will also be a rather large book that might take me all year to read, but it is going to happen.

‘All the Books’ will also continue, but I have not fully decided on frequency of these posts yet. That lack of decision is in no way being impacted by the fact that my TBR may have risen even more over Christmas.

I also want to get a bit more involved in this wonderful community. I have become a bit of a lurker (not in a creepy way), as I tend to read and like posts but not chat with people. This is not deliberate, I am shy so tend to keep in the background wherever I am. To help with this I will be introducing ‘Fantastic Blogs (and where to find them)’. This will be a monthly post where I talk about some of the fantastic blogs and bloggers out there.

This will mainly focus on book blogs, but there may be some others in there too. My thought at the moment is to focus on certain elements, be it photography or funny posts, and give each site a write up. It may include interviews with other bloggers, that sort of thing. As you can see, it is still a pretty fluid idea at the moment ☺️

I am going to complete at least one Book Tag per month. To be honest, these bring me out in a bit of a cold sweat as I find it near impossible to make any actual decisions and can labour over responses to very simple questions. Whenever I read other people’s responses they are smart, witty and come up with fantastic books and I worry that mine come across bland. Please be gentle with my first few attempts 😊

I have also totally neglected the writing side of this blog, apart from one post about NaNoWriMo (which I then spectacularly failed at) so I will do something to correct that too. My aim is to post an at least monthly update, but let’s just see how that goes (shuffles away looking nervous, mumbling incoherently….)

 

Looking back at this, there seems an awful lot going on. I feel slightly anxious about achieving this, but also excited at what is to come. That is my favourite part of New Year – the sense of anticipation, the clean slate and starting over.

Have you made any plans for 2017? Do you have certain books that you cannot wait to read or new blog ideas that you cannot wait to try out? What are you most excited about for the New Year? Let me know in the comments below.

Let me take the opportunity to wish you Happy New Year! I hope that the New Year brings you happiness.

Sarah