#recentupload

Books Read: 21

Pages Read: 8,751 (~24 pages per day)

Although I did not manage to complete my Goodreads goal of 30 books this year I am not too bothered about that. When I realised a few months ago that I wasn’t going to be able to I stopped pushing myself to try and read as much as I could and by the end of November I had stopped tracking my reading altogether. I didn’t want to finish tracking one year of reading and then jump straight into the next - I wanted a few weeks where it didn’t matter if I forgot to record my page count at the end of every day and hopefully that will make me more motivated to begin to start tracking my reading again in 2019. 2018 was the first full calendar year spent at university so I knew that my routine and therefore my reading routine was going to change dramatically. It was only really in September that I managed to get myself back into a regular routine of reading each night and as a result it was the last few months of the year where my reading was at its best.

While I did read some outstanding books in 2018 I found that a lot of the books I read fell into that fuzzy category. While I was lucky enough not to read a book I completely disliked this year I found there were a lot of books that I read and enjoyed but that there were not enough I absolutely loved and that is one of the things I want to try and rectify in 2019.

Because of this I didn’t want to make a whole post about my favourite books of the year as I honestly don’t know whether I would have that much to say but there are a handful of books I did really love and so wanted to touch on them here. There is a fierce battle for the top spot out of all the books I read this year so I think I am going to have to have joint favourites! The two books I enjoyed most this year were Obsidio by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff and one of my most recent reads, The Toymakers by Robert Disnsdale. Two books which could probably not be more different plot wise but two books which completely blew me away nonetheless. I also thoroughly enjoyed the Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor and The Diviners by Libba Bray as well as being able to dive back into the world of Mara Dyer with The Becoming of Noah Shaw - a sentence which I am honest I never thought I would write.

For anyone interested the 21 books I read in 2018 (along with my ratings for each one in brackets) were:

(and for anyone that isn’t, my apologies - at least it isn’t that long!)

* Satellite by Nick Lake (4 stars)

* The Becoming of Noah Shaw by Michelle Hodkin (4.75 stars)

* The Fever Code by James Dashner (4 stars)

* Alex & Eliza by Melissa de la Cruz (4 stars)

* Obsidio by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (5 stars)

* Spare and Found Parts by Sarah Maria Griffin (4.5 stars)

* Replica by Lauren Oliver (4.25 stars)

* An Ember In The Ashes by Sabaa Tahir (4.5 stars)

* Vicious by VE Schwab (4 stars)

* Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas (4.5 stars)

* The Diviners by Libba Bray (5 stars)

* One Of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus (4.25 stars)

* Angelfall by Susan Ee (4 stars)

* A Court Of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas (4.5 stars)

* And The Ocean Was Our Sky by Patrick Ness (5 stars)

* Hollow City by Ransom Riggs (4.25 stars)

* A Storm Of Ice and Stars by Lisa Lueddecke (4 stars)

* Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor (5 stars)

* Stealing Snow by Danielle Page (4.25 stars)

* The Toymakers by Robert Dinsdale (5 stars)

* Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald - The Original Screenplay by J.K. Rowling (4 stars)

Moving forwards and into 2019 for the first time ever I have set myself a set of reading resolutions I want to try and stick too. Resolutions is potentially even the wrong word for them - they are almost a set of pointers I can look back on to remind myself that reading should be fun and that I shouldn’t be constantly worrying about my page count and that it is ok if I don’t post in a while.

They are:

1. To keep a reading/bullet journal - I have already kind of started this one as I have everything ready and set up to make a proper start on January 1st. While I am not the most arty of people I just find that there is something so satisfying about bullet journals and using it to track my reading is the perfect excuse to start one of my own. I am also hoping to branch out with this and use it as a good way to track my studying as well.

2. To read books that I want to read and not those I feel that I should - by this I mean that when I buy new books I often feel like I shouldn’t read them straight away, even if I am really excited to read them, because I feel like there are other books on my tbr which have been there longer and therefore deserve to be read first. I think this may have been part of the reason I was reading some books that I didn’t have much enthusiasm for in 2018 and I hope that by reading books I am more excited for this may help to rectify the issue of reading books I only thought were ok.

3. To keep up with/be aware of new releases - every January I usually create 12 new shelves on my Goodreads so that I can keep track of all of the new releases that are coming out each month and for the first time ever I feel like I have absolutely nothing to put on these shelves. I do really enjoy watching booktube videos and keeping up with what is being released but with uni I find that I often don’t get the time for this. This year I am going to try to make time, even if it is only 30 mins a week, to relax and watch some of these videos and keep up with what is going on book wise. I find this a much more useful way to keep up with things book wise than using Goodreads as, while I do still use Goodreads to keep track of my reading, I often don’t get a lot of enthusiasm from scrolling through books on there and it kind of makes me not excited to read.

4. To read/prioritise sequels - while it is not always possible to sit down and read an entire series (due to some books in the series not being published etc.) I always find that when I come to read a sequel I am having to google what happened in the book before it so that the sequel will actually make sense to me. This is because I always leave it so long after reading the first book before picking up sequels and so I have completely forgotten what has happened in the previous book. Now I have absolutely no reason why I do this, especially considering that I generally buy sequels fairly soon after they come out so they are always sat on my shelves but I am hoping that by getting to sequels sooner this will mean that hopefully I will begin to enjoy them more.

5. Lastly I want to change up the format of my blog posts - one of the ways I hope to achieve this is by putting a bit more effort into them. I often find myself rambling on, struggling for stuff to say about a book but trying to put words down on the page just so that it will make a decent length review/post. Last year I tried to review every book I read but there are some books where even though I enjoyed them I just don’t have too much to say about them and if this is the case then simple - I just won’t post a review about it. I am going to try and not post am awful post just so that I can say one has gone up. I also again want to try and change up the way I do wrap-ups and TBRs (if I even decide to keep these) so that they are a little more informative and give people a taste for what I thought of a book without having to read loads of text. I am hoping achieve this through a new system of broken star ratings for each book. I maya also try and include some shots from my reading journal if it looks like it is going to fit nicely.

Reading this back I now realise how long this post is so if you have made it to the end, well done! I feel now like I have said a lot of things I have wanted to say for a while and that I can move forward into 2019 feeling fresh and motivated about reading again.

October was my first full month back at uni and whilst I was at uni last year my reading really nose-dived (and to be honest it hasn’t really picked up since). This year I told myself that I would try and mark out more time in my schedule to actually sit and read and relax - especially in the evenings. While October wasn’t the most productive reading month I have ever had my reading was on par with what I had been reading over the summer and for me that is much more of an achievement than reading hundreds and hundreds of pages.

I managed to finish two books in October (and I am mid way through a further two). I finally finished A Court of Wings and Ruin which I had been reading on and off since the end of August! I think that this one was my favourite yet and I ended up giving it 4.5 stars.

My original plan for the rest of the month was to finish the second and third book in the Miss Peregrine’s series by Ransom Riggs. With it being October I thought that those would be the perfect spooky read for this month. In the end I only ended up finishing the second book, Hollow City and I have it 4.25 stars. I decided not to pick the third book up as I went away for the weekend towards the end of October and only wanted to take one book away with me. As I had not quite finished Hollow City (and I knew that would not last me the whole weekend) I decided to pick up the Muse of Nightmares instead as I was lucky enough to attend an event/signing at my local bookshop with Laini Taylor to promote the release of the Muse of Nightmares.

As mentioned I have already started two books towards the end of October so my plan for this month is just to finish those. I am mid-way through the Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor and I am also about half way through A Storm of Ice and Stars by Lisa Lueddecke. This is the companion to A Shiver of Snow and Sky which I read about the same time last year and really enjoyed it. It is the perfect read to get me in the mood for winter.

Rating: 5 Stars

In its simplest form And The Ocean Was Our Sky is a retelling if literature classic Moby Dick told from the point of the whales. For the purpose of those (myself included) to which that makes little sense - I shall expand. Bathsheba, third apprentice to the mighty Captain Alexandra, is part of the hunt. A relentless fight against men as retribution for the way their kind have been treated. However when they spot a ship floating in the water they think that it will just be another easy arrack. What they do not realise is that attacking this ship will lead them on a trail to come face to face with the devil himself.

After a string of quite poor reading months I feel that things picked up again in August with my reading. I managed to finish both The Diviners by Libba Bray and also One Of Us Is Lying by Karen McManus. I ended up really enjoying both of these books as I was really in the mood to read some mystery and both of these books fit that bill perfectly. With one being a contemporary and the other a supernatural novel it meant that while both books fell under the same genre they were both very different and it therefore meant that it didn't feel to samey to read two mystery novels one after the other.

Set in 1920s New York, The Diviners follows Evie O'Neill who is shipped off to stay with her uncle in New York after she causes yet another scandal in her small Ohio town. While Evie thinks this will be the perfect opportunity to sip gin and listen to jazz music in nightclubs soon after she arrives a string of murders start taking place around the city that seem to have a supernatural element to them. When the police turn up at her uncle's Museum of American Folklore, Superstition and the Occult argue ends up becoming involved in trying to solve theses murders and it turns out Evie has a gift that may even help them catch the killer.

Rating: 5 stars

Rating: 4.25 Stars

Before starting this book I was rather apprehensive. I had read a couple of other Lauren Oliver books and was not a huge fan of them however the premise of Replica really intrigued me so I decided to give Lauren's books one more shot and I am now so glad I did because I ended up really enjoying this one!

Replica is such a different book to anything I have ever read with the stories of two girls - Gemma and Lyra - being told alongside each other. I have heard of a couple of different ways that people tackled reading this book but I decided to read one chapter from Lyra's perspective and then flip the book upside down to read one chapter from Gemma's perspective (one of those actions which gains you some rather strange looks when switching between the chapters in public). This book was filled with twists/revelations which is one of the things that I absolutely adore I books. I love coming to the end of a chapter and sitting there speechless for a couple of minutes after realising how the story now all fits together. The one slight issue I did have with the way that I read it was that I did end up spoiling the book unintentionally for myself a couple of times because I sometimes ended up glancing over to the next page by accident before finishing the chapter from the other girls perspective.

I am fully aware how ambitious this TBR is for me, especially considering I generally have it all on to finish two books in a month normally. The reason my TBR is so huge this month is because I have now finished uni for the summer so have a lot more free time to be able to devote to reading and I am also going on holiday for 10 days later this months so I hope to be able to get loads of reading done then.

An Ember in the Ashes was on my TBR last month and I have about 100/150 pages to finish so I am hoping to finish that as well as make some inroads into Vicious before I go on holiday.

On holiday I am not one of these people that enjoy reading summery romance novels a lot of people associate with poolside reading. When I am holiday I really enjoy reading chunky fantasy books as holidays are one of the only times I am able to sit down and devote quite large chunks of time to them, without having to put it down every 50 or so pages because I have run out of reading time. I really don't think I will be able to finish all of these books while I'm away but I would much rather take too many books on holiday with me than not enough. Some of these books (especially ACOWAR) has been on my TBR for ages so I am going to make sure I finally get round to them now.

Rating: 4.5 stars

When Laia's brother is arrested on suspicion of treason and her grandparents murdered, she flees, determined to break her brother out of the Martial prison. Following in her parents footsteps she seeks out the resistance who promise to set her brother free on one condition - that she must spy on the Commandant of the Balckcliff Military Academy by working as the Commandant's personal slave. Studying there is Elias, the Commandant's son, who is planning to desert, a crime punishable only by death, in order to try and escape the violence and brutality of the Empire.

As with quite a lot of the books I read now I knew very little about this book before I picking it up, meaning I had very few expectations of what it would be like. I was however drawn in by the masses of five star reviews this book had on Goodreads so thought it was definitely worth a try.