Month in Review – December 2018

You may notice that I changed the name of my monthly wrap-up. I have decided that going into 2019, I would not be participating in major reading challenges such as PopSugar or BookRiot so that would no longer be a focus. That being said, I would still like to post monthly updates on my reading progress throughout the year. Maybe I will even include highlights from other blogs! Either way, this feature will be a work in progress for the next few months.

General Updates

Books Read this Month: 5

Book Reviews: 1

5-star reads:

• Crush by Svetlana Chmakova
• The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

3-stars & under:

• The Button War by Avi

Book of the Month Choice(s) (and link):

Back List Pick of the Month

While I may not be participating in other major reading challenges in 2019 such as PopSugar or Book Riot, I will be participating in this one. Beat the Back List is a unique reading challenge in that it does not have prompts that need to be filled or tight deadlines in which to fill them. Instead, it is a year long commitment to reading books that are already on your TBR. The only catch is that you read books with a 2018 or older publication date. You go at your own pace, which makes for a fun and unique reading experience. In order to do a better job of checking these back listed titles off my list, I let my fiance pick one that I had to read based on a few shelves of unread books. Here is his choice:

Sky in the Deep by Adrienne Young (2018)

I picked this up on a complete whim, totally because of the hype. I don’t know a whole lot about it, other than it is about Vikings and something about a dead brother who turns out to not be so dead anymore. But a lot of people have had great reviews of it though, so I am hopeful. This was my “must read” book for November but with all the craziness of end of the year, I have decided to roll it over to my first Back List choice of the month.

Calendar Girls

I participate in the monthly blog event hosted by Katie @ Never Not Reading and Adrienne @ Darque Dreamer Reads which sparks discussions about books that fall under a specific theme. It was originally created by Flavia (Flavia the Bibliophile) and Melanie (MN Bernard Books) but has been taken over by Katie and Adrienne in the last year or so. For more information about this blog event, click here.

The theme for December was:

Let it Snow: Best Book Set in Winter

Normally I would leave a link to my participation in this section but I did not not participate this month. I guess I just haven’t read many books set during winter because I couldn’t think of anything (that wasn’t Harry Potter). You can see Katie and Adrienne’s original posts below.

Never Not Reading

Darque Dreamer Reads

Also please note that ANYONE can participate in this event, boys and girls alike! Just review the “rules” for posting and always make sure to tag the hosts (so everyone knows you are participating) and that’s it!

January’s theme is:

Happy New Year
Most Anticipated 2019 Release

Community Highlights:

This is a new feature I want to start implementing in my monthly wrap up posts. I used to do a feature called “Favorite Things” but stopped after a little while because of the volume of great content that was being posted. But I want to (sort of) bring that back! Here, I will provide links to some of my favorite content posted by other people in the bookish community during that month. It could be a blog post, youtube video or something else! Let me know what kind of content you would like to see featured in this section.

Drizzle Hurricane Books : How to Avoid the Hype as a Book Blogger

Pages Unbound Reviews:Negative Reviews are the Highest Form of Respect

Reading Every Night: Why Are Reviews So Hard to Write and So Unpopular in the Blogging Community?

Naty’s Bookshelf: My Favorite Booktubers

Bionic Bookworm: My Year in Books 2018 Wrap up

A Whisper of Ink: What Makes You Seem Like a Less-Genuine Reviewer

Hailey and I are on the same wavelength with 2019 bookish resolutions. I am determined to up my average book rating to at least a 3.5 or better. I am going to do that by not being afraid to DNF a book I am not enjoying. This is something very important to me going into the new year, and certainly something I will be working on.

What do you guys think of this setup? What do you think is missing from it (or could be cut from a monthly wrap up)? Please let me know what you think :]