Winter Wishes Readathon: Goals & Daily Updates

Goals:

• Read 200 pages each day, making a dent in what I'm currently reading
• Visit 5 blogs

Book List:


Daily Updates:
Friday 1/24:
Currently reading:

Pages read:
Books finished:
Thoughts:

Top Ten 2014 Debuts I'm Excited For

2014 seems like it's going to be a really good year for debuts...or maybe I'm just paying attention to book releases more and there are a ton of debuts on my 2014 shelf. I'm excited about more than just these 10, but I narrowed it down for the list :)

In no particular order...

What debuts are you excited about this year?

Top Ten Goals/Resolutions For 2014

I'm going to try and stick bookish here because I don't really make life resolutions. So here goes my bookish resolutions for 2014.

1. Be a well-rounded reader. My TBR this year consists of reading books from different years. I have shelves for 80s and before, 90s, 2000s, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and then brand new releases on Goodreads. My goal is to read one from each shelf each month.
2. Make a dent in series reads. I also have a shelf for series that I'm in the middle of. I'm participating in the Seriously Series reading challenge this year too. I need to make a dent in the 57 series I'm in the middle of.
3. Read everything on my 2014 TBR. I have a lot of leftovers from 2013. I have about 90 books on my TBR for this year and I want to read everything I planned to read.
4. Write full reviews for 5 star books. I am no longer doing reviews for books, but I kind of still want to do reviews at the same time for more than just NetGalley books. So I think a great goal is to write reviews for 5 star books. Good reviews.
5. Get the Goodreads group active. I've modded in We Heart YA books for almost two years and it's a great group with lots of members, but I would love to get it more active with more discussions and what not.  
6. Finish the released A Song of Ice & Fire books. I'm 300 pages into Feast For Crows, but I started it in August...so there's that.
7. Finish the dusty books on my shelves. This is quite literal. I have books on my shelves at home collecting dust. I need to read them.
8. Get my Netgalley ratio to 80% and keep it there. It's at 71% now, so I'm really close!
9. Don't let school get overwhelming where I don't have time to read. So far this hasn't been a problem, but I've only been working on my class for 2 weeks, so I'm not sure how this will look later on in the year.
10. Enjoy reading and not pressure myself. I don't want to feel like I HAVE to read something. I want to enjoy what I'm reading and read what I enjoy :)

What are your reading resolutions/goals this year?

Bout of Books 9.0: Daily Updates

So excited to get started!! :) I'm going to try and keep my updates from the day at the top. To check out my book list and goals for BOB...go here. I'm also an expert again, so I hope to visit lots of blogs and roots lots of people on!

Wrap Up
Although I didn't do as well as I would've wanted to do, I think I did well considering what all I had going on during the week. I finished The Lost Hero and Anna and the French Kiss. I read 586 pages total. I am hoping to visit a bunch of bloggers today to congratulate them on their results. Hope everyone else did well and accomplished a ton of their goals :)

January TBR List + Upcoming Releases

This year, I'm trying to become a "more-rounded" reader by reading books from different years or set of years. I'm picking an "Oldie" (before 1990) and then a book from 90s, 2000s, 2010, 2011, 2012, and a "Newbie" (2013 and on). In addition, I hope to continue Random Reads, where I read one randomly selected book off my TBR and continue reading with the Goodreads groups I belong to. Plus there is the Bout of Books readathon this month, so I may try and finish my leftover books from 2013 :)

Books for January:

• 1984 by George Orwell
• The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket [reread] - done 1/16
• An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
• Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins - done 1/9
• 11/22/63 by Stephen King
• Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter
• The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey
• Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell [We Heart YA Books BOTM]
• The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan [We Heart YA Series Readalong] - currently reading
• Impostor by Suzanne Winnacker [Netgalley]
• Dangerous by Shannon Hale [Netgalley]
• The Queen's Choice by Cayla Kluver [Netgalley]

Change in 2014

First off, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

No resolutions here. Just trying to have a happy, healthy year with a happy, healthy family. 2014 is bringing a lot of changes for my family. It's our last year in New York and last year as a military family. We will be moving home to Tennessee in late summer/early fall and starting our new lives as civilians. Both Nick and I are working on our bachelors degrees and if all goes our way, we'll both be finishing up around the same time to find a job and buy our first home. It's both exciting and scary to be out of the veil of protection provided by the military that we have had for the last nearly 8 years.

With the acceleration of my bachelors degree, I will be spending a majority of time schooling as hard as possible. My classes start today and I'm already halfway through my first one. Basically, I hope to continue the momentum throughout the next year and start student teaching in Jan 2015. This means that doing two blogs full-time and reading 100+ books (2013, I hit 142), plus volunteering in my husband's unit is just not going to work. So Fortune is going to reduce to mostly books, not reviews though. It's going to be readathons, TBR list, and the occasional Top Ten Tuesday. The majority of my blogging will take place on Fantastical Sharing of Recipes. I didn't want to phase Fortune out completely because of my readathons and Top Ten Tuesday. BUT on Fridays, I will post about life and occasional product/book reviews on Fantastical :) So be sure to follow me there!

And just because...this sums up 2013 perfectly: