2013 Challenges

So I know I did a pretty crappy job with my reading challenges this past year.  This was something new for me, so I’m just chalking it up to a learning experience.

I’ve decided to sign up for two challenges and create my own personal challenge (aside from my year reading goal of 75).

First, my personal reading challenge is to read the first 15 books added to my Goodreads ”to read” queue.  You can see my page on that here.

I’ve decided to sign up for two of the challenges that I participated in last year: What’s In a Name & The Historical Fiction Challenge.

What’s In a Name is still hosted by Beth Fish Reads and it requires 6 books (6 different categories) to complete the challenge.

The Historical Fiction challenge is once again hosted by Historical Tapestry (by the way, have you seen their layout?  I haven’t been on there in a while so I don’t know how long it’s looked like it does, but it looks great!).  Anyway, they created different levels and I’ve chosen the Renaissance Level, which is 10 books to be completed throughout the year.

Right now, I think those are good enough for me to do.  I won’t feel as pressured and I’m sure I’ll find books that overlap (though I’ll have to double check the rules to see if they allow overlaps, but I think they did last year, so I’m sure it’s the same for 2013).

You can see the buttons for these challenges to the right.  I’ll be posting the challenge sign-up posts during this week.

I also plan to do more non-book posts in 2013 (be on the lookout for some sewing things!)

Musings (Random Post #5)

I started this blog back in October, but really didn’t get into using it until a little while after that.  My initial intention was to use it for book reviews and discussions and basically to share what I’m reading with others.  The more I post, the more I feel like writing about things other than books.  So from time to time I may post some random, non-book related things, so just bear with me.  Maybe by beginning to write more about myself, I’ll hone my writing skills and will be able to write better reviews. Who knows?

I’ve always felt that I’m not really interesting enough to write about myself.  Granted, I started a livejournal back in 2003 and wrote in it frequently about (usually) mundane activities all throughout high school and college.  It’s funny to look back at some of those posts and see how naïve and young I was.  Or how I thought and acted (or reacted) in certain situations.  All a part of growing.  I’ve been told and have come to realize that I have a really good memory and while most of those events (or non-events as the case may be) could have been forgotten by now, my teenage self obviously thought they were worthy of being recorded and therefore aren’t forgotten.  Reading back on vacations and even those everyday activities helps me remember where I can from and what has made me who I am today.  Granted, most of those posts weren’t gems by any means, but that was me then and I wouldn’t change her for anything.

I’m going through the good ol’ livejournal and I was even posting up until last summer (here is a post about a few books I read last summer).   I posted stuff about knitting on there as well and even joined a knitting community there.  The last few posts (or posts after a long period of inactivity) start with “So I was re-reading old posts….”  or “It’s been a while since I last posted…” and I would talk about whatever I had mentioned in those earlier posts or re-capped since the last time I posted.  Sometimes there were months and months that went by between posts…especially after I left school and was not on a computer daily.

Check out the livejournal sometime if you want. It might be good for a laugh.

And now for something completely different…

I’ve been browsing and reading a lot of different, random blogs and I must say I’m super jealous of the writing ability…and more specifically, the humor in the writing.  I never imagine myself to be very funny (maybe once in a while I might accidentally be funny) and I envy anyone who is naturally funny.  I’m the type of person who would think of something funny to say hours (even days) later…not so funny if you’re thinking about it.

Anyway, I wanted to share the links to some of the blogs I’ve been reading that actually made me laugh out loud (or giggle) and lament that I will probably never write blog posts like that.  Granted, my two blogs are very specific to my two biggest hobbies and if I want to stay true to them, I’ll only be posting about books (this blog)  and knitting.

I guess I just wanted to take a moment to verbally wish that I was funnier and a better writer who could make everyday life seem interesting.

Without further ado, here are some of the blogs I was reading (a few of these I just read for the first time today):

http://findingravity.com/

http://borkadventures.com/

http://disseminatedthought.wordpress.com/

http://sarahpalma.wordpress.com/

http://redlipsandacademics.wordpress.com/

http://pithypants.com

http://dampsquid.wordpress.com/

 

Also, a high five to you if you know where the title for this post came from.

 

Happy Reading!