2018 Reading Goals Wrap-Up + 2019 Bookish Goals

Hello everyone,
I hope you all had a wonderful New Year's Eve and a enjoying a lovely New Year's Day. 🎆

I am going to have a series of wrap-up posts coming up starting with this one where I look back on how I did with my bookish goals.

I have four goals at the start of 2018...

✘ Goal #1: Read the same number of purchased bought and books for review.
Unfortunately, this was a fail. Review books still took precedence because I only had that much time to read and review books have a due date. But...

✔ Goal #2: Read to enjoy.
...the review books I took on were books that I would've have purchased myself so the books I was reading in 2018 were books that I wanted to read as opposed to needing to read them for the book. According to Goodreads, my average rating of the 93 books I read in 2018 was 3.8 stars so I was picking up enjoyable reads for myself.

✘ Goal #3: Spend less money on bookish merch.
Huge FAIL 🙈 I don't think I bought as much individual book merch in 2018 than I did in 2017, but I bought A LOT of subscription boxes in 2018, especially in the latter part of the year, sometimes multiple boxes in a month. I just friggin' love bookish subscription boxes 🤷😅

⁇ Goal #4: Buy less physical books than the previous year.
I actually don't know. I stopped tracking my physical book purchases in May when I was at 36. I bought 73 physical books in 2017--I probably bought around the same amount in 2018. My physical-books-I-bought numbers go up when I go crazy on BookOutlet and I only put in a few orders--nothing crazy--totaling 16 books for the year. I really don't know... 🤔

I didn't really do a good job tracking my goals in 2018 so in 2019 I'm hoping to be better at it, especially because I am bullet journaling the year for the first time! 😁😁 You can see glimpses of my BUJO on my Instagram.

Here are my 2019 goals...

Goal #1: Use my bullet journal to keep track of:

• Books I read
• Books I buy
• Bookish merch and subscription boxes I purchased

I'm so excited to start bullet journaling in 2019 and I want to make sure I keep track of my bookish habits throughout the ENTIRE year so I'm going to make it a goal to help me motivate myself.

Goal #2: Buy only 50 physical books.
Buying all the books and not reading them right away and letting them pile up is always, ALWAYS a problem for me every single year. I remain optimistic--I'm giving myself a super low number of only 50 physical books. 🤞🤞

Goal #3: Read the same number of review books and non-review books.
Like in 2018, I am not going to give myself a specific number of books to read in 2019. Not having a number worked out really well for me in 2018 and I was able to read even more books in a year than I did previously.

But, I am hoping that I'll read at least the same number of review and non-review books. Even though the review books I take on are books I will most likely would purchase myself, they are review books and reading them aren't as fun as reading books I pick up on a whim from my TBR.

In 2018, I read 36 non-review books out of the 93 I read total and that fairly high number is thanks to my subscription to the Audible Romance Package since November. I typically read 6-7 books per month, but since getting the ARP I've read over 10 books each of the last two months of the year, which is a lot of books for me!

Seriously, the ARP is AMAZING!! I was able to binge the entire Pucked series by Helena Hunting in about 3 weeks! This would be impossible without audiobooks.

So, my game plan for 2019 is to use the ARP, which includes audiobooks of many of the romance books already on my physical shelf and my Kindle. I can finally get to them after all these years 😭😭

Goal #4: Be more active across social media: Instagram, FB reader groups, Twitter, and Goodreads.
Something I really struggle with is being consistent with my social media pages, especially Instagram. I want to be more active and actually talk to people and make friends with other readers, but I don't really know how to go about doing that. Hoping I'll figure it out in 2019!

Also, hoping I'd be able to post at least twice a week on Instagram and be able to actively comment on other people's posts rather than just mindlessly liking.

Goal #5: Reach 1,200+ followers on Instagram.
I hesitate to give myself a number, but I really, REALLY want to grow my Instagram in 2019 and having a number to strive for will motivate me. I'm currently at 898 and have been hovering at this follower count for about a month now. Again, I think my problem is that I'm not consistent and I don't interact with people. Here's hoping I'll be better with that in 2019.

I'm going to be posting my best and worst books of 2018 the next few days, as well as my most anticipated list of 2019.

Happy reading,
Michelle