My 2019 4.5 star reads

Hi booklovers

It's time to share with you my 2019 4.5 star reads. 

These books were not necessarily published in 2019.

*Shadows of Self (Mistborn #5) by Brandon Sanderson

This was my favourite of the current three books of Mistborn Era 2.

*The Blinding Knife (Lightbringer #2) by Brent Weeks

This one is filled with a lot of twists and turns and the ending is such a big cliffhanger.

*Skyward (Skyward #1) and Starsight (Skyward#2) by Brandon Sanderson

I really enjoyed both books (I have to admit that I actually read Skyward at the end of 2018 and then reread it before starting Starsight). Starsight didn't go where I thought it would go and I missed some of the characters from Skyward, but I found some new favourite characters as well. I'm very curious to see where book 3 will take us. Unfortunately, it won't be published until 2021 :-(

There is one sci-fi book on this list:

*One Word Kill (Impossible Times #1) by Mark Lawrence

This is Mark Lawrence's venture into YA sci-fi and I enjoyed this a lot. It takes place in the 80s and being an 80s kid myself some things were familiar. I actually listened to the audiobook of this one and the sequel and only recently got the physical copies. I also pre-ordered the final one on audio and I'll definitely be getting a physical copy as well.

The other 3 4.5 star reads were NA contemporary:

*The Risk (Briar U #2) and the Play (Briar U #3) by Elle Kennedy

Elle Kennedy is one of my favourite NA writers and I thoroughly enjoyed both these stories.

*Shacking Up (Shacking Up #1) and Hooking Up (Shacking Up #2) by Helena Hunting

I've read a couple of the books in the Shacking Up series, but these are still my favourite ones.

Btw, these NA covers are so cringe-worthy, it's one of the reasons I read these on my e-reader.

Have you read any of these? What were some of your 4.5 star reads of 2019? Do you use half stars in your rating? Let me know in the comments.

Bye for now

Annelies

My 2020 reading goals

Hi booklovers

 

First things first: Happy 2020. Here's to a year filled with love, great books and lots of chocolate ;-)

 

I haven't had the chance to take a look at my current number of TBR books (to be honest, I'm scared to count them), but I know there are over 100 unread books on my shelves.

 

Last year I participated in the Beat the Backlist challenge and I managed to read about 50 backlist books. This year I want to continue focusing on my owned TBR.

 

When looking at my shelves I noticed there are a lot of unread YA books on there. Over the past two years, I've started reading more adult fantasy and I've ignored my stack of YA TBR books. This year I want to try and do something about that. I've come up with a way to make myself pick up more of those unread books:

 

I've written down all the titles and put them in a jar. I'll pick 3-5 books every month (or every two months, I haven't decided yet) and then read at least 1 (maybe 2) of those during that month/those months.

The reason I'm picking more than one book is that I don't do fixed TBRs. If I were to pick only one book, I'd never get around to it, because as soon as I put a book on a fixed TBR, I don't want to read it anymore.

I'll be posting the books I can choose from and let you know if I've read them, what I thought of them and whether or not I want to continue with the series (if they are part of a series).

 

Hopefully this will help reduce my TBR by the end of the year.

I'm going to be really strict about buying sequels as well. I have to be really convinced I want to continue a series before buying the sequel. That's why I'm going to wait at least two - three weeks before getting a sequel. The reason I'm doing this is that sometimes when I finish a book I want to immediately buy the sequel even though I don't read books in a series back to back. If I wait a couple of weeks I sometimes lose interest in the series, so there's no point in getting the next book. That way I'll hopefully manage my book buying as well.

 

Something else I want to do this year is keep better track of my reading. I've ordered the Novel Companion volume 3 from Little Inklings Design. Hopefully I can keep up with it.

 

I'm also going to try and write more reviews. I'm not making any promises, because school has been extremely hectic the last couple of months and will continue to be hectic during the rest of the school year, but I want to at least give it a try. We'll see how it goes.

 

Finally, I've set my GR reading challenge to 50 books. At the beginning of 2019, I set it to 30 books, but I upped that number to 50 throughout the year. So, this year, I'm just putting it at 50 because I'm pretty sure it's achievable.

 

Have you set yourself any reading goals or do you just go with the flow :-) Let me know in the comments.

 

Bye for now

 

Annelies