Rainy Day Reads

I had 20 challenges on my bingo board for 2016 and I managed to do 15 of them. I am quite proud of that! You can see all of my reviews of the books I read here .   At the beginning of the year I was killing it, crossing off books left, right and center, but towards the summer  I just seemed to peter out. I still read books, just not books from the bingo board. I think the reason for that was just that once I finished a book I would want to move on to the next one fairly quickly, but most of the books on the board I would have to get from the library and it would usually take a week or more for them to get them in. So I would just read something else, and once I finished that one, it would be the same palaver.  Still, I managed to read quite a lot of the books/themes on my board and I am pretty happy with my results. I did also try to read one more theme, a vampire book, but I started a total of three (!) books and just didn’t care enough to finish them. So ...

I did a bingo board reading challenge this year for the first time and rather enjoyed it. I'll have a "review" of how well I did going up soon, so keep an eye on that. For now, I will be presenting my bingo board for next year, as I have decided to keep it up. It is a fun way of challenging yourself and reading a bit out of your comfort zone, or just taking a chance to check off some of the books that have been bumping around on your TBR for way too long. Below is the bingo board I have made for 2017. This year I have been a bit more specific, picking a number of specific authors or even books, as I found last year's rather vague list to be a bit of a hindrance sometimes. If I first had to find out what "modern translated fiction" entailed, I was more likely to just pick up whatever was lying around and read that instead. So I have tried being a bit ahead of the game this year and picking some specific things from the get go. Modern translated fictio...

So this is the first book I can cross off my bingo chart reading goals for the year. I decided to read a book by Patrick Ness because I’ve heard so many good things about him. I have actually read two by him already “A Monster Calls” and “The Knife of Never Letting Go”. The first was based on someone else’s idea, so I felt like that didn’t really count, and I didn’t really like the second one, mainly because of the writing style, so I decided to give it one more go. And I am glad I did. This was a totally different experience regarding writing style and I liked it a lot more.   The book is about a young boy who drowns. But then he wakes up again in a seemingly abandoned world, all alone and very confused. The story unfolds as he tries to figure out what is going on, and how to survive in this world.  I liked the writing in this book. It is pretty straightforward, but still beautifully executed. We flip back and forth between this “new” world and Seth’s memories ...

So I saw this video on Youtube by Jean over on Jean Bookishthoughts, and I thought it was a fun idea to challenge your reading style in the new year. I don't normally set myself goals as such, when it comes to my reading. I use the Goodreads challenge, but other than that I pretty much just pick up whatever I want during the year. But I thought it would be fun to challenge myself as to the actual books I will be reading, and not just the number of books I read during the year. So I made this bingo chart. I've put some "easy" ones in there, that I was probably going to do anyway, like re-reading Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. Read a collection of short stories Read a graphic novel Read a book by Haruki Murakami Read a Man Booker 2015 shortlisted book Read a non-fiction book Read a book by Shirley Jackson Read some modern translated fiction Read a book by Jan Guillou Read a vampire book Read a Bronte book that is...

It’s the first bright day of a brand new year!  And that means it’s time to take inventory of last year’s resolutions. I made a post here detailing my resolutions, but in short they were: Do more DIY Take up yoga or pilates Do a 365 challenge/one picture a day for a year challenge Read 60 books I think it went okay. I managed to upload one DIY on the blog…I mean, I could have done better, but one is more than zero, right? I have been doing yoga and pilates. Not super regularly, because I do it at home using Youtube videos and the Yoga studio app, but I’m doing it. I managed to complete the 365 challenge. There were a few days I missed out, because I was out of wifi range and my app kept crashing when I tried to upload, but I am going to count it as a win anyway! I read 64 books for my Goodreads challenge of 60 books, so that is a definite win!  I really feel like I won the 2015 resolutions, if you can call it that. The DIY thing is questionable, but...