2018 Resolutions! ~ Books and more


So I've had a few days to think about my New Year's resolutions for 2018 and thought the best way to hold myself accountable is to write them down and post them on the internet.

1. Read 15 books
At the beginning of 2017, I set myself the goal of reading 12 books; one for each month of the year. Having not completed a Goodreads Reading Challenge before I wasn't entirely sure how many books I was capable of reading in a year, so I just guessed that I'd be able to read 12. Turns out I was almost absolutely right! I managed to read 13 overall which I was super happy with.

I haven't gotten around to writing reviews for many of these books, so just in case you were interested here are the books I read in 2017:

The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Room, Emma Donoghue
The Light Between Oceans, M. L. Stedman
The Reader on the 6.27, Jean-Paul Didierlaurent
Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
We Were Liars, E. Lockhart (ugh)
Hex, Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs
The Martian, Andy Weir
The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
The Maze Runner, James Dashner
The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
and finally Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J. K. Rowling

I'd like to challenge myself a bit more this year and read 15 books. Let's see how that goes.

2. Write more reviews

This one is kind of self explanatory. I regret not keeping up with my blog as much as I should have done in 2017 and would love to be able to look back on my reviews and relive my thoughts of the time. I won't review every single book I read, but I'll try and at least review the ones that I either love or hate a lot.

I've also considered maybe delving into BookTube? But it's only a thought. 

3. Read more non-fiction
Non-fiction is something I haven't really considered endeavouring into before now. One of the modules I studied at university last year was a linguistics module on modern French which I found really interesting, so for Christmas my mum bought me Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson. I'm about 100 pages in and absolutely loving it! It's made me realise non-fiction doesn't have to be boring and is definitely something I want to try and read more of in 2018.

4. Finish the Harry Potter series
Harry Potter has never really appealed to me until Asda was selling the 20th anniversary editions for £3. Couldn't resist.

I am currently reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and would just love to be able to finally say I've read Harry Potter. Maybe I won't get so many strange looks anymore.

5. Try not to freak out about my year abroad
You might have realised this is definitely not a book-ish resolution. As part of my Comparative Literature and French degree, I spend my 3rd year in a French speaking country teaching English at a school. 

Safe to say I'm pretty terrified.

I have submitted my application and there's nothing left to do but wait, which is both a good and a bad thing. It's good because I can sit back and relax. It's bad because I can sit back, relax and spend all my spare time worrying about it. My resolution is mainly to spend this time productively in terms of preparing for my year abroad, and try my best not to completely freak out.

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So there we have it! Hopefully by this time next year I will be 15 books wiser and comfortably settled in wherever I am in the world. 

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