Happy New Year! A Brief Recap, My Expectations and Reading & Blogging Challenges

Happy New Year! 🎉 If 2023 welcomed you with a power outage and a flood, raise your hand. 🙋🏻‍♀️ The first morning of the new year was chaotic -- to say the least. I guess the year just had to start with a bang. Anyway, may 2023 bring new books, new goals, new achievements, and a lot of new inspirations on your life. Wishing you a year fully loaded with happiness. 💛

2022 was a terrible year! There were victories and happy moments, but overall it was an appalling year that I will not remember fondly. Apologies for my language, but 2022 kicked my butt. But I'm still here, and you will have to deal with me rambling about books. You really don't have to, but I hope you do. Anyway, I won't dwell upon the sour moments. So, here are some happy moments I want to share with you (I fear they are all mostly work-related).

🌻 I began my PhD studentship. I still can't believe I'm being paid to do something I love.

🌻 I'm the new Membership Manager at the Young Adult Studies Association (YASA). One of my tasks is to recruit new members, and I believe some of my fellow book bloggers would love to join us. Not only do we have a YA Fiction Book Club, but we welcome all YA enthusiasts. If you're interested, you can sign up here (yes, the info must be updated because the conference was back in November; it's on my January to-do list).

🌻 I travelled to Italy and visited Ferrara and Venice -- I have dreamt of visiting Venice since I read Mary Hoffman's City of Masks. While in Italy, thanks to a dear friend of mine, I taught my first class at the University of Ferrara. Obviously, I did a brief introduction to YA dystopian literature.

🌻 I read 49 books. Accordingly, to The Storygraph, I mainly read fiction books that were adventurous, emotional, and dark, and typically choose medium-paced books that are 300-499 pages long. I may or may not talk about my 2022 readings in another post. Let's see if I find the time. I now need to update Goodreads because it seems I have only read four books (I hate their new template).

What to expect in 2023

I was not as active as I was expected after a triumphal return last year in May -- and then in September. Let's cross our fingers and hope I can finally balance blogging with everything else going on in my life.

As you might have noticed, I'm slowly moving from "My Lovely Secret" to "My Bookish Secret" -- the blog header is already in place. I have been going back and forth about changing my blog name for the past year, and I'm finally ready to do it. Now, I just need to figure out how to change every single URL and redirect blog posts from one blog to another without losing years of hard work. And, well, if I have to start everything anew, so be it -- it isn't like I did not lose all of my subscribers... Maybe I should have just started a new blog and redirected everyone there.

With all these changes, I hope to be more active around here again. To do so, I will join the following reading and blogging challenges to try to be a good book blogger, not a ghost book blogger that appears to haunt every full moon. 👻 If I find other challenges that I might be interested in joining, I will update this page.

BEAT THE BACKLIST hosted by @ Austine Decker

After a hiatus, I am again signing up to join Beat The Backlist. This has been one of my favourite reading challenges since I began blogging because it helps me read books that have been on my TBR pile for ages. This year, I am hoping to read twenty backlist titles. 

 

There are some reading prompts, and I eventually might end up using them to uncover some forgotten gems in my TBR pile. Some books I'm hoping to read are A Far Wilder Magic by Allison Saft, Anatomy by Dana Schwartz, Bridge Of Souls by Victoria Schwab, Creatures of Will & Temper by Molly Tanzer, Gallant by V.E. Schwab, Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters by Emily Roberson, Partials by Dan Wells, Sanctuary by Paola Mendoza, Sherwood by Meagan Spooner, Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen, The Defiant Heir by Melissa Caruso, and The River Has Teeth by Erica Waters.

2023 DISCUSSION CHALLENGE hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction and Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight

*ceremonial voice* I pledge to myself to share more discussion posts. 😊

This Discussion Challenge has always helped me write and share discussion posts about books and bookish stuff. Although, I have never been able to share as many discussion posts as I had expected when I signed up. 😅

 

If you are interested in joining, this challenge is all about promoting discussions about whatever you want as long as it is related to books and/or book blogging. There are five levels, and I plan to reach the first one, Discussion Dabbler. One discussion post looks pretty feasible.

 

You can use the hashtag #LetsDiscuss2023 to share your progress and connect with other participants on Twitter (this is a great form to give visibility to discussion posts and find some new interesting articles).

What are your reading and blogging plans for 2022?

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