Happy New Year! π If 2023 welcomed you with a power outage and a flood, raise your hand. ππ»♀️ 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. π
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).
π» I began my PhD studentship. I still can't believe I'm being paid to do something I love.
π» 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).
π» 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.
π» 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. π» If I find other challenges that I might be interested in joining, I will update this page.
BEAT THE BACKLIST hosted by @ Austine Decker
2023 DISCUSSION CHALLENGE hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction and Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight
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. π
What are your reading and blogging plans for 2022?
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Welcome back! Glad to have you back and hey, blog when you can! We'll still be here and happy to hear from you! Wow on the PhD! And I'm jealous of the trips. My goal is to get out of the US for only the second time in my life this summer and go to Scotland. Hope you have a good week and thanks for visiting me on Lisa Loves Literature earlier!
ReplyDeleteA PhD studentship is very impressive! Congratulations!
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