Hello friends! Welcome to my 2018 reading challenges retrospective. Today I'm going to look back at the 2018 challenges I joined, share whether I was successful or not, and talk briefly about my feelings. I took a quick peak at the numbers last night and I was surprised at how some of the challenges went. Let's do this!
Starting off with the challenges I didn't complete...
I loved the idea behind Blog All About It. The prompts were fun. I liked that it was once a month and gave participants time to work on their posts. I just think it got lost in the shuffle because it was my first year where I was actively doing discussion posts. Discussion posts are very difficult for me in many ways, most of which is coming up with topics. I'm pretty sure that's why I fell behind and eventually threw in the towel. I just couldn't come up with blog posts. Will I do this one again? I don't know. I'm kind of leaning towards yes, but we'll see.
Sigh... Another challenge that I love. I've joined the Blogger Shame challenge for the past couple years with the same result each time. I always start the year strong only to fizzle out by May. Will I join it again in 2019? No. I am going to do a more personal goal and go from there.
The Series That Never Ends challenge... If you've seen my goals blog posts for the past couple of years, you'll know that finishing series is a giant thorn in my ass. I want to finish them and have every intention to finish them, but I get busy and don't. It's another one I don't know if I want to try again. It's a toss up between giving it another shot or keeping it as a personal goal.
And now for challenges I did complete...
This challenge is always one of my favorites. I love finding new to me authors, so it's not surprising that I completed the Try Something New challenge with 27 authors (my goal was 21 to 40 books, authors, etc.).
The All About the Trope challenge was another fun one that I completed with 6 books. I wanted to continue with a different trope (my original pick was enemies-to-lovers), but I never got around to it. Sadly, I don't think I'll be doing this one again in 2019 though.
Honestly, this can't be a surprise to anyone. I am addicted to contemporary romance so of course I blew this one out of the park. I actually stopped tracking my progress at 42 books back in June...
I'm not a 100% sure how many books I read that falls under the Bad Boys of Romance challenge, but as a contemporary romance addict, I'm pretty sure it's a given that I completed it. My last count was 8 and my goal was 10 to 15 books. So yeah, I'm calling it a win.
Even with the huge reviewing/blogging slumps that plagued me the last half of the year, I still completed the review challenge with 104. I could have gotten upwards of 120 if I had been consistent all year, but I'm extremely happy with where I did land.
I friggin' loved this challenge and I can't wait to start it again in 2019. I love the idea of a scavenger hunt within books and I eventually found 39 items.
This challenge has been quite the eye-opener. As someone who isn't good with discussion posts, it helped me get comfortable with posting them more often than I did in past years. Even though I eventually lost steam part way through the year, I still completed my goal of 11 discussion posts and finished with year with 17.
So, that's it. Like I said, I was surprised at how many challenges I actually completed this year even with the slumps that plagued me during the last few months of 2018. One of my goals for next year is to take it down a notch with some of my challenges. I want a bit of an easier year in 2019. I'll talk more about that tomorrow. How did you do this year?
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