2019 Reading Challenges

Hello friends! Happy New Year's Eve!! It's time to talk about 2019 reading challenges. Yay! Are you as excited as I am? Well, part of me is excited. The other part of me wants to take it easy a little this year. I think I found a happy medium. The challenges I'm doing in 2019 are ones that will most likely flow naturally. It's difficult to explain, but it just feels right. I'm also looking for an easier way to keep track of my progress and do update posts. Not sure how I'm going to go about it quite yet, but I will for sure keep you updated sometime in January.

Without further ado, here are the 2019 reading challenges I'm participating in...

2018 Retrospective: Reading Challenges

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!

Six Month Challenge Update: How am I doing?

Hello friends! When I set out to do monthly challenge updates, I originally wanted to have quarterly posts that had cute charts and graphics. That didn't pan out because, let's face it, I'm not the best when it comes to making graphics. My goal then became a six month update to post in July. So I sat down and powered through making charts. In the process I've learned that slow and steady does indeed win the race and lowers my frustration level. They are simple, but I like 'em.

So here we are... It's July 3rd and I have finally finished my January - June update. Thank goodness I don't have to do this again until December. 

May Challenge Update: How am I doing?

Hello friends! Holy cow, May was quite the month. If you read my challenge update post for April, then you'll know that even though I read a lot that month, it wasn't a good challenge month. Not a whole lot of those books fit into my challenges. May was the total opposite. While I'm not making progress in a couple challenges, there was a good bit made in some others. 

April Challenge Update: How am I doing?

This month's update is going to be short and sweet because even though I did review 13 books, I actually slacked a little on my challenges this month. Bad, Crystal! The challenges that had no progress were: Blog All About It, Blogger Shame, All About the Troupe, The Series That Never Ends, and Bad Boys of Romance. Hopefully I can catch up a bit in the next couple of months. 

March Challenge Update: How am I doing?

Hello friends! I'm going to be honest here, I had every intention of making a pretty 3 month challenge update with graphics and fun charts. I even started working on them last week. Then I remembered how much I hated pie charts in college. Blech! So instead of pretty 3 month challenge updates, I will now do a pretty 6 months update in July.

This update is a bit more detailed than the previous 3, so there's that...

Spring Mini Blog Ahead: March 24 to April 7

Blogging can be stressful. Especially when life gets busy with vacations, school, emergencies or when a dreaded blogging slumps hit. Blog Ahead aims at helping cut the stress by blogging ahead and creating a stockpile of scheduled posts that are ready to go when life gets a little crazy.

The challenge begins March 24th...

Whatever number of posts you have scheduled on that day...add 14 posts and THAT's the goal you're aiming for by the time the challenge ends. 

February Challenge Update: How am I doing?

Hello friends! I'm back with my monthly How am I doing? challenge update, or as I like to call them mini monthly updates. As I mentioned last month, these monthly updates are designed to be a quick and simple way to keep myself motivated. I will be back next month with a more elaborate 3 month update. Until then, here's the progress I made in February.

January Challenge Update: How am I doing?

Hello friends! I've been playing around with different ways that I wanted to update my challenges. My first thought was to update 4 times a year, but I wanted to have a way to keep track of my monthly progress. Plus updating more often helps keep me in check and seems to motivate me more. So I'm introducing a monthly How am I doing post. It's going to be super simple with no frills. Then every three months I'll do a more elaborate and (hopefully) flashy update. This seemed like a good middle ground.

So, let's do this! Here is my January challenge update...

5 Things I Love About Winter Romances

I have a not-so secret confession... I love winter romances. No, really. If I could, I would probably read them all year long. My love for winter romances most likely stems from the fact that I live in Southern California. While we do get what we call California Cold, we don't get snow. We do get a rare frost, but none of the pretty snow. Which is probably a good thing considering how bad Californians drive in the rain... It'd be downright scary if it snowed.

Since we are in the middle of winter and it was 70 degrees the day I'm typing this, I thought it would be fun to imagine I'm in a snow covered cabin in the woods with my favorite romance hero and talk about the 5 things I love about winter romances.

Ten Contemporary Romances I Can't Wait to Read

Hello friends! Is it just me or are there a lot of great books coming out between how and next December? I'm really looking forward to all of the fabulous books that I've recently added to my 2018 TBR. Here are ten contemporary romances I'm looking forward to reading this year. This is only contemporary. There are lots of erotic and romantic suspense books I'm itching to get my hands on.

It's going to be a year filled with great books...

Hello 2018: Why I set my Goodreads challenge at one book...

It's that time of year when everyone is setting their Goodreads challenge. It's a time when I'm always feeling caustically optimistic. It's a brand new year and we've got 365 days to read as many books as we can. Surely I can up my last year's number by 10 books. Right?

Nope... I'm changing things up this year.

Challenge Update: 2017 Wrap-Up

Hello friends! Can I be honest with you? I feel like we're all friends here and I can be honest. 2017 was a year with many epiphanies. There were a lot of things that I learned about myself and about my blog. Early on in the year (actually closer to late last year), I realized that I was taking challenges way too seriously. It got to the point where I was reading to complete a challenge instead of reading because I wanted to. And I hated that feeling. My ultimate goal for 2017 was to be okay with my reading progress. I'm pretty sure that mindset saved my insanity more than once.

As we go through my challenge wrap-up, you'll notice that I didn't complete as many as I would have liked. But you know what... I'm okay with that. I'm ecstatic with what I did complete and I'll work on what I didn't in 2018. So, let's do this...

2018 Challenges... Have I lost my mind?

Hello friends! It's that time of year... The announcing of the 2018 Reading Challenges! I'm convinced I have lost my damn mind. Why? Well, I'm going to attempt 10 challenges this year. TEN! I'm going in this with a calm and collected attitude. In the past year I've learned that I'm okay if I don't complete one. They're a fun and creative way to get me to either read more books I love or read books I wouldn't normally reach for. A couple of them even help me with my blogger goals for 2018. More on that later... One thing I am doing a bit differently is that all of my challenge sign-ups will be in this one post. It's easier for me to track and link.

So, without further ado... Here are the challenges I'll be participating in 2018...

2017 HoHoHo Readathon Wrap-Up

Hello and warm fuzzies!

Oh, how I've missed you all. I was actually away this past weekend with my dad on our twice annual trip. He goes to bowl and I go to do computer work for his league. It's a quick weekend of fun for us. But now we're back on the grind and I'm back to blogging.

I wanted to do a super quick update post for the HoHoHo Readathon that was November 8th to the 15th. I did okay... Didn't complete many of the challenges mostly because I had to prepare for the trip. Not to mention I'm also doing a craft fair in December, so toss in that insanity and I don't have much brain cells left. I did manage to read two novellas and one full length book. I'm not going to talk much about them here because I am doing separate reviews for them.

Technically I did read 4 books, but one of which was not a Christmas romance. Darn...

Challenge Update - October 2017

After a fun-filled day of updating books and working on my review archive, I thought why not complete the day with a Challenge Update post. What can I say? I got a whole lotta updatin' going on... And I'll be so happy when it's done! *winks*

October 2017 Blog Ahead... Wish me luck!

Like with other challenges, I always start off with the best intentions. Then when it comes time to actually start the challenge, those intentions fly right out the window.This time, I'm setting my own goals and I'm determined to meet them. If I do, fabulous! If I don't, I'll be proud of what I did accomplish. If I go past my goals, you'll have to pick me off the floor because I probably fainted. *grins*

Challenge Update - July 2017

Hello friends! As promised, here is a more detailed look at my challenge update form January to July. Next month I'll be able to get a bit more in-depth as I'll have tracked it more closely. I'm so behind in tracking my challenges and it is quite the chore to get caught up. I have some ideas to make next year a bit easier, but I'm not really worried about it for the rest of 2017.

Challenge Update: January to June 2017

No joke, I have been meaning to do a challenge update since February. What started out as a once a month update turned into every other month. Then that morphed into every 3 months... Then every 4 months. Until finally the first half of the year, where we're at today. Can you believe that we're already past the half-way point in 2017? Insanity, I tell you! For whatever reason I find challenge updates to be a daunting post to write. As I start heading down the rabbit hole (aka redesigning the blog), I think I'm going to incorporate challenges into reviews. Something else to consider...

Anyhoo, welcome {finally} to my challenge update post for January to June 2017. 

May 2017 Clean Sweep ARC Challenge

Kimba the Caffeinated Book Review is once again hosting the Clean Sweep ARC Reading Challenge over on her fantastic website. The challenge is to read as many of those ARCS that may have gotten a bit dusty on your TBR shelf and get a jump on your summer blog posts!