2019 Reading Plans:

I am planning a reprise of my Women Writers project for 2019; with a twist, however: On Goodreads, I used to be a member of the Around the World in 80 Books group (the name is pretty much self-explanatory) -- I'd like to combine that basic idea with my "women writers" selections, with the aim of diversifying my reading regionally / internationally.  While my 2018 Women Writers project was a rousing success in terms of the male / female author ratio (roughly 2:1), it's impossible to miss that I read a lot of books by English and North American authors; so in 2019, I'm going to aim for a wider spread next year, both in terms of authors and book settings.

(By the same token, I am also planning to continue my exploration of the world of Golden Age mysteries, so make of that what you will ... there's bound to be some juggling, I suspect.)

Book Lottery:

With the above diversification aim in mind, I picked my 5 candidates for the first book I am going to read in 2019:

... which were then folded and went into the drawing box, where they were thoroughly shaken up and mixed:

And the winner is:

... which is excellent news, since Xinran's Sky Burial (which I just read today) is truly outstanding; even if The Good Women of China, going by what I've heard, makes for truly heartrending reading at times.

Well. Not only has the Halloween Bingo been fun, it has really advanced this year's reading goals! For the game, I at least started and "finished" (with reviews) 32 books: 20 audios, 3 ebooks, and 9 bound books. Of those, I DNF'd 5 (one with the intention of going back to try again later), but completely read 27 (25 squares +2 wild cards).

Goals:

• 13 books knocked off my 2018 TBR mountain
• 10 previously unread books from my physical bookshelves*
• 1 book from my "remembering dad" project
• 2 Book Riot's "We Need Diverse Books"
• 2 Banned books
• 0 Nancy Drew
• 0 Public Library physical books

Not bad for 7 weeks of reading! I do need to step up my borrowing of physical books from my public library - I borrow plenty of digital media, but I know the library depends on borrowing stats to maintain its funding. 

*One book from my physical bookshelf doesn't count as read/completed, because I pulled it down, looked at it closely, and decided to just put it in my donation box unread because I didn't really want to read it. It was a freebie that I picked up somewhere, years ago, and had been cluttering up my bookshelves since. It counts to my bookshelf TBR project because it's an unread book removed from my shelf. I'm only letting myself buy 1 new book for every 2 I take off my bookshelf in an effort to keep myself from being buried in books. 

This year I've decided not to be too harsh on myself, so I'm only setting one simple bookish goal for 2016 and it is the following:

To read everything that I have downloaded. I have 50 titles that I haven't read yet, so I want to finish them this year. 

I have a tendency to get distracted easily, so this year my goal is to have direction, maintain focus, and reach a level of clarity. If I can do this with literature, I feel I will be able to apply this habit to life as well.

1. Read 200 new books

2. Read more ebooks/ARCS that I have to read.

3. Review more books, not just rate.

4. Read all the books I haven't read yet on my physical book shelves.

5. Read more books on my tbr list.