Bookish Resolutions - Month 1 Update

In January, I set some goals for the year and now it's time to see how I did for the first month. The challenge is called Bookish Resolutions, and it's hosted by Laura @ trips down imagination road and Michelle @ Because Reading. I didn't set my goals until midway through the month, and I must admit that I did not do well in this first month. But it sounds like this may be considered a bit of a practice month!

Here are my goals and my progress for January:

Reading Goals

Read 60 books by the end of the year ~ I've read 4 books so far. 4x12 is only 48...
Read 5 books that I already own as of today (1/17) ~ 0
Read every book chosen for my book club this year ~ so far on track
Commit to reading no more than 2 review books per month ~ I read two in January

Blogging Goals

Write a weekly reading recap every week ~ I missed last week but hit all the others
Write at least one review each week ~ I missed one week
Visit and comment on 5 blogs per week ~ not doing well on this one at all
Send out Book Club Picks newsletter every month ~ sent January's on time

Personal Goals

Fit in three workouts per week ~ not yet but I did work out on Monday...
Drink 64 ounces of water per day ~ I think I'm doing okay with this one
Get 7500 steps in at least 5 days per week ~ nope

Comments

Getting back to blogging

It seems that blogging has dropped to the bottom of my list for the past year, and was pretty low for the year or two prior to that. I love to read, and am continuing to do so, but as my regular readers know I haven't been around much. My last blog post was almost a year ago!!

There are many things that have taken me away from blogging. Work has been much more challenging and interesting these past few years, but that means I really don't want to get back on the computer when I get home at night - or on the weekends.

Family life has been more busy with kids having multiple activities in the evenings, leaving little time to just hang out and write about the books that I read.

I will admit to a bit of a Facebook addiction, which means way too much time spent scrolling through my newsfeed instead of doing something more productive. This is one of the things I'm working on and hoping that this will free up some time for getting back to the blog.

Overall, life is good. Work is …

Book Review: The Bookman's Tale by Charlie Lovett

Peter Byerly is distraught over the loss of his wife nine months ago. He has retreated to their cottage in the English countryside, hoping to return to his love of collecting and restoring rare books. But when he opens a book about Shakespeare forgeries and finds a Victorian watercolor of a woman who looks just like his wife, Peter is soon on a search for the origin of the painting and the truth about Shakespeare's real identity.

The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession by Charlie Lovett is a wonderful journey for anyone who loves books. It follows Peter's search in 1995, which turns into a bit of a thriller at times. But Lovett also takes the reader back in time a bit so we can learn the story of his relationship with his wife and how he came to be a bookseller. He does a beautiful job of expressing Peter's feelings about the rare books he encounters, and his feelings are contagious.

And then he takes us back even further to the history of one particular volume, whos…

Banned Books Week: Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park

This is the end of Banned Books Week and unfortunately, I haven't had a lot of time to write about banned books this year. But I did want to include at least one post about it, so today I wanted to share one of the book series that it seems most people are surprised to find on the list: Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park.

According to Wikipedia:
The Junie B. Jones series came in at #71 on the American Library Association's list of the Top 100 Banned or Challenged Books from 2000-2009. Reasons cited are poor social values taught by the books and Junie B. Jones not being considered a good role model due to her mouthiness and bad spelling/grammar. This is an interesting example of a banned book. Many times there are serious, controversial topics featured in books that are challenged. Things like homosexuality, drugs, vulgar language, etc. You can actually understand why people may not want their children to read those books, and why they may challenge their inclusion in school libra…

My Book Retreat

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