Now we’re in a new year, I thought I’d share with you my bookish bucket list!
- Read a book in each of the three languages I’m learning – French, Spanish and Russian (This is, outside of class)
- Be quoted in a book. I’d love for one of my reviews to be quoted in a published book!
- Make some money blogging. Even if it’s just 10p from my new affiliate links, I think it would be really cool to earn something doing something I love so much.
- Go to an official blogging event. Technically I’ve been to one of these before but it was ages ago and I’d love to be able to go to more, perhaps a bit more regularly
- Reach 1000 blog followers. This just looks like a massive number to me so I would absolutely love to reach it.
- Participate in some sort of blogger pen pal or gift swapping scheme. I’ve seen so many cool ones and I’d love to join in some day – it just hasn’t been possible for me yet.
- Be a rep for a bookish merch company. I’ve seen a few chances come up for this, I don’t think now’s quite the right time but I’d love to do this someday.
- Tell people in my real life about my blog. Currently no one in my real life knows about my blog but I’d love to be confident enough to tell people.
- Win a blogger award. I know there are so many great book bloggers out there, this is unlikely to happen but what’s a bucket list without a couple of crazy dreams?
- Be happy with my stats. This isn’t really related to what I achieve as statistics but more my attitude towards them. I spend a lot of time worrying about my stats and I want this to stop!
What’s on your blogging or bookish bucket list? Let me know!
On the Fence by Kasie West – A cutesy contemporary with some great family relationships
Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins – A cute romance set in Paris
Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder – a fab YA fantasy with a great herione
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater – not your cliché werewolf romance
Gone by Michael Grant – all the adults disappear, what happens next?
My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick – yet another adorable contemporary romance with great family dynamics
Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl – An unusual paranormal romance with a historical aspect if I remember correctly
So that’s only seven, but I’d say that’s not bad, clearly I’m just good at remembering the plots at books!
What books have you liked but now you think about them can’t really remember much about? Let me know!
All my links are Amazon affiliate links so if you do choose to buy a book based on my recommendations I’ll earn a little bit of money! Thanks guys!
This was my first read of the year and I couldn’t have been more pleased with it! I loved both of our main characters Dimple and Rishi and their romance was just so cute! I loved how passionate Dimple is about coding and how much Rishi loves art and how they can both support and encourage each other in these different interests. I must confess I’m a huge fan of the hate to love trope and this book is kind of an example of that, how Dimple goes from hating Rishi to, well you’ll see! I also loved seeing both Dimple and Rishi’s family life and how their culture affects the way they live their lives – in very different ways!
All in all, I gave this book 4 stars and would definitely recommend it if you’re a fan of cute romances, girls in STEM, diverse backgrounds and witty humour!
This book is just so fabulously feminist! As you can tell from my list of feminist reads, I absolutely love a good feminist YA book and this one definitely fits the bill! It’s about a girl slowly growing the courage to stand up and say something about sexism. I loved this because so often YA heroines are either unnaturally brave or complete wimps – Viv is neither! I could really relate to her, wanting to do something but not knowing where to start and then when she does start, starting small and shy but with the support of others, it growing to something awesome!
I also loved this book’s representation of female friendships, it shows the ups and the downs – the unquestioning support, the struggles of a friend triangle and the beauty in making friends and rediscovering friendships. Moxie also contained a romance, which I must admit I adored, it wasn’t the central plotline, which was nice change.
I gave this book 5 stars and would recommend to literally anyone, feminist or otherwise! It really shows the power of teenage girls and that’s why I loved it so much!
I’ve just sped through this book in one evening since I could get it for free with Kindle Unlimited and I really enjoyed. It was a tad predictable but that didn’t stop it from being a cute, fluffy YA romance read. Sally, the main character, is so awesomely geeky! I didn’t quite understand all the references as I’ve never seen either Star Wars or Star Trek but I was loving the Harry Potter references! She’s sick of her best friend and her mum (these two were so funny together!) sending her on so many blind dates so she decides to get a fake boyfriend. This is an incredibly cheesy and unrealistic YA trope but it’s one I love nevertheless, when people go from pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend to more! Our dashing hero here to save the day by volunteering as a fake boyfriend is Becks, all round American boy, attractive, sporty and generally lovable!
Even if you don’t have Kindle Unlimited it’s an absolute bargain and a really enjoyable read. I would give it 3.5 stars and would recommend to anyone wanting a cute quick read!
All of these books are currently less than £3 on Amazon Kindle so I recommend you get your hands on them sharpish! All the links in this post are my affiliate links so if you do decide to buy one of these books based on my reviews, I’d love it if you could use those and help a girl out!
So I thought I’d show you guys my bullet journal! I’ve heard a lot of people say they were planning on starting one for 2018 and I decided to do the same. I tried bullet journal in 2017 and did a couple of months of it but then I became so busy with work, I stopped blogging, reading and bullet journaling. So I thought I’d start again in 2018 and here we are! I’m really nosey and love admiring other people’s bullet journal and spreads so I thought I’d return the favour and show you mine. Although I must warn you, mine are nowhere near as pretty as some of the ones I’ve seen.
The first three pages of my bullet journal – after my index, are my key and my stats tracker. My key includes some of the traditional, widely recognised symbols as well as some of my own, that I’ve just made up because I thought they’d come in handy. The second page is my stats tracker and I know stats aren’t the be all and end all of blogging but I like being able to keep track of my stats and see how my blog is doing. The third page is my reading goals for a year, just being kept track of using circles, cut up into little pizza slices. I must confess I also having a blogging stats page which is currently blank as I’m not quite sure to how to organise it.
Next up in my bullet journal, we have a very basic year overview, where each month gets a third of a page so I can write in some key dates for that month. At the time of photographing, all I had on there was my blogiversary, but I’ve since added the release dates of books I’ve preordered and will continue to add important dates throughout the year.
Next up we have my books read, ARCs and backlist books pages which are pretty simple really. My book read page is organised like a book shelf, just to make a little more interesting to look at than just a straight forward list. My ARCS page contains a table with spaces to write the title, author, date released and date I reviewed it. My backlist books page is the simplest of the lot, with just space for me to write down the backlist books I read and track that challenge.
Then we have three more very basic pages that don’t need much explaining, space to write down all the UKYA books I read, all the films I watch and all the books I’ve reviewed.
After that we get to my first monthly set up, for January. First of all I have a monthly overview so I can record which days I post, when books come out and other important dates in January. Then I have a monthly to do list, where I write down all the things that I want to get done that month, without assigning them to a specific day or week.
Finally we have my January habit tracker so I can keep an eye on my reading, post writing, commenting, book buying, tweeting and admin work for my blog. I also have a weekly overview where I write down the tasks I want to get done each day, as well as recording how much I read each day.
So, that’s my bullet journal! What did you think? Do you have a bullet journal? How do you use yours?
So far for 2018, I have preordered four books so I thought I’d share them with you guys!
Love, Hate and Other Filters – 16th January
A searing #OwnVoices coming-of-age debut in which an Indian-American Muslim teen confronts Islamophobia and a reality she can neither explain nor escape.
If I’m being honest I don’t really know masses about this book but it sounds really good and it was fairly cheap on Kindle, so I decided just to go for it!
The Exact Opposite of Okay – 8th March
A hilarious, groundbreaking young adult novel for anyone who’s ever called themselves a feminist . . . and anyone who hasn’t. For fans of Louise O’Neill, Holly Bourne and Amy Schumer.
This books sounds absolutely amazing! UKYA does some of the best feminist young adult books and The Exact Opposite of Okay sounds like it will be no exception. Since preordering this book, I’ve also learnt that the launch for this book will be happening in Newcastle where I live and Laura Steven is so lovely so now I’m doubly excited!
The Midnights – 6th March
This voice-driven coming-of-age YA novel is perfect for fans of Katie Cotugno and Playlist for the Dead.
This one sounded like a good read and Sarah Smetana is a debut author for 2018! There is also some pretty awesome preorder swag available internationally, so if that doesn’t convince you I don’t know what will.
Perfect (UK paperback) – 25th January
The thrilling, shocking and romantic sequel to the bestselling YA debut FLAWED is finally here. When we embrace all our flaws, that’s when we can finally become PERFECT…
I know this book has already been released but I’ve preordered a paperback copy since it’s cheaper than the kindle edition and means it can join Flawed on my shelf. I received an ARC of Flawed and really enjoyed it so I’m keen to get stuck into the sequel.
What 2018 books have you preordered?
Also, before you go I’d love it if you could fill out my survey, which you can find here, so I can understand what sort of posts you enjoy and what you’d like to see from my blog.
alwaysopinionatedgirl 