End of the Month 2016 [January]

Okay time. You can seriously slow the hell down any time now. First I was coasting along minding my own 2015 business, then I blink and it's 2016, then I blink again and it's February! 

Well, at least I got some good reading done this month. I finished 10 books this past month. Not all the books I had aimed for with my January TBR but I got the majority of them in!

I had started a reread of the Harry Potter books back in December and even though I really wanted to finish them, I was too excited to get into my first choice for the Series a Month challenge. I got so absorbed in The Mortal Instruments that I really allowed myself to savor it. Which left myself no time for the last 4 books in the HP series. Ah well. Hopefully I'll fit them in one of these days :/

I also squeezed in a couple of quick contemporaries this month when all I had handy was my Kindle and really wanted to read (since my TMI books are all physical copies). So I also read:

Series enders always make me so freaking nervous but, while this one did have me constantly on the edge of my seat, it was a fantastic ending!

It's not like this was horrible, though it did have it's moments that made me want to put it down...permanently. It's just kind of here by default really because everything else I read was just so much better.

(Click the banners to go to my individual challenge pages)

The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare

City of Bones was a reread, the rest were all first timers for me.

Love isn't even a strong enough word for how I'm feeling towards this world...

The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare

I initially read City of Bones back in 2012 I believe it was and finally did a reread of that all the way through the other 5 this month!

8 out of the 10 books I read this month have been on either my shelf or in my Kindle since at least summer of 2015. I think this reading challenge is going to be my best friend this year! So much cleaning out of the shelves!!

What I read:

City of Ashes

City of Glass

City of Fallen Angels

City of Lost Souls

City of Heavenly Fire

Game for Marriage

Vanilla on Top

Don't Look Back

Even though the bulk of my reading this month was more on the Urban Fantasy side... I did manage to sneak in a few contemporaries to break it up a bit.

What I read in January:

Game for Marriage

Vanilla on Top

Don't Look Back

Royal Marriage Market

(Click on the image to see the 4 books I crossed off my Popsugar list)

While I did get a good number of books read this month, I have absolutely failed at writing reviews. Matter of fact I wrote my first one before doing this post and it goes up in a couple days. Hopefully I can get a few more written tomorrow since I'm taking the next couple days to get some blogging done.

There's really not much else to say about my bookish/blogging world this month. I've read a lot of freaking fantastic (to me at least) books this month, where only one of them was just so-so. I really hope this continues through the rest of my 2016!

How has your reading/blogging life gone this month? Read any exciting books lately? :)

2016 Reading Challenges I'm Going To Attempt!!

So I have kind of dropped the ball....a lot in 2015. Mostly because I overwhelmed myself with lots and lots and lots and...well you get the idea...ARCs. But I've curbed that habit, sure it took until the end of the year to do it, but I did and in order to breathe some fresh air into my reading life and get me excited and motivated again I wanted to join up with some reading challenges!

I'm really excited to get involved in these especially since the ones I found all involve trimming down that ever growing TBR and the piles of books that I already own!

Tentatively these are the three that I plan on doing (mostly because they were the only ones that I saw so far that caught my eye). So I may just add more to this list yet. These first three that I'm signing up for can easily be hodge podged together and will kill 2 (or 3 in this case) birds with 1 stone so that's also why I picked them!

Each challenge is going to have it's own dedicated page which I will link below and I'm also posting a very tentative list of all the books I will be using to complete these challenges on a monthly or whatnot basis on each of their pages. I say very tentative because, especially in the cases of the series I'm adding, I may not end up loving them as much as I once had/hoped to do.

*Also a quick note because I don't want to rewrite everything I just did, I forgot that almost a week back I had signed up for one other reading challenge that I'm adding in to bring the total to 4. But once again it also fits in perfectly with all of the other challenges. 

Also some books I read will overlap into more than one challenge so each list you'll experience quite a bit of déjà vu!

So what do I plan on doing in 2016?

Rock My TBR hosted by The YA Book Traveler

Sign up (here)

My challenge page (here)

Finishing the Series hosted by Bea's Book Nook

Sign up (here)

My challenge page (here)

I'm aiming high and going for Experienced Series Reader with 7 or more series!

Series a Month hosted by Love at First Page

Sign up (here)

My challenge page (here)

Contemporary Romance Reading Challenge hosted by Love at First Page and Gone with the Words

Sign up (here).

My challenge page (here)

I'm hoping to go over my goal of Home Run and actually hit Grand Slam before the year is up but we'll see.

Those are what I have for now. I may add more if I stumble across any other challenges down the road. And if you find any creative or extra challenging ones or have one you think I might be interested drop me a link! You never know and I'd love to see what else is out there at the very least. Good luck with your challenges and TBRs in the year to come and happy reading all!