31 Jan 2015

January Wrap-Up: In Which 2015 Starts With a Bang


One of Chami and I's resolutions this year was to become more consistent in our blogging. This got me thinking about last year, specifically my monthly wrap-ups - I was all over the place with them, sometimes I'd write 500+ word posts and then the next month there wouldn't be anything. I'm trying to change that this year by posting a wrap-up every month. I'll be posting them in the first week of the next month - so January is being posted today in February and so on. 

I won't just be talking about the books I read. I'll be talking about posts we did throughout the month that we are particularly proud of, other things that are happening in my life - the TV I've been watching, book related events I've been to and etc. Without further ado, let's wrap up the month that was January 2015. 

BOOKS

 This month I read 13 books. Six of those were comics, four YA and two adult. Burial Rites, Tandem, The Winner's Curse and The House of Silk all got five star ratings. I also reviewed Defiance and I Was Here which both got four stars.

I also DNF'ed these two books. I really tried to like these, but I just couldn't.

CHALLENGES
I set myself quite a few challenges this year. A few of them I discussed in this post, and a bunch of others that are things like 'read more of this author' and things like that - I don't think you guys will really care about those and I haven't really started on them anyway. I haven't actually made a start on any of the challenges I mentioned, except for 'Around the World'. This is what my map looks like now. (If you click on the red things, it'll tell you the location and the book.)


TV/FILM
I've been pretty restrained this month, in the case of starting new TV shows at least. I've been watching a lot of Veronica Mars - I'm on to season three now and just...FEELS. I also finally finished Firefly - seriously, it took me over a year to watch this. I saw Serenity too (the movie continuation of Firefly) I'm not quite over it yet. Finally, I started Agent Carter. OH. MY. GOD. THIS SHOW. I don't care if you don't even like Marvel, you need to watch this show because it's amazing and Peggy Carter is kickass. I also re-watched the first Captain America film - I've watched the second one about ten times, but I'd only ever seen this one once.

WRITING 
I've done a quite bit of writing this month (almost 9,000) - not nearly as much I hoped but still a reasonable amount. I've been mostly writing Tied Together but I've been planning out a few other things to pick up once I've finished. I'm currently 44,000 words in - I did write 50,000 for NaNoWriMo but I deleted at least 15,000. I've sort of reached that stage where everything is really, really difficult to write so I'm not forcing myself to write when I've got no motivation.

VIDEOS 
I've been pretty busy on YouTube this month. I thought I'd just link them all here and you can pick out the ones you'd like to see, if you'd like to watch any of them at all. Would You Rather: Booktube edition. Read-a-thon TBRs. #ProjectTBR. Bookentine Read-a-thon Announcement. RYBSAT Round 4 TBR. Comic Book Haul. RYBSAT Wrap Up. Bookentine TBR.

ON THE BLOG
This was a big month on the blog! Chami posted quite regularly at the start of the month while I kicked back, and then we swapped for the second half of the month after Chami left for America. Fathomless Females, our new 2015 feature, started this month with Regan Claire and Eva Pohler joining us. Chami talked about apps that all book lovers need, and we also celebrated Chami's 18th.

OTHER THINGS
I caught up with a couple of blogger friends this month. On the 17th, I caught up with the wonderful Michelle and she took me comic book shopping. I picked up some exciting things as you can see in the video, and then we spent some time crying over how expensive clothes are. Last weekend - the 24th, there was another Melbourne Booktube/Blogger/Watcher Meet Up. There were only six of us this time, but I got to catch up with my Sydney girls - Michelle, Nicole and Miranda. I also got to see the lovely Neisha again as well as a friend she bought along. We had a really great day!

So that was January. I hope you all had a wonderful start to the New Year. I've got a very exciting month coming up in February, so stay tuned for that!