December has been a dearth of posts, regrettably, though I think that has a lot to do with the year just winding down and my desire to just chill out a bit more until the New Year, as far as reading goes and then writing about it goes. I even missed WWW Wednesday yesterday, though that had much more to do with how busy I was over the holidays. I just couldn’t find the time to put one together. I should have done it ahead of time, but I usually write it the morning of and that was a tough habit to break. Nevertheless, with 2018 coming to a close in less than a week I wanted to take some time to reflect upon my year of reading and writing a bit.

Goodreads Challenge

This is the first year since I started tracking what I read on Goodreads in 2016 that I haven’t hit my mark. I’m currently at 59 out of the 75 books I was hoping to have read and I don’t see that happening over the next few days. I do have every intention of getting that number to 60 though, so I’m at least hitting my compromise.

27 of these books are prose/text-only books and the other 33 will have been graphic novels.

Personal Reading List

As I’ve mentioned in these blog posts before, I hand-write a list each year of books that I want to get through. Striking out entries as I go is satisfying. Here’s a before and after for the list this year:

That’s 28 books listed in total and I’ve only read 13 of them. I’m honestly most disappointed with this, though I was far too ambitious to include The Lord of the Rings, It, and The Name of the Wind. They’re all massive and it was highly unlikely I’d have gotten to all of them in one year.

More Precise Goals

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien had been a monkey on my back for a long time. I think I’d owned the book since 2011 and had really and truly meant to read it sooner than I have. I’m happy to have it done finally, it was an experience I’m grateful for, but I also blame this book on my incomplete Goodreads challenge. It was a slog and it took me from February to June to complete, which sounds ludicrous, but it’s not any less true. Despite those negative associations, I do ultimately look back on finishing it with satisfaction. It’s an important piece of literature and I can see why people love it so.

I also endeavoured to read a lot of different Star Wars books this year, both novels and comic books. 12 of the books that made my reading list this year alone were Star Wars comics, with another five having been novels. I was glad to catch up on all of the comics so substantially, but it was most important to me that I complete the Aftermath trilogy by Chuck Wendig and Bloodline by Claudia Gray, the latter of which takes place afterwards but is not directly connected. Regardless of my reading challenge being short, I’ll always be happy I got these done. I feel like I can take to the series more leisurely again now.

The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett is a reading project I’ve had going since the beginning of 2016. It’s so long it has to be a years-long pursuit, but regrettably I didn’t get to as many this year as I feel I could have. 2016 saw me reading the first four books, then in 2017 I read books five to nine. For 2018 I’ve only read 10 and 11. It’s still something, but I’ll have to make some changes next year to get on better track.

Writing

I haven’t posted a Writing Report in a while because my progress has been limited as of late. With the holidays and other matters winding down I’m hoping to pick things back up in the New Year.

Despite current slowdown, I am pleased with what I have gotten done this year. I haven’t been a dynamo of continual writing, but I’ve submitted stories more than ever before; once for a flash fiction contest, another super-short piece for Duolingo, and a final story longer than the other two that I’ve submitted to a horror podcast and an anthology, the latter of which I’m still patiently waiting to hear from. Nothing has been accepted yet, but it’s been very exciting nonetheless and I look forward to pushing myself into my creative writing ambitions even further in the coming year.

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My annual top five list of books I read should be out soon and there will be the final New Books and Novel Discoveries for this year posted soon too!

Thank you for reading!