2019 reading challenge

 My 2019 personal reading challenge is this: read a romance novel, an award nominated book and one book from my physical TBR pile each month. 

That’s a minimum of 3 books a month, which sounds easy for someone who’s often read 100 books a year, but I’ve had problems concentrating in the past several months, so I don’t want to set my goals too high and then fail and hate myself.

Why a romance novel and an awards nominated novel? Well, because I’m going to pursue two types of original writing this year: one is to write m/m romance with the view to self-publish, and the other to pursue my years-long ambition of writing literary/fantasy novels, which I aim to have traditionally published. I have two pen names, I bought two domains to prove to myself that I’m committed, and I’m going to give it a go and hope it doesn’t turn me into a split personality. Reading in my genres (romance and fantasy) and immersing myself in the best writing available is the best school of writing I know.

The final category, the unread book from my physical TBR pile, is because I’m taking part in somuchreading’s 2019 challenge, which urges participants to tackle the books they haven’t read instead of buying new ones. I’ve got over 50 unread books (and possibly close to 100) on my shelves, but doing challenges for the past 4 years meant that I neglected them in favour of books that fit the challenge. That’s not even counting the masses of ebooks on my Kobo.

Below are some of the books/authors I have on my list for 2019. Feel free to suggest more in the comments!

K.J.Charles, Cat Sebastian and Courtney Milan’s works should keep me busy for the year, I think. I’m new in romance: any other authors (esp m/m) I should give a try?

Award nominated books: The Luminaries by E. Catton, Bring up the Bodies and Wolf Hall by H. Mantel, The 5th Season by N.K. Jemisin, Uprooted by Naomi Novik, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by S. Clarke, Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Goblin Emperor by K. Addison.

And these are all women authors! Success! 

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Cat Wolfe is eager to declutter this year, which means book giveaways are coming! Woohey!