Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year!!

It's 2014 and as always, with a new year, it's a chance to make changes and to assess the good, and the bad, to see what works, and what doesn't, and to just celebrate with friends and family.  I have taken a well-deserved break - okay, a very long, long, long break from blogging and while I did post during the year, it was only on rare occasions, and only when I felt like it.    

I do want to thank my loyal readers and followers who have stuck by me during the last year, or two, and your support has been wonderful.  I think there just comes a time, or maybe two, in everyone's life, when you have to step back from what you are doing, and re-evaluate, and last year was my time to do so.  I have been offered some pretty amazing books to review last year, and have received some pretty amazing books for the upcoming year, and despite it all, I am a reader, and an addicted one at that.  It's hard to stay away for long.  However, with everything going on in my life, and that hasn't changed, nor will it change in the foreseeable future, I don't think I will be back blogging the way I was; I just don't think that I can.  No one can do it all, and I've come to accept that, however much I'd love to read my way through Chapters and the local library (both places where I spent my afternoon yesterday, by the way lol).

Goals for next year:
1) Read more books that I want to read:  I think it's important to read books that I want to read and not always get caught up in the ARC world, and the review world.  I did that a bit more last year, and while it was difficult to not write a review for every book I read, I began to enjoy reading again because the pressure was not there. What I've decided to do is have two piles: one for non-review books, and one for review books, and alternate the piles.  The key is not to cheat, either way.  Oh, and I did cheat last year.

2) Get out of the house more:  Being a teacher, it's so easy to get caught up in introverted activities and become housebound, especially in the weather conditions we have here.  SNOW, SNOW, AND MORE SNOW!!!  It makes you just want to curl up in front of the fire (no pun intended), and just read.  Too easy to develop bad habits.

3) Enjoy blogging again:  Stop writing only reviews.  When I first started blogging, I would write about whatever came to mind.  I did a monthly post about haunted castles that I loved to write about (it's one of my obsessions). I didn't really care if anyone read it, I just wrote about them because I enjoyed it.  Time to start doing it again.  The writing thing.  Let's face it, reviews can be boring and for a writer, dead zone.

4) Join an online book club: Don't have time to do the real thing as I'm driving my kids around to their competitive things, but sure do have time to do the online thing.  Any suggestions for a good online book club?  Probably on Goodreads as I know they have some good ones in history and fantasy, the two ones I'd be willing to do.