2018 has come to its end, and with that, I’m wrapping up things on the blog, and moving on from the last year, into a new year. The reading challenges I participated in this year were a lot of fun, but I wish I would’ve had the time to participate more. With my current schedule, I could only update the challenges once a month, but I didn’t really find the time to visit the challenges pages, or communicate with other people participating in this challenge, as I would’ve liked.

I didn’t participate in the Goodreads Reading Challenge this year because I knew it would be tough to set a number now that I’m working full time, and juggling all that with studying, writing, and finding contractors for the home we’re building. I did participate in a few other challenges.

For the Netgalley Reading Challenge, I aimed for Silver level – 25 books. I ended up only reading and reviewing a miserable 2 books from Netgalley, so I didn’t win this challenge. Hopefully I’ll do better in 2019 but I have a nice line-up of Netgalley books waiting for my review right now, so I hope so!

The next challenge I participated in was the Beat The Backlist Challenge. I aimed to read at least 20 books from my backlist this year… but only managed to read 1 book from the backlist. Still some progress, but not as impressive as I had hoped. My plan is to make a list of books on my backlist for next year and cross them off one my one, hopefully that’ll help.

For the A-Z Reading Challenge 2018, I had to read books starting with every letter of the alphabet. I didn’t quite make it, but I made some good progress – I got 19 out of 26 letters.

Next up, for the New Release Reading Challenge, my goal was to read 61-100 new books this year… And I ended up reading 72, so that’s one challenge I completed! YAY!

Last but not least, I participated in the Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge, for reading mystery books. I aimed for third level, reading 26-35 thrillers, but ended up only reading 14 books.

I think most of my failing has to do with lack of time, and with reading less books than usual. In comparison, I read 189 books in 2017 and only 79 in 2018, less than half of my usual number. I hope to read at least 100 books in 2019 but that migyht be stretching it.

I’ll be participating in a few challenges again next year, but I might drop a few and maybe participate in a few new ones. We’ll see. Happy New Year!