2016 Bookish Resolutions

TTT is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

2015 is well and truly over and we are already edging our way into the new year. And no new year would be complete without new year resolutions. So without further ado, let's look at my bookish resolutions for 2016 and also how I fared on my 2015 resolutions.

Top Ten Books on My Winter TBR 2015

TTT is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

As temperature sets to single digits here in Australia, I can't help but feel a twinge of envy at the fact that my Northern Hemisphere buddies are all blogging about their summer TBRs. However, having said that, I'm pretty excited about tackling my winter TBR as there are several books on it that I've been meaning to read for ages. In fact, I deliberately chose the following 10 books as they have already been sitting on my TBR for quite awhile - some for perhaps too long.

2015 Bookish Goals

It is the beginning of a new year and I'm ready to set some challenges for myself book-wise. There are a lot of books coming out in 2015 that I'm really excited about. And there are also a lot of books still on my TBR shelf that I need to get through. So many books, so little time!

2014 Wrap-Up: My Bookish Accomplishments This Year

Image sourced from Peddhapati at Flickr

At the end of every December, I look back and marvel at how quickly the year has come and gone. And it almost feels as if with every year, the speed of its passing seems to be that much quicker. I feel like I'm getting old.

2014 has been quite an up and down year. Career-wise, I've finally graduated and started working. It's been quite an experience. So much to learn. So much to do. So much to overcome. With the final two weeks of my internship looming ahead of me, residency is starting to look mightily scary!

Book-wise, 2014 has been a big year. It's been the first year that I've really started to read novels in large volumes. And when I started this blog back in February, I had five bookish goals for the year. So let's have a look and see which ones I've accomplished.

Top Ten Things on My Bookish Bucket List

TTT is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

This week, the topic is for us to list the top ten things on our bucket list book-wise. It can be blogging-related, book-related or writing-related. So here are the 10 things that came to mind :)

1. Own a personal library collection

Now this doesn't have to be as impressive as Jay Walker's personal library collection (now that one is a masterpiece - google image "world's greatest personal library"). But someday maybe, when I get my own place, I'd like to have a room dedicated to the library with floor to ceiling bookshelves lining all the walls (ideally with one of those rolling ladders too).

2. Read all the books on Time 100 list of the 100 best novels

I think I went through the list recently and discovered I've only read a handful of the books on that list, so I'm hoping to rectify that!

3. Meet more authors and attend book signings

I think the only book of mine that is signed was by Isobelle Carmody and that was only because she came to my high school for a talk. But hopefully, once I get more free time under my belt, I'll be able to indulge in my bookish hobbies.

4. Be part of a book club

I'm not very good at joining things and regularly participating. But I'd love to join a book club one day (again, when I'm more free) and participate with other people - I don't mind if this is in person or online.

5. To build a well-established book blog

I don't have a certain figure as to how many followers I would like to have or how many unique visitors. Since I'm just starting out, I guess I just hope my blog is here to stay and that it'll continue to grow.

6. Have a better online presence

Going hand in hand with the previous goal, I think I'm still at the learning process when it comes to building my online presence, using social media and interacting with fellow book lovers out here on the world wide web.

7. Write and (hopefully) publish a novel

Clearly, a lot of us book bloggers (and even non-bloggers) have this goal. But *shrug* it's just something I'm very interested in and maybe, one day, it'll happen.

8. Get a better grasp of the English grammar

Grammar has always been the thing that has eluded my grasp. Even during high school, I would get excellent grades but grammar would always be the thing that drags my average English grade down to an Asian F (A- for those wondering what an Asian F is).

9. Get into new genres that I'm not too familiar with

This is similar to the 2014 book goals I had about expanding into new genres and trying books that I normally wouldn't try. I still haven't read a classic yet (I don't think) so I still need to do that.

10. Get to the point where publishers will send me ARC copies :D

Well, that's the dream, isn't it? :P

Anyway, what were your top ten bookish bucket list goals? Leave a comment or link below and I'll be sure to check it out!

My 5 Reading Goals for 2014

I'm planning on (re)starting my reading journey by defining a few goals for myself. As I have mentioned in my last post, I did sign up to Goodreads' 100 books challenge but reaching that goal is not the problem. I simply felt I was reading books of similar genres and that I wasn't really expanding my horizons. I'm still keeping the 100 books challenge but I'm going to further expand on it below.

1. Goodreads 100 books challenge

So far this year, I have already finished 33 books (and that is not including rereads). I will put up my 2014-read list up on a separate page up the top soon so you can keep track along with me all the books I have read. But as you will probably find out, a lot of my books fit into the YA-fiction fantasy/dystopian series genre (it'll make more sense once you see my book list). But in addition to what I will usually read, I plan on tackling the following challenges below.

2. Read 10 classics

I am not a classics fan. Sure, my favourite book of all times is J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings but beyond that, there are not a lot of classics that I like. Even Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which has the adoration of all my female friends, wasn't more than simply a semi-pleasant read for me. So I want to see if I can change my opinions on this genre (as I know there are a lot of awesome books in here). My goal is to read 10 classics and since we're already in February, it's sort of roughly 1 classic a month with 1 month as a back-up just in case. If I find this experience enjoyable, I would definitely like to expand my classics goal next year.

3. Read 10 books from the genres Science Fiction, Crime/Mystery, Memoir & Historical Fiction

Again, these are genres I don't usually read from at all so I would like to expand my horizons. There are a couple of books I already have in mind such as Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes series, Frank Herbert's Dune (I couldn't finish this one back in high school) and Robert Galbraith's The Cuckoo's Calling. The one genre I did not include here is "Horror" and that is because I have a very low fear threshold. I have only watched one Japanese horror film and that was on a roadtrip with my university friends. Boy did they regret forcing me to watch it. I was so terrified I couldn't sleep and if I couldn't sleep, no one in the entire household was going to get any sleep either. I remained terrified for about two months after the incident too. I have read one of Stephen King's short stories and even that gave me a mild fright. So yeah, I'm not too keen on branching in the horror genre. But everything else is fair game.

4. Read at least 1 play and 1 book of poetry

Believe it or not, I really enjoyed my English classes back in high school. Poetry analysis really made me appreciate something that initially just didn't make sense to me. And poring over Shakespeare's plays line by line really made me enjoy them a lot more than I would normally have. So yeah, I would like to at least read another play and a book of poetry by the end of the year.

5. Write reviews for at least half of the books I read

I find sometimes when I go on a reading spree, I tend to just consume a lot of books without much thought, which I think defeats the whole purpose of reading books in the first place. So by forcing myself to sit down and actually write out my thoughts on the books I've read, I think I'll be able to gain a better appreciation of the books and also learn from them a little.

So yeah, that's all my reading goals for this year. They don't seem like a lot but given what I've been reading for the past month, it might take a lot of willpower to change my ways and try something new. I'll keep you guys posted.

Until next time!

OCR: It's not a disease, it's a way of life

Hi, my name is Witless Fool (yeah, don't ask, that's a blog post in itself) and I am an obsessive compulsive reader (hence the name of this blog). I love books. I love reading them. I love the endless potentials they contain. I love being able to pick one up and escape into the world that exists between the covers.

In short, I love books.

I think I fell in love with reading way back in the later years of primary school. That was roughly when I managed to have enough of a grasp of the English language to truly enjoy the process of reading. Some of my favourite childhood books are Brian Jacques' Redwall series, Joanna Campbell's Thoroughbred series, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events to name just a few.

Then high school came around and I continued to read during my spare times, even during the busy final years. Isobelle Carmody, Jennifer Fallon, Juliet Marillier, J.R.R Tolkien, Nora Roberts, Linda Howard are just some of the standouts that come to mind as I type this post. I was in the midst of developing my taste and personal preferences so I was eager to try my hands on everything, including a brief foray into science fiction before I decided nope, I'm definitely more of a fantasy and romance type of gal.

Sadly, in the past few years of my life, I have done very little reading. Real life, and in my case, university, got in the way of my reading. It wasn't until at the end of last year, when I finally finished university that I have had the time to sit down and finally start reading again. And boy, did I miss reading.

I joined GoodReads' 100 books challenge this year and already, I'm sitting at 32 books and counting. The more I read, the more I realize how much I've missed out on over the past 6 years. But looking back on what I've read so far this year, I've realized I have been sticking predominantly to YA-fiction that's either fantasy or dystopian. I want to broaden my horizons again as well as catching up on the good books that have come out in the past that I haven't read.

So here's the goal of this blog: to keep track of all my reads, my thoughts on them, and plans for future reads. I'm also quite keen to tackle some classics (as I am genuinely not a classics fan) as well as revisit some genres such as science fiction that I abandoned a long time ago. I'm still sticking to my 100 books challenge plus also do some rereads of some old-time favourites.

In my next post, I think I'll do my 2014 reading goals.

So yeah, welcome to my blog, thanks for dropping by and wish me luck! :)