Wednesday, January 1, 2020

Welcome to 2020!

Happy New Year and 🎵hello from the other siiiiiide🎵 of a new decade!

I like to do a little New Years post every year to set some goals for myself and my blog. I'm gonna try to keep it kind of simple this year since I always overestimate how much reading and blogging I will have time for. (The whole being an adult/parent-to-a-small-human thing is still taking some time to sink in... the fact that I cannot just spend my life reading 24 hours a day is still very disappointing to me... although I do get to make a lot of block towers and Duplo buildings and pretend food in a day so, there's that.)

Anyway, here are some of my goals and plans for my blog for 2020!
  
Reading Goals:
  • Double last year's reading goal: try to read at least 104 books this year. That's 2 books a week... I feel like that's doable, but I only managed 54 this year, so we'll see! 
  • Read all the picture books on the 2020 Amelia Bloomer List. It's an annual list of "the best feminist books for young readers, ages birth through 18" (source). Since I discovered the list, I've wanted to try to read some of the titles, but I've never committed myself to doing it... Well, now is the time and this is the year! The 2019 list came out last February, so as soon as 2020's  list is announced I want to get reading! I want to read some books on the list for older readers too, but I feel like limiting my goal to picture books is more realistic.
  • Read more classic children's books. I want to introduce my son to some of the classics I enjoyed when I was young, and I want to rediscover them for myself. And I want to try some new classics I've never read too. We'll probably be reading mostly picture books since he's firmly in the picture book category right now, but I want to try to read some classics for older readers too.
  • Get my NetGalley feedback ratio up to 80%. Probably not totally realistic in one year, but I'm setting it all the way up at 80% as a challenge. I got a little over-eager in my requesting for a while there, and while I'm doing much better at limiting my requests now, I still really need to devote some time and energy to picking my ratio back up. We'll see how well I can do in a year! 

New Blog Features Coming/Returning in 2020:
  • I want to bring my { bon voYAge! } feature back to life, but turn it into a kidlit friendly version. I was doing just YA books set in countries around the world, but I'd like to include everything from board books up through middle grade too, so I'm going to try to come up with some other kind of "reading around the world" feature that includes kidlit for every age.
  • I'd also like to wake up the { Something Old, Something New } feature. This year, I want to do better about keeping up with new releases, but I really need to catch up on my backlog too. This is a great way to make sure I read at least one "old" and one new book a month!
  • I'd like to try to come up with some kind of feature for awards and lists of great books. I've been following a lot of awards and booklists for a while, and I just started a weekly wrap-up post where I share some current lists and announcements I've come across each week. But I'd like to do maybe a monthly feature where I share some more detailed info about an award or booklist, maybe even try to read and review a book from the list. I discover a lot of great books by checking these awards and lists, and I love finding new lists and awards to keep up with. If you have any favorites you follow, please share them in the comments!

So there are my goals and plans for this year at PPBN! Trying to keep it simple and doable... we'll see how things change as I go along! Good luck to you on your reading and/or blogging plans this year, and I wish you a very happy 2020!

And as I always do on New Year's each year, I'll leave you with my favorite quote that always puts me in a hopeful and positive mood for everything the year has in store...

(image via Pinterest)

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