By far, 2017 was the best year ever of my 7-year old bookish baby blog. With over 250 books I've read and reviewed on Amazon.com and Goodreads, tons of good books obtained via NetGalley.com and a lot of individual collaborations with beautiful writers and their books, the last 12 months were an amazing bookish experience.
My best Books of the Year
My pleasure of reading reached new levels, with new ways of reading and understanding the written word and its challenges. I've started the year with a great lecture, which reminded me of the classical A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles. The reading list continued with better and better books: Do Not Say We Have Nothing, by Madeleine Thien and Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee, beautiful saga of identity, or the inspiring life journey of Henrietta Lachs. The Patriots, by Sana Krasikov was a book that brought back a lot of personal memories, and the promise that maybe one day I will be able to put on paper that novel I am sometimes dreaming too much about. I enjoyed a lot of thrillers, but as usual, those with a political layer or connections are always my favorites, therefore I loved reading Siren, by Annemarie Neary, dealing with post-conflict stories in Northern Ireland. For the sake of the intense intellectual musings, The Idiot by Elif Batuman was my number one choice. The short stories from Rotten Row by Petina Gappah opened to me the African storytelling worlds. My last - but not least - favorite reads of the year were the captivating page turning YA novel Rosemarked, by Livia Blackburne and the emotional poetry book by my dear Monica Bhide, Telltales, my first review of poetry ever - but hopefully not the last one. Celeste Ng, with her Everything I Never Told You was my revelation too, and can't wait to read her newest book in the next days too.
In addition to the book reviews, I also often participated to book tours, published interview with writers and guest posts by authors. Because I am also a travel writer, I included in many of my adventures on the road, visits to libraries, some of them being appreciated not only for their bookish richness, but also for their architectural exquisitiveness, like the Stuttgart Public Library.
2018 Will Get Even Better
I want to believe that it is up to me to make 2018 even better. Besides NetGalley.com, I am now receiving also books via Edelweiss and Librarything.com, all of them considered top releases for the coming year. For the month of January, I am already having two important book tour scheduled, and at least 20 interesting book reviews ready to be published. I am also decided to offer more space to poetry, but also to revisit and read some classical literature books.
As a subscriber to the French and German languages editions of NetGalley, expect to have more books written by non-English authors too, read in the original language. I do have my secret plan to get to know as many local authors as possible from non-English speaking countries and I will do my best to advance my knowledge about writers from other worlds too. I would also love to feature more German authors and insights about the local publishing industry.
I am looking forward to new collaboration, getting to know new authors and their books and who knows, maybe this year I will be able to finally join again the NaNoWriMo writing competition for my first fiction novel. Meanwhile, I do have 4 non-fiction books coming up, after a long writing hiatus of almost 4 years.
My social media presence, as for now, will be mostly limited to blogging, sharing my posts on Twitter where I also connect to writers, publishing houses and readers and my usual sharing on Google+ groups, Amazon.com and Goodreads. I am not giving any change yet to Instagram or Facebook, as for now I am already struggling hard to improve my audience with two other blogging projects.
As usual, hard work, consistency and reliability will be my main directions, with a lot of planning and long hours invested in every single blog post. I am looking forward to new bookish adventures!
Until then, a successful, healthy and very bookish 2018, to me and you, my dear readers!
No comments:
Post a Comment