So, I have seen these posts and videos circulate the internet a lot recently but as individual posts/videos. I decided I was going to combine the 3 topics as I only had a small number of books to choose from each category.
2019 has a lot of exciting books in store for us! I can’t wait to get stuck in! Today I will be talking about some 2019 releases that have piqued my interest.
The Hod King – Josiah Bancroft
The Hod King is the 3rd book in The Tower of Babel series. I read the first book Senlin Ascends last April and it was my favourite book of 2018. It follows Thomas Senlin who travels to the Tower of Babel, with his new wife Marya but he loses her and spends the rest of the book traversing the tower in search for her. I haven’t read the 2nd book in the series yet but I just loved his first book so much I can’t help but get excited for new additions in the series.
Finale – Stephanie Garber
Same case as The Hod King. Finale is the final book in the Caraval trilogy. I read the first book Caraval, last February and absolutely loved it. I still haven’t read the 2nd book in the trilogy, Legendary, but I loved the first book so much I’m just so excited for new instalments. Fairyloot, a UK based book subscription box, is doing a very special box all about Finale and I really want to purchase it.
The Priory of the Orange Tree – Samantha Shannon
This story is told through multiple perspectives and focuses on Ead Duryan, an outsider turned lady-in-waiting who uses forbidden magic to protect the Queen, who is being targeted by assassins.
I have been hyped for this book since November as initially, I thought it was Fairyloot’s book for their December box. I love multi-perspective novels and I’m really intrigued about where this story will go especially as it seems the main characters are women.
The Gilded Wolves – Roshani Choski
Set in Paris in the 1800’s we meet Séverin Montagnet-Alarie, as treasure hunter. He is given the task of a life time when he is told to find an ancient artifcat for an ancient society called the Order of Babel . In order to get this artifact though, he will need a team of experts.
I’m getting a very strong Indiana Jones and Ocean’s Eleven vibe from this book so I am excited to read this! I haven’t read many books set in Paris either so it will be nice to explore Paris in book form.
The Similars – Rebecca Hanover
The Similars is a YA sci-fi novel focusing on a character called Emmalina who’s best friend, Oliver, died that summer. Trying to get over the grief of losing Oliver she comes face to face with Levi… her Oliver’s clone. Six clones arrive at her high school and even though she doesn’t want to get involved with them she can’t help but feel the pull. Soon she gets mixed up in the dark truth’s about her school and the clones.
I have never read a book like this before. Sci-fi isn’t really my genre but this sounds so intriguing so I really want to give this a try!
I have done really well this year. I will end 2018 on 32 books by the end of this week and I am incredibly proud with how much I have read. My original goal was 22 books so I was very happy to beat that goal.
I have 5 areas that I want to complete during 2019. They cover authors, genres and reading challenges. I wanted to plan a bit more for 2019, as this year I just picked up anything I liked and read it. But since then I have started but not finished a lot of series and I have signed up for reading challenges and book subscription boxes. I wanted to approach 2019 in a more organised way.
How many books do I plan to read in 2019?
For 2019, my goal is to read 25 books. I was deciding to possibly aim for 30 but this year I was very fortunate to go on a couple of holidays where I spent a lot of time reading and I was also in college with a lot of free time so I managed to get a lot of reading done between lessons. Now that I have started full-time employment I don’t want to give myself an unachieveable goal.
2019 Sequels
I started a lot of series in 2018 that I was un-able to finish. So on Goodreads, I created a shelf called my 2019 sequels shelf which was dedicated to the sequels to the book series I had started within the year. My plan is to read these books before the month of June, so the first half of the year is dedicated more to finishing or continuing series from 2018 and the 2nd half of the year is dedicated to new series and books. There are twelve books on this shelf and they include;
The Arm of the Sphinx – Josiah Bancroft (Book 2/4 – The Tower of Babel series)
The Fellowship of the Ring – J.R.R. Tolkien (Book 2/4, I am counting The Hobbit in this series.)
The Girl in the Tower – Katherine Arden (Book 2/3 – The Winternight Trilogy)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – J.K. Rowling (Book 4/7 – Harry Potter series)
Legendary – Stephanie Garber (Book 2/3 – The Caraval series)
The Light Fantastic – Terry Pratchett (Book 2/41 – The Discworld series)
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis (Book 2/7 – The Chronicles of Narnia)
The Mermaid’s Voice Returns in this One (Book 3/on-going – The Women Are Some Kind of Magic series)
Obsidio – Amie Kaufman (Book 3/3 – The Illuminae Files)
Poirot Investigates – Agatha Christie (Book 3/41 – Hercule Poirot series, not including the new books by Sophie Hannah)
Resort to Murder – T.P. Fielden (Book 2/on-going – A Miss Dimont Mystery series)
Thunderhead – Neal Shusterman (Book 2/on-going – The Arc of the Sycthe series)
The ONTD Reading Challenge
On Goodreads, there is a group currently called “2018 ONTD Reading Challenge”. It’s run by two women and they pick a theme for each month of the year and you must follow the theme and read a book each month that fits within the theme. I thought it would be really fun to do this as it means I would read books I would have never thought of picking up. I also tried to apply some of the books from my 2019 sequels list to some of the themes between Jan and June. So I have made a small plan, of books that I could read during the month, and it looks like this:
January – Read a book that has been adapted into a movie or TV show.
The Light Fantastic (TV episode)
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (Movie)
The Fellowship of the Ring (Movie and TV episode)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Movie)
Poirot Investigates (Multiple TV episodes)
February – Read a romance or a book in which a couple breaks up.
I am not really a romance fan so the books I looked at all have elements of another genre.
Obsidio (Sci-fi)
Cinder – Marrisa Myer (Sci-fi)
The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern (Fantasy + Historical Fiction)
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Taylor Jenkins Reid (Historical Fiction)
March – Read a non-fiction book.
The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson
This Is Going To Hurt – Adam Kay
A Thousand Naked Strangers – Kevin Hazzard
The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures – Aaron Mahnke
April – Read a book about time-travel.
11/22/63 – Stephen King
All Our Yesterdays – Cristin Terrill
May – Read a book set in a country you have never been to.
The Girl in the Tower (Russia)
Confessions – Kinae Minato (Japan)
Shadow of the Fox – Julie Kagawa (Japan)
The Widows of Malabar Hill – Sujata Massey (India)
June – Read a book about friendship.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire/Order of the Phoenix (I would read OotP if I read GoF earlier in the year.)
The Fellowship of the Ring/The Two Towers (Same as above)
Neverworld Wake – Marisha Pessl
July – Read a re-telling.
Dorothy Must Die – Danielle Paige (The Wizard of Oz)
The Afterlife of Holly Chase – Cynthia Hand (A Christmas Carol)
The Child Thief – Brom (Peter Pan)
Spinning Silver – Naomi Novik (Rumplestiltskin)
August – Read a thriller where a female lead is in danger.
The Cheerleaders – Kara Thomas
Sometimes I Lie – Alice Feeney
Unraveling Oliver- Liz Nugent
Broken Things – Lauren Oliver
September – Read a comedy.
Three Bags Full – Leonie Swann
My Lady Jane – Cynthia Hand
The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue – Mackenzi Lee
October – Read a book about war.
A Tattooist of Auschwitz – Heather Morris
November – Read a graphic novel/manga.
From Hell – Alan Moore
Fullmetal Alchemist – Hiromu Arakawa
The Prince and the Dressmaker – Jen Wang
December – Read a book that won an award in 2019.
This book I would have to pick closer to the time. These are just books I have in mind that fit the theme, I may decide later to read something else.
Any authors you plan to read more of?
I would love to read some of Brandon Sanderson‘s books. I have heard great things about his work and it seems like the kind of thing I would enjoy.
Any genres you plan to read more of?
I would love to read more classics. It’s probably the only genre I haven’t attempted to read, outside of school. So it would be good to try the genre out.
2018 has probably been my best reading year to date. So far I have read 31 books beating my target of 22 and I still have one book left that I want to read in the last 2-3 weeks left of December. Now that we are nearing the end of the year I want to look forward and start planning books I would like to read in 2019 and while that post will be coming in the following weeks. This post is a bit different.
The books in this list are a mixture of series I have completed and want to read again and series I started reading a couple of years ago but never finished, with this series I would start with re-reading the books I had already read and then continuing where I left off.
The reason this isn’t in my 2019 plan is that I wouldn’t be able to finish all of these series in one year as well as reading other books. This is more of a plan to cover the next 2 or 3 years. First up…
Series: Harry Potter
Author: J.K Rowling
Status: Currently Re-reading
Last Book I Read: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
No. of Books: 7
I decided early this year that I wanted to re-read the Harry Potter series. I have tried so many times to re-read the series, which I first read when I was 11, but I always gave up when it got to “Goblet of Fire”. The last time I tried to tackle this series I was 14 and got to the First Task chapter of the 4th book. Since then I have been listening to a variety of Harry Potter themed podcasts and it’s reignited my love for Harry Potter and the desire to re-read the series. One of the other main reasons was that I couldn’t remember much about the series from “Goblet of Fire” onwards especially not “Half-Blood Prince” and “Deathly Hallows” so I wanted to re-jig my memory and read the series through older eyes.
So far I have read; “Philosopher’s Stone”, “Chamber of Secrets” and “Prisoner of Azkaban”. I loved the “Philosopher’s Stone” as it brought back a lot of fond memories for me and I loved the “Chamber of Secrets” due to the murder mystery element to it. My opinion of the book actually changed due to the re-read, I love it a lot more this time around. I liked “Prisoner of Azkaban” but didn’t love it. It was still very good but I just wasn’t drawn into the world as much as I was with the other two books. My plan is to read “Goblet of Fire” next year and carry on the series. After I read Harry Potter I will then begin to re-read…
Series: Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Author: Rick Riordan
Status: Finished series
No. of Books: 5
I got this series a couple of Christmas’ ago after my dad and I watched the movie and I loved it so much I asked for the books for Christmas and boy was I shocked by how bad the movies were. Those movies were the epitome of “the book was better”. I was always a massive fan of Greek Mythology and the idea of mixing modern day and ancient gods together blew my mind!
I finished this series nearly 5 years ago and remember loving it but that’s the only thing I can remember about these books as I have completely forgotten what happens in this series. The movies can’t help you as they were so badly done and there were only 2 made! So one of the reasons I wanted to read this book was to remind myself about what happens.
Another reason is I remember loving it so much! This series to me was one of the first series where I realised that there wasn’t just Harry Potter out there. I didn’t think I would ever find a series that would match my love for Harry Potter and yet here we are.
Series: The Heroes of Olympus
Author: Rick Riordan
Status: Need to finish
Last Book I read: The Mark of Athena (Book 3)
No. of Books: 5
You are going to see a lot of Rick Riordan in this post, just to make you all aware. I was really scared reading the Lost Hero as I thought I wasn’t going to love it as much as I loved the previous series. I wasn’t sure if I was going to like the new characters and I wasn’t sure what direction this book was going to go. I was relieved when I finished this book that I loved it just as much as I loved the original series and to me, it felt fresh and new, not using recycled storylines which was what I feared it was going to include.
I haven’t finished this series, when I was reading the third book, “The Mark of Athena” the last book came out and I saw loads of spoilers posted by fans so I wasn’t really interested in finishing the series as I now knew the outcomes. So my plan is to re-read the first three books which I have already read first just so I can remind myself what is happening and then continue from there.
Series: The Trials of Apollo
Author: Rick Riordan
Status: To be read
No. of Books: 3
So I haven’t actually read the Trials of Apollo series. I haven’t even read one book. The reason this series is in the list is it’s continuation of the same world that “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” and” The Hereos of Olympus” series are in and I know that big things happen to characters introduced in the previous series’ so I feel like I need to complete this world as it’s not the end of the journey for Percy and other characters, hence why this series is here.
Series: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard
Author: Rick Riordan
Status: Need to finish
Last Book I read: The Sword of Summer (Book 1)
No of Books: 3
I read this book two years ago during the summer holidays when I first decided I was going to focus on reading more. It was one of the first books I ever logged into Goodreads. To me this book was not Rick’s best work but I still enjoyed it regardless. I love Rick’s stories and imagination and to be honest I don’t know much about Norse Mythology so it would be nice to learn more about it as well as finishing this action-packed trilogy.
Series: The Chronicles of Narnia
Author: C.S. Lewis
Status: Currently Re-reading
Last Book I Read: The Magician’s Nephew (Book 1)
No. of Books: 7
I have had the entire book series standing on my book-shelf for I don’t know how long! I read up to “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe” but haven’t read any of the following novels. During December I like to read smaller books just to amp up the numbers on my Goodreads reading challenge so I decided to pick up the Magician’s Nephew in the hopes of a quick read. That book is left unfinished at it was quite dull. I am hoping when I re-read the next book I won’t be so disappointed. I mainly wanted to read this series as I love this world so much, I watched the first 3 movies and adored them and I want to continue being in this world.
Series: Agatha Christie’s entire collection.
Author: Agatha Christie
Status: Need to Finish
Last Book I Read: The Murder on the Links (Book 2 in the Hercule Poirot Series)
No. of Books: To many to count
I have watched adaptations of Agatha Christie’s work since I was about 10. I have the whole box set of every episode of the Hercule Poirot TV series but I have only ever read 3 of her books. Two which were from her Hercule Poirot series and one which was a standalone story. I want to read Christie’s work because I love her imagination and genius. Having watched everything unfold on the screen I would love to now watch it unfold on the page. I also love the fact that there are so many books and I want to challenge myself to read all of them. I love a challenge.
So there you have it. Quite a lot of books to get through. The next book I will be reading starting Monday will be The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien.
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