Blog Post One: Happy New Year ヾ(〃^∇^)ﾉ

I have absolutely no idea why I haven’t done a blog post about what’s going on in my life so far. I guess the one big thing that may be occurring is clearly the big milestone of living in the midst of a pandemic for about 2 years. Oh, well that, and a new year!

I love starting a New Year, regardless of whatever situations I was in. I think having a new, fresh 365 days ahead of me motivates me to go and strive for more things. It’d been such a long past few days as I was anticipating the year and I’ll admit that I hoped that the situation would get better and I would finally be able to rip off those tiresome masks that are mandatory to wear at school, but I don’t think the virus would’ve agreed with me. It seemed to be having too much fun infecting and causing much more trouble than necessary.

Having a NY is even more exciting when you’re a bookworm though. There are so many things that I want to do, both literary and non-literary related and even just thinking about it makes me absolutely ecstatic to get started:

These are all the bookish things:

1. Setting a Reading Goal for the Beginning to the End of 2022:
   Setting a reading goal is just one of the many things that I’m excited to do. There are so many books coming out in this year, along with many books that are on my To-Be-Read list that I may have been putting off until this very moment. I absolutely love to write lists about what books I love and which I must read this month and this year. I can foresee many library visits throughout, plus it would be absolutely awesome if I could reach the goal and maybe even surpass it.
2. Read Some of my Friends’ Favorite Books:
   I find this to be such an amazing way to connect with my friends (and if some of your friends read alot too, you should try this out). I’ve already read some of my friends’ favorites and what I’ve found while doing so is that these books expanded the horizons of my reading-genre capacity and it really allowed more book groups to fit inside the “books i loved” section of my brain and helped to get to know friends better. You can really get a feel of which books/characters your friends base their personalities and likings on, or just get a sense of what they value in a specific book and find patterns in different books to see if they’d like them.
3. Highlight Favorite Parts and Quotes in Books:
   This goes along with point no. 2. Even though I’ve never done this before, I want to try and let some of my friends borrow books that I like, along with annotations, notes, and highlights of what I enjoyed the most in the book. It also helps to understand people better if they do it with you too.
4. Buy More Books:
   Okay, so even though I like to get my hopes up for possibilities like this, it probably won’t happen to me anytime soon. The reason is because even though I have a myriad of must-buy books to add on my shelf (which currently consists of around, 30 or so books), I don’t really want to blow money blindly to get books that, perhaps after reading once, I might not touch again. I always try to make sure that the book can be found online or in the library, and even if not, I try to read a very small synopsis that doesn’t have the plot embedded to make sure if I would really want it. But still, it’s nice to cling on to a small shard of hope that maybe I will be surprised with some amount of books.
5. Read Books with Different Cultural Settings:
   This year, I really want to try to expand my horizons about how different countries are in books. The reason for this is that I have no money for plane tickets to New Zealand or South Korea or someplace like that, and I guess I want to get my information from books before I decide firmly on whether or not I should visit a specific country when I’m older. Also, reading books with various settings (like ones that aren’t necessarily in the US) would probably intrigue me to a point where I actually do want to know more about and be more rounded and less parochial.
6. Starting a Book Note:
   The main reason I want to do this is because I really want to write a list of all the books I’ve read “in the past year” or “this year” or whatever relates to a list of books I read in 2022. I tried this a couple years ago (long before I started reviewing books), but I wasn’t able to keep up and maintain that list, and eventually I lost it to the trash bin. This time, I want to try and maintain it online, on my trusty notepad widget I have as a google shortcut, and make sure I note down all of the books I’ve read, along with their authors. Also, maybe adding something like no. 6.5, I really think I want to review more of the books I read in the year, so I can have a sense of achievement as I look back on my website at the end of this year to see how far I’ve come. 
7. Reading in Different Book Formats:
   Technology has truly affected how we read, even in 2020-2021, where most libraries were closed, and I had to make do with finding sites (not pirated, I repeat, not pirated) sites where I could download books as PDFs and read on my computer and Fire Kindle. But anyways, there are physical books – paperback, hardcover, chapter leaflets and packages – and online formats – such as audiobooks, PDFs, kindles, nooks –
   I’m a firm believer that some formats are better than others. Obviously I would agree 100% with anyone who has paperback or hardcover as their no.1. However, if I was in a car or a plane ride I’d use audiobooks, and even though the bright light and internet privileges distract me from actually getting it done, there won’t be much of a good WiFi connection to make me get sidetracked to scrolling aimlessly on Pinterest, or just look at new YT videos that came out from my favorite channel. Still, physical books would be good, since I love the smell and also the feel of them (weird, I know)

Anyways, those bullet points are a few of the many things I have in store for this year. Let’s meet in the comments to discuss what you’ll be doing for the new year! Thanks for reading and hope you have an amazing beginning with many books in store <3