Plans for 2020, Reading Challenges, and We Have a New Co-Blogger!

Hello everyone, and welcome to a brand new decade!

It’s kind of weird to say that!? Especially because I’m bad at remembering what year we’re in, at least at the beginning of each new year – a case in point, I had this post saved as “2019 Plans” for weeks. 🤦‍♀️

Either way, we at Wordy and Whimsical are starting this decade by sharing a couple of things about our future. For those who come strictly for the bookish content, we’ve shared all the challenges we’re participating in in 2020; while we’re also sharing some blogging related news with y’all today, including the fact that…

we have a new co-blogger!!

Introducing Sabrina, our new co-blogger!

Sabrina: A big hello to the readers of Wordy and Whimsical!  I’m so happy to be joining you here.  To quickly introduce myself, I am a 23 year old reader from Australia.  I used to run my own book blog, but I hit a mild rough patch in 2016 and suddenly gave it up.  I’m so glad I have been given the opportunity to get back in the game 🙂  If you want to know a bit more about me, you can always check the About page on the blog!

On a gloomy note,

Ruzi: Since I haven’t been on here in a while, HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE! I hope 2020 has been treating y’all marvelously. It has me. I’ve grown to love work, and even though it is pretty taxing – especially being away from home and managing things on my own for the most part – I’ve decided to go ahead with it and see where it takes me. I was in two minds for a long time about the job because, well, you could say impostor syndrome? I just wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it at all. It all felt like waaaay beyond my capabilities at a point but I’ve settled in well and find I can actually do it, alhamdulillah. Who would’ve THUNK.

Now to give you some idea of what I’m up to, I work at a refugee education centre, and when I say work takes a toll on me, I mean it reeeally, truly does, and I don’t find time for much else because of this. Which brings me to what I’m actually here to announce – I will be taking an indefinite hiatus from book-blogging. This honestly KILLS me and it definitely isn’t a decision I’m taking lightly at all, but if you’ve been around the blog lately you’d have noticed it’s just been Vera keeping things afloat and the only reason why I’ve been holding out on making this decision if because I felt SUPER bad about leaving her on her own here…and, well, I just hated admitting that I wouldn’t be able to balance it all anymore. For a while, anyway.

There was no point in putting it off any longer because I was basically only lying to myself here saying I’d have time for blogging when I haven’t even cracked a book open in so long, so I FINALLY womanned up and decided on breaking the news to y’all. So…yeah. Things are going to be even better in this corner of the blogosphere though, since we have a brand new co-blogger and all (WELCOME, SABRINA!!!) so stick around and don’t miss me too much. I’ll be back when I’m back – and that shall be soon, hopefully. So long! xx

2020 Challenges We’re Participating In

Sabrina: Aside from the Goodreads annual reading challenge, I’ve never participated in a yearly challenge.  Well, I don’t think I’ve ever participated in a reading challenge full-stop.  And, if I’m honest with you, I mostly cheated my way through the Goodreads challenge over the years too, lol.  This year however, thanks to some encouragement from Vera, I am doing two challenges!

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Vera: In the past few years, I opted out of doing any yearly challenges, because I’ve been known to overwhelm myself with them whenever I participated in more than one. This year, however, there were so many challenges I knew I really wanted to do, so – besides the annual goodreads challenge – I’m doing two others in 2020.

The Book Blog Discussion Challenge

Vera: The Book Blog Discussion challenge is hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction and Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight, and it’s a challenge I’ve wanted to participate in for a long time. The aim is to write more discussion posts, share them in a link up, and visit the other participant’s discussions, as well. I love reading and writing discussions, so really, this is a no brainer – I’m joining in and I’m excited.

I’m aiming for the second level, Creative Conversationalist, which means that I hope/plan to write 11-20 discussion posts during 2020. A discussion per month seems doable, and I can’t wait to see everyone else’s posts.

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The Start on Your Shelf-athon

Vera: You guys, I adore The Quiet Pond, and CW’s idea of tackling books we already own is just what I needed. In the past few years, I’ve gotten really bad at stopping myself from buying books – seriously, really freaking bad – and on top of that I’ve slowly but surely started to turn away from my physical copies. At this point, I own more than 100 physical books I have not read, and I’m going to be concentrating on these for the challenge, because I’m not as bad at getting to my digital library.

Technically, now would be the time to share my goals and my tbr, but uh, I’m not very sure about them!? 🙈 To keep this challenge relaxing, I don’t really want to set a number for myself – I know, I know, I’m doing this ‘challenge yourself’ thing all wrong, but I just want to have fun without stressing myself out! As for my tbr… I don’t want to list 100+ books here, but I have created a goodreads shelf for the books I want to tackle for this challenge.

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Sabrina: I am also taking part in the Start on Your Shelf-athon!  I have about 30 unread books on my physical bookshelves, which is admittedly a manageable number.  Still, I don’t want to set my goal that high in case it discourages me.  I can tell you that I am planning to finally finish the Grisha trilogy by Leigh Bardugo plus the Six of Crows books because I don’t want to miss out on the Netflix adaptation.  My tentative overall goal for this challenge is to read 10 books that are already on my shelf, but I do have a shelf on goodreads that includes all the books I own but haven’t read that I can pick from.
(Side note – isn’t Castor the sloth the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?)

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Out of Your Comfort Zone Reading Challenge

Sabrina: In addition to the above, I am also taking part in the Out of Your Comfort Zone 2020 Reading Challenge hosted by Caro @ Bookcheshirecat!  I am always looking to try new things and expand my reach when it comes to reading, so this is the perfect challenge for me!  I’ve got a pretty solid plan for this challenge too – I want to read five books from each of these six genres/categories: 

– Horror
– Non-Fiction
– Classics
– New Adult
– Romance
– Historical Fiction

If a book fits into more than one of these, I will still count it for both.  For example, I plan on reading Sense and Sensibility and I will be counting that for both the Classics category and the Romance genre.  As an added bonus, this book will also count for Start On Your Shelf-athon!  Once again, I haven’t got a full TBR set in stone, but I have a shelf on goodreads of books I am considering!

Let’s chat!

Are you excited for the new decade? Or indifferent about it? Are you participating in any reading challenges? Oh, and don’t forget to give a warm welcome to Sabrina! 💜

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