kiwigirl reads. . . .

Just thought I would write a quick update, I have not been writing much here lately but that is nothing new. You will see however that I have been better in my reading this year so far, I am 31 books in to my Goodreads Reading Challenge of 50 books. I think this year I will be able to complete it. I am trying to make sure I put some time aside each week to do a bit of reading. I also recently took a course on Creative Writing though the Gotham Writers website, they have courses in New York but they also offer an extensive online catalog. I did the introductory course Creative Writing 101 which is just a six week course, very low pressure and basic for beginners or people just getting back into writing. I really enjoyed it, I was not really sure where to start or what to do so this was the perfect introduction for me. There was good information about lots of different writing styles and key ideas, there were weekly assignments but they were very small and I found them interesting...

Well, I am disappointed to report that I did not quite reach my goal for 2013. And while I am sad about this as I was really close to getting to 50 books, I am still pretty happy to get what I did done. My final count for the year was 45 books. Considering that most of these were read in November and December I think I did OK. I was really pushing it at the end, the last book I read on the 31st and I read it in one day because at that stage I knew I was not going to make it to 50 books so I at least wanted to make 45. So I have made the same challenge for this year. I am sticking to 50 books again, I think that a good number and I am starting earlier. I think I started in March last year so this gives me more time to get orgainsed and hopefully get a jump on things. I do have two books I have not finished from last year that I need to finish quickly as they do not count towards my 2014 goal.

This year I started off the year knowing that I was not going to be very good at keeping up with my blogging, it's really hard to keep the momentum running from the initial start up of the blog when it's all new and exciting. That being said I knew I wanted to keep it going and I hope that I can continue to blog about the books that I love when inspiration and time permits. Knowing how bad I had been at the reading challenges last year I decided to only do one this year and that one was just the Goodreads Reading Challenge where you set yourself a goal. I even made it a much more realistic goal than the 100 of 2012 which of course I did not even get anywhere near. I settled on 50, thinking that would be an easily achievable number, when I think about how many books I used to read in a year this is laughable but with the invention of TV on the internet I have to say my dedication to books is not what it used to be. At the start of this month I was startled to realize tha...

I joined a website called NetGalley (https://www.netgalley.com) last week.  Its where publishers list books that they have where they want people to review them. You can request a copy of the book from the publisher and if that request is approved you can download the book for free.  You then have to review it and let them know where your reviews are posted. It sounds like a good way to get copies of some books that I might not have considered otherwise.  There are a lot of different publishers listed, some of them really big names and other smaller ones as well.  Some of them have conditions to release the books such if you are a blogger then you have to have a certain amount of traffic.  That ruled out a lot for me as my blog is still pretty small, I just don't have the time to read and review as much as I would like to.  I still found a couple of books that looked interesting and did not have as stringent reviewer guidelines so I think it will be...

So I thought that I might start off by reviewing some of the books that I have read over the last few years. This way I can get started as soon as I have some time and don't have to wait until I have finished what I am reading now. If I am reading a series I will start with the first book in the series (even if it was a while ago) and perhaps make a note of the other ones I have read, this way if you are looking for something new to read you can see from the very beginning rather than half way through. I have been reading a lot of young adult stuff at the moment as I don't really have much time on my hands. These books are good because they are usually a bit shorter, also the content is usually pretty light which is nice when you just need a break. I live in Suwon, South Korea so it is sometimes a bit hard to get English books. There are places that sell them and you can buy online but I don't have as many as I do at home with access to the library. I did...