The Sunday Post: For the Month of January 2015

Hosted by Kimba
The Caffeinated Book Reviewer

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by the lovely Kimba, where you can share any news that has to do with your blog, re-cap the week or month, and/or show off what you received in your mailbox. All you have to do is link up your post on Sunday’s and hop around to the various other blogs participating and see what news they have to share. I've decided that I’ll be doing this once a month, just to keep you guys aware of all the things happening here.

Anyone can participate as long as you can...

• Enter your link on the post- Sundays beginning at 12:01 am (CST) (link will be open all week) 
• Link back to this post or this blog 
• Visit others who have linked up

For the Month of January 2015

In the month of January, I feel like I've gotten a bit more organized on the blog, did some cleaning up, and was able to set a pretty good pace for myself where my reading goals are concerned. During the first week, I averaged reading about 2 and a half books, managing to get two reviews written and posted, as well as making sure I had at least 4+ posts scheduled in advance at all times. I decided that I was going to start my new year off with getting things ready, a little more organized, and set-up to where it would be easy for me to meet the goals that I've set for myself. I posted them here, if you'd like to take a look at them. If you have any tips on helping to keep myself organized, as far as keeping track of my TBR and review piles or any other tips in general that might help out, link me to them or let me know in the comments below. I always welcome any advice from a fellow blogger. 

And the big wow for me, is that I actually managed to read 16 books this month. Well, actually, if you break it down I read a total of 9 actual books and 6 novellas. This ended up putting me 9 books ahead of schedule on my Goodreads Challenge for this year. So I'm pretty much all...

You can also find me on the new social media platform, Tsu as @suzinbooks. If you're on there too, just friend me and send me a request and I'll be happy to add you to my list!

A Month in Book Reviews

• Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley
• The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events) by Lemony Snicket

Blog Tours + Media Blitz

• Media Blitz featuring Shadow Fire by Kimber Leigh Wheaton
• Media Blitz featuring Take Them By Storm by Marie Landry 
• Media Blitz featuring #Hater (Hashtag #2) by Cambria Herbert
• Book Blitz & Interview: The Queen's Gift by T.R. Allardice
• Release Day Blitz + Giveaway: A Cold Legacy (The Madman's Daughter #3) by Megan Shepherd

Features on the Blog

• Wishful Wednesday: All Fall Down by Ally Carter
• Feature + Follow Friday: What Other Collections Do You Have Besides Books?
• Wishful Wednesday: I Was Here by Gayle Forman
• Feature + Follow Friday: Do You Have Any Collections Besides Books?
• Discussion: Once Upon A Series (Series I'll Be Finishing In 2015)
• Challenge: Take Control Of Your TBR Pile
• Challenge: Book Blogger Organization
• Feature + Follow Friday: Do You Own Any Doubles?
• Discussion: Blogging Problems 101: Getting Organized & Staying That Way
• Personal: Where I Get My Inspiration For My Custom Made Jewelry
• Book Gossip for the Soul: January Book Haul 2015
• Feature + Follow: Where Else Do You Post Your Reviews?

Around the Blogosphere

• Rachel @ Parajunkee's View has been hosting a Book Blogger Challenge, where each day she has been sharing some amazing tutorials and blogging tips&tricks to help keep you organized. It's definitely worth checking out.
• Brittany @ The Book Addicts Guide is hosting an awesome Book Blogger Organization Challenge that will be running from January to June. It's goal is to help you get a little more organized and focused on your blog.
• Alright guys, the Take Control of Your TBR Challenge hosted by the lovely Kimba @ Caffienated Book Review is back and rearing to get started in March! If you want to take part in it, just click on the link above and sign up!

Book Blogger Organization Challenge

Book Blogger Organization Challenge
Hosted By The Book Addict's Guide

When I was thinking about what challenges I wanted to participate in this year that would help with my reading goals, I was also hoping that I would find one that would also help out with my blogging organization as well. Luckily, Brittany @ The Book Addict's Guide has come up with a pretty good one called the Blogger Organization Challenge. Naturally I was ecstatic when I found it and have finally decided that I'm definitely going to accept the challenge in hopes that it will help me to stay on task with my blogging this year, help out with organizing the blog somehow, and making it look it a little better and organized. 

This challenge is going to run from January until June of this year and will be covering a lot of things to help you get your blog, content, and other things organized in a way that you'll feel like you're accomplishing your goals and staying on task.  I don't know about you, but for me sometimes I feel like blogging can get a bit stressful and overwhelming, when you have all of these ARC's/eGalley's for review, blog tours that you're a part of, and trying to figure out what kind of new content you want to introduce to the blog other than your normal content that you usually post. This year I don't want to feel like something I enjoy is becoming a chore for me, because then it takes all of the fun out of it. So, I figured that this would be a perfect challenge to help me out in that respect. 

Each month there will be a small list of different tasks and topics that we'll be focused on, if you'd like to get a feel for what they are, you can go ahead and check them out below and then decide for yourself if you want to be a part of this challenge. It's just a basic general outline of some of the things that will be focused on each month, you can do as many or as little of them as you feel you have the time for and work at your own pace. :)

JANUARY: Reading challenges & resolutions
Picking challenges, making resolutions, scheduling, forming plans, picking reading/blogging buddies,
FEBRUARY: Blog maintenance
Updating old reviews, pages, layouts, features/memes, contact info
Clean up images, broken links
SEOs
MARCH: Social Media + Review Outlets
Update social media accounts: bios, who you follow, delete old accounts you won’t use, resolve to use some accounts more
Organize Goodreads shelves: duplicate copies, version of books, creating shelves, removing shelves
Cross-posting
APRIL: Graphics, HTML, CSS, Plug-ins
Update graphics for posts/memes/events, update button, update header
Learn Photoshop/Gimp/PicMonkey
Brush up or try to learn simple HTML and CSS (for layouts, fonts, etc). Take this month to delve into the scary world of coding! (Or at least teach yourself one new thing!)
MAY: Book clean-up + spring cleaning!
Culling shelves, giveaways, donations, giving back borrowed books
Reading books you were given as gifts, ARC catch up
Rearranging shelves, updating Goodreads again, giving back borrowed books
More cross-posting & cleaning up GR shelves
JUNE: Freebie
Recapping what you’ve organized, focus on biggest area of need, review TBR list...

January = Reading Challenges + Resolutions

So far, I feel like I've been pretty productive and I'm feeling accomplished in the things that I've wanted to work on. If you want to know more about my resolutions for the new year as far as my reading and blogging goals are, then click here. In terms of my reading goals, I've managed to read six books (well, one of was a novella that was part of one of my series I plan to finish this year), but I'm still going to go ahead and count it anyway. And, as far as getting all of the challenges that I plan to participate in this year all set up and ready to go, I think I've pretty much figured out what they're going to be and why I've chosen them. 

I've challenged myself to finish at least 5+ series this year and I've been following along each day with Rachel @ Parajunkee's View 31 Day Blogging Challenge, where you're challenging yourself to be a better blogger and it's actually been really beneficial and eye-opening as far as some things go. She has a lot of great advice to offer and if you're looking for something that will help you out in pretty much all area's of essentially being a better blogger, then you should definitely check this out. 

ANNA & THE FRENCH KISS: DISCUSSION ANSWERS FOR CHAPTERS 17-31, GIVEAWAY, & CHALLENGE!!!

Have you guys been having a fabulous time reading along with us in Anna and the French Kiss these last two weeks?!

Molli and I have had an absolutely BLAST co-hosting this fantastic event for you guys! She's done a truly terrific job of picking up my slack for this second week, because I've had a few personal things come up that needed my attention, so I've been running a bit behind. I've been having such a super terffic time with reading ANNA for the first time and getting to know you guys and seeing all of your different perspectives on the book.

The more I get into this book, the more that I absolutely DON'T want to put it down ever! I want to read it and re-read it and read it again and then re-read it again, because everything is so dang adorable about it. I love talking about this book and sharing my thoughts and opinions with you guys, and I hope that you do too. So, take a look below at my answers for Chapters 17-31, and then link us up to yours!

Discussion Answers for
Chapters 17-31

Don't forget to check out the newest challenge!

All you have to do to participate in this challenge, is create a post telling us about an experience that you had in high school (or college) where you could find yourself relating to Anna, then share the link with us in the linky below. Doing this will earn you an extra entry into the supa-SEKRET-giveaway for a copy of Ilsa.

Super-SEKRET-Giveaway ISLA AND THE HAPPILY EVER AFTER By Stephaie Perkins
a Rafflecopter giveaway


Hosted By: Molli @ Once Upon A Prolouge & Suz @ A Soul Unsung
REMEMBER

Doing all of the fun challenges and link-up's could possibly earn you extra entry(ies) into the giveaways.

ANNA & THE FRENCH KISS READ-A-LONG: DISCUSSION ANSWERS, GIVEAWAY, & MORE!

Have you guys been having a fabulous time reading along with us in Anna and the French Kiss these last two weeks?!

Molli and I have had an absolutely BLAST co-hosting this fantastic event for you guys! She's done a truly terrific job of picking up my slack for this second week, because I've had a few personal things come up that needed my attention, so I've been running a bit behind. However, I am back in action today, and ready to take on all of my assignments for the rest of this week and for the third and final week in our read-a-long. I'm kind of sad to see it coming to an end, because I've been having such a super teriffic time with reading ANNA for the first time and getting to know you guys and seeing all of your different perspectives on the book.

By now we've gotten through the first and second set of discussion questions and tomorrow, the answers for the second set will be going up on both mine and Molli's blog, along with the linky for you to link up the answers to yours. (Important: Remember that every time you link up ANYTHING it is another entry into the giveaway you don't want to miss out on!) Since I'm playing catch up, I'm going to ahead and post the vlog that I made answers the first set of discussion questions for Chapter's 1-16, and tomorrow I will post the second vlog with the answers to the discussion questions for Chapter's 17-31.

Discussion Answers for
Chapters 1-16

Today, we have a brand new challenge for you! We want you to tell us about an experience YOU had in high school (or college) where you can relate to Anna!

All you have to do to participate in this challenge, is create a post telling us about an experience that you had in high school (or college) where you could find yourself relating to Anna, then share the link with us in the linky below. Doing this will earn you an extra entry into the supa-SEKRET-giveaway for a copy of Ilsa.

Super-SEKRET-Giveaway ISLA AND THE HAPPILY EVER AFTER By Stephaie Perkins
a Rafflecopter giveaway


Hosted By: Molli @ Once Upon A Prolouge & Suz @ A Soul Unsung
REMEMBER

Doing all of the fun challenges and link-up's could possibly earn you extra entry(ies) into the giveaways.