Hello everyone, and welcome to Literary Weaponry’s End of Year wrap up! I won’t bore you with platitudes of how quickly the year went by (you already know that it went faster than a speeding bullet) but instead let’s get straight to the books, shall we?

2018 brought us so many dazzling new releases, debut authors, and magnificent books read. It was a veritable smorgasbord of literary delights! It also was my most successful year in terms of total books read which was exciting for me as well. Let us take a look back at 2018 through blogging here at LW.

• These totals had me really excited when I saw them! I am up over 3000 pages and 8 books from last year. Honestly, I don’t know where I found the time but I’m glad I did.

• Is anyone surprised that Kingdom of Ash is my longest book read? No. Because it is a MONSTER. I think that if I had read a physical copy of it that the weight would have been intimidating. It is also 300 pages longer than my longest read last year which was also, unsurprisingly, from Maas.

• For me it seems to have been the Year of Maas. I’m not complaining, her books are popular for a reason. However, it does make me a little sad that Olmec Obituary and the rest of the books from that series aren’t more popular. They are really good stories with interesting characters, a core positive family, delightful ancient history themes, and even tackle some rare themes in a healthy way like mental illness.

Loves and Hates of 2018

• I think that we all stumbled across several books we fell in love with in 2018. Below are some my five star reads from the year!

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• On top of finding books we love, we also find ourselves with some real duds. Below are six books that felt short of the mark for me.

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Writing

Along with reading, I also continued to pursue my dream of becoming a traditionally published author this year. I did not accomplish that goal, or finish a manuscript, but I worked towards it and that is important.

I had a lot of writing false starts throughout the year which, while disappointing, lead me to my current working manuscript. There was always something just not quite right about the stories I was working on but my current sci-fi/fantasy project has me feeling excited. Hopefully more on that in the coming year.

Coming in 2019

Last year I set my goal at 52 books and crushed it by reading 64. This year, I’m going to start low and manageable. I started a new job this fall and have noticed since I started that my reading time has certainly lessened. So, if I hit my goal of 30 books read during the year I was most definitely raise that goal but for now I am feeling confident and ready.

Also during the year I hope to completely reformat my blog. I have been using the same header image etc for over a year now mostly because I was unsure of how to create my own images etc to change it. However, after Christmas my husband bought me a shiny new laptop with image editing software so I am going to give this a shot! I also love this new computer. It makes my hear go pitter patter along with the keys which have a great feel to them.

Goals for the Coming Year

I think that we all have goals or resolutions of some sort. 2018 was a very difficult year for me, especially the last quarter, and I am going into 2019 with the mindset those difficulties created. So, I will be keeping my goals/resolutions short and simple.

Be better.

That is it, nice and simple. No matter what I am doing, my goal is to try to be better at whatever it is than I was before. Reading a book? Be better about promptly writing the review. Playing with my daughter? Be better about being mentally present and positive. Making dinner? Be better in my food choices when feeding my family. I also want to be better about getting back to regularly posting here on the blog. I mentioned that the last portion of the year was mentally, emotionally, and physically taxing on me and my writing here and on my personal projects suffered for that. That cannot continue. I just want to be better.

That is it for me. I wish you all a wonderful coming year and may all your dreams come true.