Hi Y'all!
Good morning and Good evening folks!
Well in this brand new post, I'd like to recapitulate my previous month, I think it's high time that I take up blogging more seriously, so introducing this brand new feature on my blog and at the end of every month, I'll try to wrap up my month with a Month in a Recap post!
So, beginning with my new year resolutions to wrapping up the month with a visit to the book fair, January was pretty cold at times but for me just like it's most of the time perky weather, I had a nice and charming month with lots of bookish drama, movie time and hang out and fun!
- My Goodreads Reading Challenge for this year
"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies."
----George R.R. Martin
Yeah, this year, I've decided to read 365 books, just like the saying goes an apple a day keeps the doctor away, similarly, a book a day, keeps me happy and determined. I don't know, if I can complete my challenge, but who cares about the outcome, and it seems like I'm doing pretty good with 3 books behind the schedule! How am I doing it? Well, I'm trying to eat up a 400 pages book a day, which till now I couldn't achieve it and most of the books that I read in January were less than 500 pages. Let's keep up the good faith and move on with my challenge! And for you guys, this is the current status of my bookshelf, which looks pretty messed up and I know that I need to organize the shelf real soon! Probably this year, I'm going to need another bookshelf to keep up with my reading challenge :-(
- Received another bag full of books from authors and publishers
"Books are a uniquely portable magic."
-----Stephen King
Last month, I received quite a few books from some well-know as well as some not well-know authors and publishing houses. It's not a new thing, but here are some of my favorite books that I received in the mail! And among this lot, I already finished reading Gale Martin's Grace Unexpected, but rest are still lying on my TBR shelf. Moreover, I also received some Parisian chocolates and a box of vintage postcards from Penguin courtesy TripFiction, along with a copy of Feasts of the Innocents by Evelio Rosero Diago. But these are not the only books that I received in January, there are almost 20 books that I received this month, and my blog space is not enough to put up their picture, sadly! :-(
- Hosting my first ever book giveaway on my blog
"The word "giveaway" can itself bring a thousand dollar smile"
So now it's time to increase my blog traffic and what better way than hosting a giveaway. Firstly, thanks to John Hennessy for hosting a giveaway for his new novella from the Murderous Little Darling Series, The Blood and the Raven
And it actually increased the flow of traffic on my blog by almost 5 percent and this giveaway saw 120 participants, moreover I also came to learn about the fact that if you ever want to increase your number of followers on your blog, then simply host a giveaway of any book.
The second giveaway was for author, Lucas R. Wright's new book, The Legend of Waterhole Branch
And similarly this giveaway too increased my blog traffic! So in the month of February, I'm hosting quite a number of Blog-tours and few giveaways. So watch this space for more updates!
- Blog Feature on The Book's Buzz
"To Blog= To Share,
To Connect,
To Create,
To Inspire. "
Alex from The Book's Buzz blog has featured me in her Featured Blogger. Alex is a really cool blogger and has a lot of spunk in what she writes. Thanks Alex for featuring me in your blog, wish I could some day return the favor for you and honestly it was really sweet of you. Visit Alex at The Book's Buzz
Read along my first ever blog interview here
- Blogging cannot be that easy
"Blogging isn't about publishing as mush as you can. It's about publishing as smart as you can."
----Jon Morrow
It's not an easy job to update your blog regularly with posts other than reviews and author interviews. To expect more readers or followers, you must update your blog with diverse posts that are highly believable. I'm trying hard to included more and more diverse posts about any random stuff related to book or maybe not bookish! So my next motive will be to write about diverse topics other than reviews.
- Girls Day Out!
“Friendship is born at that moment when one man says to another: "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . ."”
----C.S. Lewis
And as the saying goes, best friends are people you can do anything or nothing with and still have the best time. And these two are the definition of that saying!
As I said in my bio, that I'm in love with the weekends, I mean who wouldn't be in love with the weekends, especially people working their butt-off for 9-10hours from Monday to Friday.
One of my Jan weekend easily put me off the week-load of stress, when me and my besties planned to go out for lunch and drinks followed by watching a movie. And honestly speaking, a day out with your best friends can be the best stress-buster in the whole world. I call it a day when you can rewind and be crazy and have no conscience for the future. Hope we can do this quite often!
- New Friends Alert!
“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
----Mark Twain
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| Vani |
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| AJ |
Vani Kaushal- author, The Recession Groom. It's not easy to be friends with the authors, but with this down-to-earth, cool and sweet author, it is really easy to be friends with her. I hope with time, our friendship strengthens over books.
- Resolution broken!
"She went to get a dress, but saw some beautiful shoes, so she bought sunglasses."
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| Catwalk |
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| Round-eye glasses |
Hence, my very first resolution is already broken. People at least wait for a month or two to break their New Year resolutions, but I'm nothing less than Rebecca Bloomwood since just like her I feel that the world indeed gets better when I shop and I do it again and again to have this feeling.
- Picnic Time!
"This is a great collection of colleagues."
----Corbin Johnston
So let's pack up a lunch and hit the high road to somewhere new and charming on a brand new day when the weather is calling you to go out of your four walls.This is the picture of my office colleagues on the picnic day. We all went to a place away from the hum-drum of our big city and this beautiful place was located beside the river Ganges. We all had great fun, from dancing inside the bus on some latest foot-tapping songs to playing musical chair to having jokes on each other, it was a day well spent and this day definitely strengthened our bonds on being a co-worker to each other.
- January is never complete without a visit to the International Book Fair
"You can't buy happiness but you can buy books and that's kind of the same thing."
This year the trip to book fair wasn't that memorable,since some of the best stalls were missing from the Guild and I couldn't find a single book that I wanted to purchase in the available stalls. Moreover, this year the theme was Great Britain, but they made it up with a stall of British Council, that was nothing close to the theme. And I literally had to fight to purchase John Green's Paper Towns.Anyways, that was my whole month in a nutshell, apart from that, I must say, my month had equal shots of both happiness and laughter with a dash of sadness!
See you folks in my next blog post!
Happy Reading!
Whoa, you have quite the challenge set out in front of you! I hope you can manage it - I know I wouldn't be able to. And this year I have limited myself to only buying one book/box set a month (I know that is cheating a bit because in a box set there are a lot of books lol) so hopefully I will be receiving less if authors and publishers don't keep up the pace now. You do have a lot of books so I hope you get that new bookshelf!
ReplyDeleteThe international book fair looks awesome and I wish I was able to go somewhere like that. YAY for making new bookish friends and a lovely picnic and girls day out!
Yes it is! That's great, now I'm in a huge dilemma! I doubt that whether I can complete my challenge or not, but I can give my best I hope.
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