My year in review

My reading in 2022 and bookish goals for 2023

After a not great reading year in 2021, I was back on track in 2022. I made my Read the World Project my focus and I completed it before my self-imposed deadline! That’s novels/poetry/non-fiction/short stories from 205 different countries around the world. I’m so happy that I broadened my reading horizons that way and I really do feel a sense of accomplishment over it.

My goal in 2022 was to read 52 books and review half of them and I smashed that target – I read 79 books and reviewed 42 of them. I always want to have an equal split between male and female authors if possible, with the understanding that it’ll probably be leaning towards women which it was in 2022. “Both” got a decent sized chunk last year as I read The Old Guard comics and reread/caught up on the Saga comics series and both of them are written by both men and women writers and artists. When it comes to what genres I read in 2022, Sci-fi got a bit of a boost thanks to the Saga comics and because I reread the Hunger Games trilogy and then the prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Horror definitely made an appearance thanks to the 12 Challenge as I’m normally a complete wuss. I started 2022 with 88 books on my physical/digital TBR and I ended it with 75 books on my TBR! That number has been the goal for my owned TBR for the past two years and I’ve finally done it. (more…)

My film year in review and my film-related goals of 2023

In 2022 I was very chill about film-watching and didn’t make myself watch things like the awards buzzy films just to keep in the loop (which was one of my goals last year!). I do think my whole procrastinating/mindless scrolling through social media did possibly have an affect on my film-watching like it did my reading at times though. I did also re/watch Doctor Who from Christopher Eccleston to the end of Jodie Whitaker’s era (I kind of stopped watching when the Ponds left and didn’t start again until the middle of Thirteen’s run) which took me six months so watching a couple of episodes of Doctor Who took the same time as watching a film might’ve.

In total I watched 177 different films, about 40 of which were rewatches. I said 2021 was the year I’d watched the least films but turns out 2022 now beats that which I’m OK with as I still watched a lot of good films, including these which made my Favourite Films of 2022 list. I still do enjoy watching films, whether they’re the latest blockbuster or something more obscure that I’m only watching because there’s an actor I like in it, but it’s nice not to put any pressure on myself to hit an arbitrary number or anything. I did see 45 different films at the cinema which was more than I expected because unlike previous years I didn’t really spend many Saturday’s at the cinema watching two or more films in a row like I used to. Again, I think this is a sign of me being choosier over what I want to watch rather than going to the cinema just for the sake of it. I did have an unlimited card which meant for about £16 a month I could see as many films as I like but I don’t think I was using it to its full potential as I used to so I cancelled it. I did get a similar card for a cinema that’s a lot closer to me (as in less than a 10-minute walk away) so I can go see a film at like 6pm after work and walk there rather than having a 30 minutes’ drive to the cinema.

I completed my 52 Films by Women challenge for both directors and writers again this year which I’m always happy about. Though it wasn’t intentionally I did like how only one of the films directed by women was a rewatch – which was of course, Mamma Mia! (more…)

My Reading in 2021 and my Bookish Goals for 2022

It’s the second week of January so it’s about time I took a look back at what I read in 2021, if I met my reading goals (spoiler alert I did not) and what my bookish plans for 2022 are. Like I said when it came to my film watching last year, I think 2021 is when things started to take a bit of a toll and I was very slumpy when it came to my reading especially. I know I didn’t make the time for reading like I have done previously and instead would scroll through social media or watch TV shows.

My 2021 reading goal was to read 52 books but I missed that by a fair bit and ended up reading 42 books of which four were rereads. 42 books isn’t terrible but for me it’s the least amount of books I’ve read in a year since when I was at university where reading for fun took a back seat. I reviewed 36 of them which is more than half so I am happy about that. Side note: on Goodreads and The StoryGraph (which I’m still learning to use and am happy to friend/follow people on there) it says I read 41 books as Why the Sky Moved Away from the Earth by Christine Gnimagnon Adjahi isn’t in their database and I’ve been having some trouble adding it so that’s why my numbers don’t tally up there. As I haven’t really read a lot and not a lot really stuck out to me I haven’t actually done a top ten books of the year but I’ve got a full list of what I’ve read with links to all my reviews if you’d like to see my thoughts on them.

I didn’t have any challenges or big goals in 2021 besides my Read the World Project and trying to get my TBR down. At the start of 2022 I had 41 countries left for my Read the World Project meaning I read 29 books/countries in 2021 and that made up more than half of my reading last year. I ended 2021 with 88 books on my physical/digital TBR which is the exact number I started 2021 with! I didn’t know that until I was looking at last year’s goals and was very surprise by that stat. So while I’ve read books, acquired books, and donated a whole lot of books when I came to terms with the fact I was never going to read them, my actual TBR number hasn’t changed. Quite impressive really.

I like to read an equal amount of books from male and female writers with the presumption that if it’s going to skew one way it’d be towards women and that’s what happened in 2021. I didn’t have a target in mind for how many authors of colour I wanted to read but it ended up being an exact 50/50 split between white authors and authors of colour. Honestly, I probably couldn’t have done that if I’d have tried. The only authors I read multiple books from were Garth Nix and Leigh Bardugo so if we’re going with authors in general, not by their books, I read more different authors of colour in 2021 than different white authors. I hope that makes sense.

Now for my 2022 reading goals.

The main thing is finishing my Read the World Project. I’ve already said I’m extending my deadline until I turn 31 which is at the end of September so that’s pretty much nine months to read 40 (I’ve already read one book this year) books before then. Honestly, I do think it’s doable. I just need to put time aside for reading. A lot of the books I’ve got for this project are on the shorter side at 300 pages or less so I know if I didn’t get distracted, I could probably read a couple of them a week. There are 14 countries I still need to find a book for but I think that’s doable and, in the meantime, I have 26 books/countries to keep me busy.

I will set my Goodreads goal at 52 yet again (maybe this time I’ll hit it) and will aim to review half of all I read. As I review all my Read the World books that should definitely be done. I’ll again suggest getting my TBR down to 75 but we’ll see how that goes. Last year I started getting the book-only Illumicrate subscription from about February I think and to be honest I’ve skipped one month and only read one of the books I’ve been sent. So, in the 10 books I’ve acquired through that, I’ve still got 9 on my TBR. While it’s nice to get a brand-new hardback book that often has a fair bit of hype around it I don’t see the point of me continuing to pay for the subscription if I don’t read the books promptly, especially when they are not my priority at the minute. So this is a sort of note to myself to not have my subscription automatically renewed in a few months and to maybe try and read at least a couple of the books I’ve received via Illumicrate before 2022 is over.

The final challenge I’ve got is the 12 Challenge that was on Instagram/Twitter – 12 months to read 12 books recommended by 12 friends. These are the books that was recommended to me for this challenge:
– A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos
– A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan
– Slade House by David Mitchell
– Himself by Jess Kidd
– Nina is Not Okay by Shapi Khorsandi
– John Dies at the End by David Wong
– The Cabinent by Un Su Kim
– They Both Die in the End by Adam Silvera
– Darius the Great is Not OK by Adib Khorram
– City of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai by Paul French
– She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
– Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
Seven of them are available via my library and two of them I already own so I may have to buy copies of three of them in the year at some point.

Those are my reading goals for 2022. Generally, they’re pretty simple ones and it’s the 12 Challenge that will be pushing me out of my comfort zone a bit. I want to focus up on my reading and try and spend at least 30 minutes a day reading – something that is pretty easy to do if I just put my phone down. Do you have any reading goals for 2022? I’d love to hear them.

My film year in review and my film-related goals of 2022

In some ways I think the events of 2020 caught up with me in 2021 and that’s when it started to have an effect on my reading and film-watching. I watched 203 different films (the lowest amount in a year since I’ve started properly recording this sort of thing in 2016) and of them 61 were rewatches. With all the various lockdowns and restrictions, I still managed to see 28 films in the cinema which is more than I thought I did to be honest. I put together my top ten films of 2021 last week which I did find it kind of hard to put together as once again I felt as I wasn’t watching a lot of new stuff even though there’s been a lot of critically-acclaimed films released on various streaming platforms this past year.

I completed my 52 Films by Women challenge for both directors and screenwriters again which I am happy about. Especially as I didn’t watch the 52nd film directed by a woman until the last few days of December. I was definitely cutting it fine in 2021. Normally I’ve hit 52 at least by December.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t watch any more of the films in my Clint Eastwood and Alfred Hitchcock boxsets like I said I’d like to, and I definitely didn’t watch any Studio Ghibli films. So that sort of goal was a massive failure.

When it came to TV watching though I surprised myself! I’ve shared all the shows I watched in 2021 but I finally finished watching all the Marvel Netflix shows like I said I wanted to for the past two or three years which feels like an achievement to be honest. I watched all the Disney+ MCU shows like I thought I would, and out of the other shows I mentioned wanting to try I did actually watch and love Ted Lasso so that’s something.

Now it’s time for the fun actor and director stats I get from having a Letterboxd pro account.

My most watched actors of 2021 were:

Last year I rewatched (and reviewed) all the X-Men films and all the Spider-Man films, as well as rewatching my comfort-franchise, Fast and Furious, I revisited The Matrix films for the first time in over a decade, and did my yearly rewatching of The Lord of the Rings so that pretty much explains every actor who makes the top 20. The two major outliers are John Cho (I watched the Harold & Kumar films for the first time in 2021 so that counts for half of his films) and Frank Grillo who I generally like and will watch just about everything he’s in.

I like the fact that a quarter of my most watched actors of 2021 are women, though it’d be nice if there were more, and almost half of my most watched actors aren’t white which is mostly thanks to the Fast and Furious franchise.

My most watched directors reflect the franchises I’ve been (re)watching. Justin Lin (Fast and Furious) Lana and Lilly Wachowski (The Matrix), Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings) Sam Raimi, Jon Watts and Marc Webb (Spider-Man), McG (Charlie’s Angels), and James Mangold, Matthew Vaughn and Bryan Singer (X-Men).

Really happy and somewhat surprised that there’s five female directors here as while I have watched 52 films directed by women each year for six years now, rarely do I watch more than one film by the same female director in a year. This can be down to that they don’t yet have a big filmography to go through or their films aren’t easily available, or that they do have a fair few directing credits but I’ve just watched them in previous years and haven’t rewatched them.

I had a look and the last time I had more than one woman director make this end of year list was in 2018 and then it was only two of them. In fact, this is the year with the most women directors on my most watched list since I’ve been recording this stuff!

So, my film-related goals of 2022. While it is nice to have an opinion on the films/performances that are up for awards or are getting awards-buzz, I don’t want to push myself to watch things just because they have a level of prestige. That’s not to say I won’t watch any films that get nominated but I don’t want to stress myself out trying to cram in a load of films that are often serious or about tough subject matters in the first three months of the year.

I will once again say I’d like to make some headway with my Clint Eastwood and Alfred Hitchcock boxsets but who knows if that’ll happen. I will be aiming to watch at least 52 films written/directed by women again in 2022 though. I do like that challenge as it gets me watching films I might have put off as not a priority or I find things that I hadn’t heard of before.

Do you have any film or TV-related goals for 2022? If you have a Letterboxd account do let me know so I can follow you.

2021: The Year of TV

For many, many years I’ve been saying I’m terrible at watching TV shows and generally speaking I am but that did change in 2021. I still haven’t watched many of the “big” shows like Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Succession, The Boys, Outlander – you name it, I probably haven’t seen it.

But in 2021 I watched more TV shows in their entirety than I have ever before in one year. In fact, I watched 31 different shows. Only two of them were continuations of shows I’d starter before 2021; Cobra Kai and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and one was a rewatch; W.I.T.C.H.

Here’s a list of all the shows I watched last year. they’re sort of in order of when I watched them though if there’s been a gap between when I watched various seasons of the same show, I’ve included it on the original listing. Like Cobra Kai I watched on 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2021 – started and ended the year with my new favourite disaster man Johnny Lawrence.

– Cobra Kai season 3 and 4
– Derry Girls series 1 and 2
– Brooklyn Nine-Nine season 6 and 7
– Superstore season 1-6
– WandaVision
– The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
– Loki
– 9-1-1 season 1-4
– 9-1-1: Lone Star season 1-2
– Shadow and Bone S1
– Batwoman season 1-2 and first half of S3
– The Gifted S1-2
– Ted Lasso S1-2
– Mare of Easttown
– W.I.T.C.H. S1-2
– Chernobyl
– Turner & Hooch
– Big Shot
– What If…?
– Only Murders in the Building
– Doctor Who: Flux
– The Equalizer S1
– Jessica Jones S2-3
– Luke Cage S2
– Iron Fist S2
– Daredevil S3
– The Punisher S2
– Hawkeye
– Superman & Lois S1
– The Wheel of Time
– Alex Rider S1-2

My favourites that I watched this year were Chernobyl, Superstore, 9-1-1, Ted Lasso, Superman & Lois and, of course, Hawkeye (which I reviewed over on JumpCut Online). But really, I enjoyed pretty much everything I watched this year. I will say I found the first series of Alex Rider a bit of a slog but the second series was great and more than made up for the first.

I also finally caught up with and watched all the seasons of the various Marvel Netflix shows I’d just left by the wayside. That was something I’d definitely been talking about catching up on for years and I’m pleased I’ve finally done it. It was nice to revisit those characters and stories again after so long.

I think in 2021 the pandemic sort of caught up with and it was in 2021 when I found it difficult to concentrate on things like a two+ hour film or a 400-page book. So that’s why I turned to TV. A lot of the stuff I watched is around the 45-minute mark per episode if not shorter and I just found it easier to watch a few episodes in an evening than have to focus on a film. Plus, as I was working from home for the vast majority of the year, I would also watch an episode (or two depending when I got up) before work or during my lunch hour. So that definitely helped me watch more TV than normal.

As for what my TV-watching will be like in 2022? Well, I do want to make reading more of a priority this year so naturally films and TV may take a bit of a backseat which I’m fine with. I want to carry on with the shows that I’ve started, when the next series starts here in the UK so that’s Batwoman, Ted Lasso, 9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Lone Star, Derry Girls, The Equalizer and whatever else might have a new series air at some point in 2022. I’m still kind of annoyed that the final season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine still hasn’t been aired here yet but at least that’s something to look forward to.

I’m not sure how many new-to-me shows I’ll end up watching in 2022. The thing is with the likes of Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime and the bog-standard TV channels, there’s so many shows out there that it is overwhelming. One new show I do have my eye on (and will maybe renew my subscription to Apple TV+ for it) is The Afterparty, that looks like fun and it has a lot of people I like in it.

Looking at what I’ve watched and enjoyed this year, if there’s any shows you’d recommend whether they’re new for 2022 or not, please do let me know. I won’t make any promises that I’ll watch them – especially if they’re in their fifth season with 20ish episodes a season (that’s super intimidating) – but as there’s so much out there it’s hard to know what’s good or not or where to begin. And who knows, I might like a show to fill my lunchbreaks again.

My Film Year in Review and my Film-related Goals of 2021

What with 2020 being what it was, my film-watching didn’t really take a hit. I watched 265 different films and of those films, 93 of them were rewatches. I think with everything going on I definitely enjoyed revisiting old favourites, where I knew the story so didn’t necessarily have to think too much. I did manage to see 16 films in the cinema in 2020, pre-pandemic and in between the various lockdowns the UK has had. I shared my Ten Favourite Films last month, in some ways it was hard to pick favourites as I felt I hadn’t seen many new UK releases what with everything else going on, but I really would recommend all the films I mentioned in that post.

I completed the 52 Films by Women challenge for both directors and screenwriters again, which was the fifth year in a row. I watched 57 films directed by women and 70 that were written by women.

I did make some headway with my unwatched DVDs and Blu-Rays! That’s thanks to the A-Z in April Challenge where I posted a film review for every letter of the alphabet. Now I have 63 unwatched physical films so that’s good. I did watch some of my Clint Eastwood and Alfred Hitchcock boxsets but I still have over 10 films in each boxset.

I didn’t spend much time watching TV series in 2020 (what a surprise!) but I did finally finish watching Shadowhunters and I was really happy with how they managed to wrap everything up. I also watched series two of The Alienist and His Dark Materials, Good Omens and Down to Earth with Zac Efron, which I all really enjoyed in different ways. My newest TV obsession is Cobra Kai, I watched the first two seasons in one weekend in September and fell in love with it, then I watched season three in two days at the beginning of the month and even got my mum into it. I love that show a whole lot.

Now it’s time for the fun actor and director stats I get from having a Letterboxd pro account.

My most watched actors of 2020 were:

I watched the Underworld series, the Karate Kid series and the Descendants trilogy for the first time, and I rewatched the entire MCU in April/May (and wrote about how that helped me grieve for my dad). I also rewatched The Chronicles of Narnia, the original Ocean’s trilogy, the original Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy (that was back in January and wow does that seem like a long time ago!), the Bourne series, the Jurassic Park/World films and The Lord of the Rings – so that explains most of the actors who make an appearance. I also made an effort to watch more of Anton Yelchin, Chadwick Boseman, Kristen Stewart and Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s filmographies.

My most watched directors definitely reflect the fact I watched a lot of different series. Kenny Ortega (Descendants), Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s), the Russo brothers and James Gunn (MCU), Paul Greengrass (Bourne), Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean), Steven Spielberg and Colin Trevorrow (Jurassic Park/World), John Avildsen (Karate Kid) and Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings). It’s disappointing but not surprising that it’s just male directors as I didn’t watch many films made by the same woman.

So what are my film-related goals of 2021? I’ll continue to be a mood watcher, there’s loads of films of different genres in my Netflix and Amazon Prime queue to keep me busy as well as the physical films I have. I want to watch 52 Films by Women, both directors and screenwriters, again. I was considering to try and watch one Alfred Hitchcock film, one Clint Eastwood film, and one Studio Ghibli film (they’re all on Netflix and I’ve only ever seen Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle) a week but we’re a week into 2021 and I haven’t watched any of them yet. But I do like that idea and hopefully going forward I’ll watch at least one of those types of films each week.

With regards to TV, I suppose what I’d really like to do in 2021 is finish all the Marvel Netflix series. I’ve watched up to and including season one of The Punisher so that means I have six series left to watch. Speaking of Marvel, I’m really looking forward to all the MCU shows coming to Disney+ this year, with WandVision starting next week. I do think I’m generally better at watching shows when they’re released weekly so I should be able to keep up with them. Otherwise, there are a load of series I’d like to try like The Madalorian, Dickinson and Ted Lasso but I won’t hold out too much hope with that one – I know what I’m like with TV.

Do you have any film or TV-related goals for 2021? If you have a Letterboxd account do let me know so I can follow you.

My reading in 2020 and my bookish goals for 2021

It’s the start of a new year so it’s time to look back at what I read last year, if I met my goals and what my reading aspirations are for 2021. My reading in 2020 started off well and even though for me personally all the terrible things happened in March (my gran, dad and uncle all died in the space of three weeks – none of them covid-related) I actually kept my reading up and had a steady amount of reviews. I think films and books definitely were a big distraction for me in the Spring. It’s towards the end of the year, November/December, time that I got into a big reading slump and just didn’t really want to read anything and struggled with the books I did pick up.

Still, my aim in 2020 was to read 60 books and I read 59. I’m a bit bummed that I just missed that total, especially as I had just over 100 pages of a book to read. That book is The Good Girls by Sara Shepard which I was enjoying but then a character has decided to hide a body when really they probably should’ve called the police (or even just left it there) and it all just seems like it’s just too unbelievable now. Anyway! 59 books is the least amount of books I’ve read in a year for a while now but it’s not surprising when I didn’t really touch a book over the past few months. I reviewed 42 of them while my aim was 30 so that’s good. I’ve got a full list of what I read in 2020 and I’ve already shared my ten favourite books of the year.

Now onto my reading goals. I didn’t sign up for any challenges and instead kept it simple. I did put £1 in a jar for every book I read, but then the world shutdown so I wasn’t going anywhere or spending cash so that didn’t really happen after March. I continued with my Read the World Project and 36 of the books I read were for that, so over half which is good, but I definitely have some catching up to do if I want to meet my original aim of the challenge. I said I’d try again to get my TBR down to 50 books, but I really didn’t try that hard. I did have a big clear out and donated about 20 unread books from my shelves, but I’d also been acquiring a lot of books (mostly for the Read the World Project) so while I started the year with 85 books on my TBR, I’ve ended 2020 with 88 books on my TBR. I don’t think that’s too terrible!

I always try to keep an equal split of male/female authors – or if I do read more then have it be women and I succeeded in that with over 60% of the books I read being by women, and almost 12% were written by both men and women. I said I wanted to have at least 30% of the books I read to be by people of colour and I smashed that target! Over half of the books I read were people of colour and I think the Read the World Project definitely helped with that as I read more books by African and Caribbean authors in 2020.

Now for my 2021 reading goals.

With everything that happened last year, and still is happening this year, I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself. I will be continuing with my Read the World Project and making that a priority. The goal of this project was to read a book from every country in the world before I turned 30 – that happens at the end of September this year and I have 70 books/countries to read and only have 16 books/countries on my TBR. If I’m being honest, I think there’s no way I’m going to read 70 books between now and September and there’s the fact I still need to find/acquire books for over 50 countries still. I think my new goal will be to complete the Read the World Project while I’m still 30 so that does give me an extra 12 months and I hope that’s doable. If you have any suggestions for international authors/books please do let me know. I’m keeping track of all the countries I’ve read so far here.

I’m going to set my Goodreads goal at 52 books, and I’ll aim to review at least half of them. I continue to want to read diversely, and it’d be nice to get my TBR down but I think at the moment with my Read the World Project it’s not realistic to set my TBR goal as 50 books, so instead I’ll put it at 75 – we shall see what happens.

Those are my reading goals for 2021. Very nice and simple ones that will hopefully mean I’m not getting stressed by reading and I hope to get out of my reading slump soon. Do you have any reading goals for 2021? I’d love to hear them.

My Film Year in Review and my Film-Related Goals of 2020

In 2019 I watched a lot of films but not too many that I got overwhelmed with meeting a self-enforced target. In total I watched 242 different films, 251 films including rewatches. I saw 76 films at the cinema as well. I have a full list of all the films I watched here and I also put together a list of my Top Ten Favourite Films of 2019 last week for your reading pleasure – I’d recommend all of my favourites to anyone, no matter their taste in films.

With the film-related goals I set myself it was a bit of a mixed bag. One of the reasons I wanted to not put pressure on myself to watch films every day and hit a ridiculously high target, was so I could watch the many TV shows I’ve missed or got half way though and not feel guilty about it. In the end I didn’t watch many TV shows at all. In fact, I watched one and a half. I watched all of Stranger Things season three which I loved and binge-watched over a weekend. You can see what I thought on Twitter as I did some spoiler-free live-tweeting. I also started to rewatch Shadowhunters as the last series came out so thought it would be nice to rewatch it from the beginning and by the time I did that the new episodes would be out. It didn’t quite work like that because I’m someone who just stops watching TV shows even when I’m enjoying them. I got near to the end of series 2 so I only really have a season left to watch and half of it will be new to me. Maybe in 2020 I will finish my rewatch and live tweeting of one of my favourite shows.

I did complete the 52 Films by Women challenge once again. I watched 56 films directed by women (all of which happened to be first time watches) and I watched 71 films that were written by women. However, I didn’t watch very many of my unwatched DVD’s and Blu-rays, and in fact I bought more and now have over 80 unwatched films.

Now it’s time for the fun stats stuff. I have a Pro membership on Letterboxd which allows you to see all your film-viewing stats and I love it.

My most watched actors of 2019 were:

I rewatched and reviewed the Fast & Furious franchise (which I adore) so that’s why almost half the actors here are from at least one of those films. I made the effort to watch a lot of Brie Larson and Keira Knightley films so that’s why they’ve gotten a spot. I rewatched the sequel Star Wars trilogy, the Lord of the Rings, the Transformer trilogy and the John Wick trilogy so that explains people like Keanu Reeves, Andy Serkis and Hugo Weaving a couple of the other actors, but some people like Jim Broadbent and Joan Cusack were a surprise.

My most watched directors also show off the fact I watched a lot of Fast and Furious (Justin Lin), Star Wars (J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson) and Transformers films (Michael Bay). I like how Antoine Fuqua makes an appearance once again (he’s one of my favourite directors) and I tend to rewatch his films fairly often. It’s a shame there’s only one woman on this list. I watched four of Mira Nair’s films that I hadn’t seen before but while I watched over 50 films directed by women, I think she was the only female director I watched multiple films from.

So what are my film-related goals of 2020? I’m going to continue to watch what I want, when I want, and not feel like I have to watch a film every day when I’d rather be reading or discover a new TV show (that I’ll only watch half of before stopping even when I’m enjoying it). I definitely want to finish watching Shadowhunters and if I manage to get through a couple of other TV shows that I’ve been meaning to watch for ages in 2020 that’d be great. I think The Alienist returns this year and as that’s like the one show besides Stranger Things that I’ve watched in its entirety recently, I’m definitely looking forward to that.

I want to complete the 52 Films by Women challenge for both directors and screenwriters again. I have been doing (and completing) this challenge since 2016 so it’d be cool to make it a fifth year in a row.

I will once again say I want to get my unwatched DVD’s and Blu-rays down. As I said, I have over 80 of them to get through but I do have a plan to tackle this! It is going to be related to the A-Z in April Challenge but more will be revealed in the Spring. I not only have a Clint Eastwood boxset to get through, but an Alfred Hitchcock one as well now so maybe I’ll make some headway with those this year.

Do you have any film-related goals for 2020? How easy/difficult do you find it is to make time to sit down and watch a film?

My Reading in 2019 and my Bookish Goals for 2020

It’s the start of a new year which means it’s time to look back at the past one. Today I’m looking at what I read last year, if I met my goals and what my reading plans are for this year. In 2019 I read 72 books (bang on the same amount as 2018 funnily enough) which beat my Goodreads goal of 52 books, and I reviewed 46 of them which beat my goal of reviewing 26. You can find a full list of what I read here (the links go to the reviews) and I shared what are my top ten favourite books of the year earlier this week. The OWLs and the NEWTs readathons certainly helped me have good reading months, and in June I was on holiday where I read 8 books in 10 days.

I didn’t really have reading challenges or goals for 2019 – especially compared to 2018 when I had like three things I signed up for! In 2019 I continued to put £1 in a pot for every book I read meaning I had £72 to put in the bank. I’m sure I’ll use that money to buy more books. I continued with the Read the World Project and almost half of all the books I read in 2019 counted towards that project. I read 35 from different countries. Once again, I tried to get my TBR down to 50 books from 100 books and after Christmas gifts, my TBR now stands at 85 books. So at least it went down!

I always try to keep an equal split of male/female authors that I read and I succeeded at that in 2019. In fact, it was more female heavy which is fine by me. In 2019 I also kept track of whether the books I was reading were by white authors or authors of colour. In my goals last year I said I wanted at least 25% of the books I read to be by people of colour. I’m happy to say I achieved that and 40% of the books I read (which makes 29 of them) were by people of colour. I think my Read the World project definitely helps with this.

Now for my reading goals of 2020.

My reading goals aren’t that different to what they’ve been the last few years to be honest. I’m going to continue to put a £1 in a jar for every book I read, and I’m going to increase my Goodreads challenge goal a bit and want to read at least 60 books and to review at least 30 of them. I also want to continue to read books from at least an equal split of men and women authors, and to have at least 30% of the books I read are by people of colour. I’ll also say (once again) that I’d like to get my TBR down to 50 books. I did make some headway with my TBR in 2019 so I hope I can continue that trend, or at least be more open to unhauling books I have no interest in anymore. I’m not signing up to any year-long challenges but I think I will join many readathons throughout the year to give me that extra push to read.

In 2019 I hit 100 countries read for my Read the World Project! I’m so happy with that number but I do have 122 countries to read in the next 21 months if I want to meet myself imposed deadline. I own books for 6 more countries, but I have many more on my radar so reading books for my Read the World project will definitely be a priority this year. Really, I need to read at least 60 books for this challenge to make my deadline of reading a book from every country in the world before my 30th birthday. I’m not sure if that’ll happen but I hope it will. If you have any suggestions for books from around the world, I’d love to hear them! You can see what countries I’ve already read here.

Those are my reading goals for 2020. Do you have any reading goals for the year? I’m always interested in the reading goals people set themselves and if they have any tips or tricks to help them achieve them.

My Reading in 2018 and Goals for 2019

Slightly later than usual (but it’s still the first half of January so it’s all good) but here’s where I look back on what and how I read in 2018 and my reading plans for 2019. In 2018 I read 72 books which beat my goal of 52 books and I reviewed 55 of them which was way better than my goal of reviewing 26 of them. You can find all the books I read here, and I posted my Top Ten books of 2018 earlier this month here.

I had a fair few reading challenges and goals for 2018 and I completed most of them. I continued to put £1 in a jar for every book I read so that gave me £72 to put in the bank at the end of the year which was a nice bonus. I continued with my Read the World Project and 31 of the books I read in 2018 were for that project.

I signed up for three reading challenges in 2018 because I love being overconfident! They were the Beat the Backlist Challenge which even though the majority of what I read was backlist, I’d always forget to put reviews on Amazon and/or link the reviews on the host’s site, so I didn’t really complete that challenge in that sense though I did surpass my target of 30 back list books. Then there was the A-Z Reading Challenge and the Monthly Motif Challenge – I completed both of those which I was really happy about.

I tried to get my TBR down to 50 books – I say “tried” but I’m not sure I really did. I acquired 53 books in 2018, from buying them myself, gifts or subscription boxes, and I read 28 of them. The other books I read were a mixture of books I owned pre-2018 and books from the library – I really embraced the library and borrowing audiobooks from there this year. I didn’t really get my TBR down at all; I started 2018 with 100 books on my TBR and finished it with 100 books on my TBR so at least it didn’t grow any bigger! It was a bit of a bummer though because looking at the numbers it did nothing about the unread books I own even though I did read a lot. Oh well! Maybe I’m destined to have piles of books around me!

It wasn’t a goal, but I do like to keep track of who’s writing what I’m writing. I always aim to have an equal split between male and female authors and I couldn’t have gotten a more even split in 2018 if I’d tried!

Now for my reading goals in 2019.

I’m keeping it super simple this year. I haven’t signed up for any reading challenges and I don’t plan to. I’m setting my reading goal at 52 books again and that I’ll review at least 26 of them. I think it’s good to at least set some achievable goals.

I’m going to continue to put £1 in a jar for every book I read as it’s a nice little financial boost at the end of the year, and I will once again aim to get down to 50 unread books on my TBR. It’s kind of a tradition at this point to say that so I might as well continue. It would be good if I could keep an equal split of male and female authors though I don’t mind if there’s more women authors as I do tend to read more books by women. Also, I’m thinking about tracking the split between white authors and authors of colour, I’d hope that at least 25% of the books I read are by non-white authors.

I think my main reading goal for 2019 is to focus on my Read the World Project. From the outset I wanted to read a book from every country in the world before I was 30. That’s in 2 years and 9 months-ish and I have about 150 countries left to read so I need to read about 50 books from around the world this year in order to make a dent. I own 14 books that are for this project and I’m definitely going to be getting more from the library, even in physical or audio form.

There’s my reading goals for 2019. Do you have any reading goals for the year? Or are you being a bit more relaxed about reading this year? I’d love to know about your reading goals and any tricks you might have to help achieve them.