OUT WITH THE OLD!!!

I can hardly believe today is the last day of 2010! Where did this year go? For me, it flew by and I'm starting to make plans for 2011.

As far as this blog is concerned, I am going to make a few changes to (hopefully) clean it up a bit. First of all, I'm going to add some extra pages and move some of the items on my sidebars to eliminate a little of the clutter, i.e. my awards. Those pages will also come in handy for listing a variety of things, such as the books I've read or the challenges I take part in.

For my book reviews, I am going to do away with the rating system. When I write my reviews, I'm sure you can tell whether or not I liked the book and it's sometimes difficult to decide if a book is a 3 or 4 or 5. I'll save that for when I post reviews on GoodReads or Amazon.

I didn't do too well with my challenges, so I'm going to try harder this coming year. That means I may do less reviews for publishing companies so I can read some of the many, many books I already own. However, I do still want to read those books I'm asked to review.

The only challenge I feel I succeeded with was the A to Z Challenge. Of the 52 potential slots to fill, I completed 36 -- 15 authors and 21 book titles. I plan to participate in this challenge again this year.

As far as statistics go, in 2010, I read 53 fiction or memoirs (biographies included). That doesn't include the (28) non-fiction or reference books. I posted a total of 81 book reviews, which does include the non-fiction. That number is up from the 66 reviews in 2009 and 35 in 2008, so I'm definitely doing a lot more reading! I'm hoping to post at least 100 reviews for 2011.

I also plan on a variety of giveaways this coming year. Some will be new books from the publishing companies and authors who ask me to review their books. Others will be from my own "collection" as my storage unit is getting over-run with boxes of books. There will be other little goodies you can try to win along the way, too, all related to reading in one way or another! I've been asked by a few companies to review their products, but I really want this blog to be about books.

I'm happy to report I'll be starting out 2011 with a hit count of 10,000 on my blog! As of right now, it stands at 9985, so I expect the other 15 by the end of the day. That's thrilling to me as when I started this blog, I never thought that many people would be interested in it. Visitors have come from all 50 states and 74 different countries.

I'm truly looking forward to the coming year and I hope you'll join me here regularly. And be sure to sign up as a follower to keep up with all the exciting happenings planned for the New Year!

Have a safe New Year's Eve and I'll see you next year!