Happy New Year + Goals for 2018

HAPPY NEW YEAR !

I wish you to have an amazing year, to accomplish your dreams, to find new ones, to stay healthy, to laugh, to be happy, to discover amazing fictional worlds and so much more!

Hello, beautiful people!

This is my first blog post of the year and because of that, I wanted to write about what I wanted to accomplish in 2018, whether it was about what I wanted to change in my life, my reading or my blogging lives. I did something a bit similar last year – but shorter – and I thought it would be the perfect way to motivate me to make 2018 a great year.

L I F E   G O A L S

I'm not going to lie, I'm at a difficult time in my life and I am completely lost. I have no idea what will happen to me in 2018 and because of that, I can't really plan ahead. 2017 was a hard year for sure, but the good outweights the bad and I am proud of myself. I really put myself out there, met amazing people, crossed things off my bucket list and most importantly, gained more confidence. Trying to figure out what I wanted my goals for 2018 to be was very hard, until I heard that sentence in a movie (you'll know which one if you've seen it):

"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."

It sounds very extreme and I don't take the second sentence literally at all, but these sentences keep coming back to me (I can't explain the whole thing, though). Like I said, 2017 was a challenging year for me and it hurt me, broke me. However, it might be exactly what I need to figure out who I am and what I want to do with my life. I met amazing people for sure, but I also trusted the wrong ones and like one of my closest friends told me, I need to be my own role model in life. I need to let go of what happened in the past, to try to move past what I consider to be my personal failures, to move past who I used to be and accept who I am now, to become a better person, to be in control. I've already changed so much in the past two weeks and I want to keep it that way. This year will be the year I work on myself, more than a year where I want so many things to happen, because I don't know what I want to happen yet, and that's okay.

In 2018, I want to find motivation, to start dreaming again. I want to learn to be kinder to myself, to fight my anxiety every day. I want to stop wanting to cry/crying every time someone asks me about my future and to stand up for myself. I want to eat healthier, to feel better in my own body – because I haven't been lately and even though it's just my brain messing up with me, I have to do something about that. I want to figure myself out and to find what I really want to do with my life. I want to be even more me than in 2017.

R E A D I N G  G O A L S

In 2017, I decided to broaden my literary tastes, as I was getting back into classics and it was a huge success. I have changed a lot as a reader and I'm still trying to figure out which types of books I love (hint: I love a lot of different books). First things first, I am not setting up a real Goodreads challenge. I put one book in it to be able to track down my reading, I'm curious to see how much I'll read without having a challenge.

Then, I want to read bigger books – by that I mean 700+ pages books –, because there are so many of them I want to discover in different genres, such as the A Song of Ice and Fire series, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke and so on. Lengthy books don't scare me anymore and I keep adding so many of them to my list! I actually started reading War and Peace last night and I'm so excited for it to be my first book of the year: I am sure it will shape 2018, in a way.

I am still planning on reading a lot of classics: I mainly focused on Victorian literature last year and of course I want to keep going because it's absolutely amazing, but I also want to challenge myself more. I am planning to push myself to read more 20^th century literature, as I've always been reluctant to read most books set in that century, but Daphne du Maurier started to change my mind. As always, I have a list and I hope I'll find new books I love. Beyond that, I want to read more French classics: I got around reading Balzac for the first time last year and to finally read Les Misérables (come on, this isn't a post about books if I don't mention this book), which motivated me even more to read in French again. I need to read more of Zola, Hugo and Balzac's novels, to get back to Proust, to discover new authors. I also want to read more foreign classics, I might pick up French translations for that, as it doesn't really matter if I read them in French or in English. I found a classics challenge perfect for all my goals, I will talk about it in an upcoming post!

There are some authors I want to focus on, such as George Eliot, Daphne du Maurier, Charlotte Brontë (as I only read Jane Eyre by her), Margaret Atwood and most importantly, Agatha Christie. Crime used to be one of my favourite genres when I was younger, I started to fall back in love with it again and read about four of Christie's novels in 2017. I want to pursue that this year, reading one of her books each month.

Finally, I really want to read more non-fiction. I discovered it in 2017 as well and I've been craving it more and more lately. Many memoirs are eyeing me, such as Carrie Fisher's The Princess Diarist (because I'm so obsessed with Star Wars haha) or Ariel Levy's The Rules Do Not Apply. I also want to read a lot of biographies, books about history and literature. I'm particularly looking forward to read biographies about my favourite Victorian authors, such as Thomas Hardy, Anne Brontë or Charles Dickens. I keep adding a lot of non-fiction books on Goodreads and I hope I can get to as many of them as possible in 2018.

B L O G G I N G  G O A L S

This blog will turn three years old in June, but because I took a very long break from blogging, I have been rethinking everything about it, which is actually great for creativity. I want to go back to being consistent here – I've already started, so that's something! – to post at least once a week or the equivalent of it (meaning at least four-five posts each month). I need to find a new blogging schedule to get back into blog hopping and commenting, because I've done it less and less lately.

You might have noticed I don't post a lot of reviews anymore, because that's not exactly how I want to talk to you all about books anymore. I will still post reviews for e-ARCs and write blog posts about a book in particular when I feel like it, but I want to diversify my content. I have so many features I want to develop, such as 'From page to screen' for classics adaptations – I only did it with My Cousin Rachel, but I aim to do it once a month in 2018 –, finally start an author spotlight feature for classics authors, write more recommendations on specific topics and so on.


While I'm very scared in 2018, I'm curious to see what this year will have in store for me and I will do my best to make the most of it.

Do you have any goals for 2018? For your life, reading or blogging?

Lots of love,

Lucie