New Year Plans

Welcome to 2017! I'm so excited for this year. I just have a good feeling about the books and movies this year, which means a good year for the blog. However, there are going to be a lot of things changing this year. Some of those are noticeable, such as new and updated pages, and others are below there surface and may take some time really show themselves. I've thought a lot about all of these changes and I'm so excited to implement them all. Honestly, you may not be interested in any of this, and that doesn't hurt my feelings, since it's more of a "business" thing that goes on here. But if you do end up having any questions about how things run, this is the post to stop by at.

First off, thanks to advice from friends, I'm going to go back to do more movie and television reviews. I won't review everything I watch, but if it's something I feel strongly about it will be getting a review. I already started this at the end of last year, but that was a sort of trial run. Now, expect to see a review or two a month that do not focus on books. This won't be taking over the blog, but I will consider it a major part of it nonetheless.

Another thing is I'm going to try to go back to only reading one, or two since I'm in a bookclub, book at a time. I had a good thing going for a while but I wasn't really finishing what I wanted to finish and just reading those that took "priority". So I'm going to go back to reading as I like when I like as much as I can. Obviously ARCs take precedence, but I only request those that I want to read right away, so it's not really a problem.

Speaking of ARCs I want to keep up on them. The second half of the year I really did start to manage this and I think I have a good system for it now. Hopefully you'll see more ARC reviews this year, too, because even though I'm not as crazy about them as I once was when I started (when I first found out about ARCs they were all I wanted like I didn't have any patience and I was always trying to get more even if I didn't read the ones I had) I still like requesting ones I'm genuinely interested in, and particularly those I wouldn't pick up on my own.

I also have a new schedule for posts. It's pretty similar to how things have been running already, but I'm going to post it again here with a little bit of clarification.

Sun -- Discussions & Announcements

Mon -- Book Reviews

Tue -- Media Reviews & ARC Reviews*

Wed -- Waiting on Wednesday**

Thu -- College Journey***

Fri -- Book Reviews

Sat -- Wrap Ups ****

* My goal is to publish ARC reviews the week before the book comes out, but if there's already a review scheduled for that day, depending on how things are, I'll post the review the day of the book's release or two weeks before it's release.

** This won't be every week, just week's when there's actually a newly released cover for a book I'm excited for.

*** Like last year this will be only the final two Thursdays of the month. I did discuss in the most recent College Journey that the first College Journey of the month will have the usual advice, while the second of the month will be more of a "what I'm doing" type of post.

**** Probably the biggest change: Wrap Up's will only come twice a month from now on. They'll come on the second Saturday of each month and they'll come on the final Saturday of each month. I've said in the past that I love writing Wrap Ups and they're my favorite post, and that hasn't changed, but it's just more economical to spend my time doing less of them. However, I think I'll be including book hauls in each of them. We'll see, that's something I'm still deciding.

A few weeks ago I tried to include weekly book news in each Wrap Up but you may have noticed that didn't really work out. I'm dropping the idea completely. I had a hard time keeping up on everything and sometimes there just wasn't anything interesting happening, nor did I like wedging it into Wrap Up's. However, if something big does go down, or there's a lot of little things, that I want to comment on, I'll be more keen to write a discussion for it.

The pages on this blog have been left to get a little wild and out of date, something I hate when it happens. So I've updated all the important ones: Review Policy and About Me. I've also changed some around. Instead of having a tab that says Reviews or 2016 there's a tab labeled 2017. At the top is a link to Archive, which is my previous Reviews tab and a link to 2016 which was the 2016 tab. This 2017 tab will keep track of everything I read and will have links to any reviews I write for each book. There will not be a place for TV or Movie Reviews on this page. I've also replaced the Current Giveaways tab with two new ones: College Journey, which both serves as an introduction to the series and a collection of all the important links. The other is for the DC Comics Readthrough I'm doing and will be up there as long as I am doing that series of reviews, which will certainly last through the year. It has a schedule for what I'm reading in the coming months and links to all past reviews.

The tab for Bookstagram has been taken off as I'm no longer on Instagram. It just wasn't meant to be. Someday I may return to Instagram as a medium for book stuff, but I don't see that happening this year. If I do start up another Instagram it will be a personal account, which I may or may not share. Booklr, however, will remain, as I want to be more active on my Tumblr. I don't expect this to ever be my first priority, but I like having it and don't want it to go to waste at all.

And that's all the big stuff changing! If you've read this far, you get Bonus Points I suppose. Happy New Year everyone!