Weekly Lists #113: Books I’m Most Looking Forward To in 2018

Happy 2018, everybody! With this being the first post of the year, I couldn’t not take a look forward, could I? This is not so much a “new releases”-post, as just: “Books I’m looking forward to reading, buying, discovering… “-post. I don’t know why, but somehow I can never really focus on reading between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, so this list should basically include all the books I got for Christmas. It kinda does, don’t worry. So let’s get to the books I’m most looking forward to in 2018!

This year, as I think I’ve mentioned before, I wanted to focus on books I’ve been wanting to read. Sure, there’s new releases that might be added to the list. And I will undoubtedly come across books that other people read and go “YES, THAT. I need to READ that.” But the books I’m most looking forward to this year? They are the ones I’ve been meaning to read for a while.

To further explain – my TBR on Goodreads was near 800 books on December 30th. The books I own but haven’t read yet, got up to nearly 200 (184 to be exact). So I did a bit of a cleanse. On Goodreads at least. I went through my “want-to-read”-list and deleted all the books I don’t really want to read more.  250 in total went off the list. I took the unread books I still had at home and would like to get to this year with me to my appartment. I created more space on my bookshelves for that :p

And after all that cleaning, and going through the lists, and thinking about what I like to read? These are the 5 categories I want to read this year, and some select titles for each of those categories!

1. Poetry

One of my favourite books in 2017 was Clementine von Radics’ Mouthful of Forevers. I mean, I loved it. And it’s got me wanting to read more poetry. These works of poetry, to be exact:

• The Princess Saves Herself in This One, Amanda Lovelace
  (Goodreads, Amazon)
• The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One, Amanda Lovelace
  (Goodreads, Amazon)
• Milk and Honey, Rupi Kaur
  (Goodreads, Amazon)

2. Classics

This entire category was basically brought on by one series: Anne of Green Gables. I’ve started that series a bunch of times. I’ve loved the first book every single time I read it. And I don’t think I’ve ever gotten beyond that book.  So this year I want to read those classics I’ve had on my shelves forever!

3. Children’s favourites’ sequels

By now most of you probably know I love to reread my old childhood favourites whenever I’m feeling down, in a bit of a slump, … Basically: re-reading is awesome. Unfortunately, though, those series don’t tend to stop when you grow out of them. So this year, I would like to catch up on what happened in certain series after I stopped reading them!

• Chrestomanci-series, Diana Wynne Jones: specifically The Pinhoe Egg and Conrad’s Fate: I loved this series when I was younger – I still think it’s really well-written. Same goes for Jones’ Dalemark-series, actually. So I’m really curious to see what happens with these characters after I stopped reading!
  (Pinhoe Egg: Goodreads, Amazon)
  (Conrad’s Fate: Goodreads, Amazon)
• All Enid Blyton-books: specifically the Famous Five books! I mean, I know all of these books were already written by the time I got to reading them – but somehow I never really realised how many there were until fairly recently? So now I’ve started buying them. I just never got round to reading them – and that’s definitely scheduled for this year!

4. Chicklit

Naturally, any new book by Cathy Kelly or Jill Mansell will be on my TBR. But there’s a couple of authors I’ve slowly started to appreciate these last couple of years. And I own a lot of books of more of them. So it’s time to start get reading!

• Trisha Ashley: any books – I just really loved her Twelve Days of Christmas, so I’m really hoping to read more of her work!
• Jenny Colgan:
  • The Christmas Surprise (Goodreads, Amazon)
  • The Little Shop of Happy Ever After (Goodreads, Amazon)
  • Welcome to Rosie Hopkins’ Sweet Shop of Dreams (Goodreads, Amazon)
• Carole Matthews
  • The Chocolate Lovers’ Wedding (Goodreads, Amazon)
  • The Cake Shop in the Garden (Goodreads, Amazon)

5. Non-fiction

All. The. History. Books. Look, I love history. And for years, that’s only really come to the front when studying the history of literature. So 2018? Let it be the year of history. And I’ve still got plenty of those on my TBR!

What books are you most looking forward to reading this year? Is it mainly new releases? Or do you have a TBR you’re fully intending on getting through? Be sure to let me know below!

-Saar