Booktastic Thursday Link Up (3rd January 2019)


Booktastic Thursday: A Link Up For Book Bloggers


Welcome to the first Booktastic Thursday Link Up of 2019!

I'm looking forward to seeing what bookish posts you have to share this week. 

I hope you all had fun celebrating the start of the new year. I had a quiet one at home, just me and my kids. We spent most of the night building this 3D puzzle  of the Hogwarts Express (one of my Christmas presents).

3D puzzle of the Hogwarts Express


It was much harder than I thought it would be (although that might also be due to my little "helpers" causing confusion by building bits of it wrong, and then me having to start over several of the pieces). Still, it was a nice, fun, relaxing way to see in the new year. 

Another thing I did on New Years Eve was to post a little Bloggers Awards to my Twitter profile. You can find it here if you missed it. Just a fun way to show some love to those who stood out during 2018. I had fun doing this and might make it an annual event.

But now for the Booktastic Thursday Link Up!

For those of you that don't already know, on Thursday's I host this meme to give my fellow book bloggers the chance to share some of their bookish posts and connect with other book bloggers.

How to take part:


Post your book related blog post links directly into the comments section of this post.

You don't need to write up a special post to take part (any book/reading related post is fine), I just ask you to link back to the weekly blog post here on my blog some where in the post you're linking up. 

 Examples of how some of the past participants included it in their posts:

 Veronica from The Burgeoning Bookshelf 
https://theburgeoningbookshelf.blogspot.com/2018/08/book-review-artisan-heart-contemporary.html

 Empress DJ from Books and Bindings 
http://booksandbindings.com/2018/12/19/book-review-christmas-on-the-island-by-jenny-colgan/ 

I ask that you link up blog posts ONLY please. Other types of links will be deleted.

I'd also appreciate it if you follow me on any social media of your choice (I'm JoLinsdell everywhere). Of course, I would love it if you subscribed to my newest posts ;)

Please grab the Booktastic Link It Up Thursday button and share it somewhere on your blog (sidebar, post, bottom, etc.) and please share about this party with any book-lovers you know.

Booktastic Thursday Link Up: A link up for book bloggers


Let's grow this party!

Click to tweet:

Come and join in Booktastic Link It Up Thursday at www.JoLinsdell.com (hosted by @jolinsdell) #LinkUp #Books #BookBloggers

Everyone works hard on their posts and loves visits/comments/pins from others. Please visit AND comment on at least one other linked post if not more.

Now on to the party!

I'm looking forward to seeing all your book related posts.


Booktastic Thursday Link Up: A link up for book bloggers


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A Link Up For Book Bloggers

2018 In Review




It's the last day of 2018, and my final post for BlogMas. 31 posts in 31 days... and in December! This month I've proven to myself that I can do it. Please feel free to throw confetti and celebrate with me as I do my happy dance :)

2018 In Review 


 I feel like this year has flown by at super speed. 

2018 has been full of highs and lows, but I feel like I grew a lot this year. I got a clearer vision of what I want to do, and how I want to do it. My website stats reflect that too as I reached new heights in traffic this year. 

 I didn't have the best of starts to this year health wise. I found a lump on my breast and ended up having it removed. It was a scary time. Luckily everything turned out OK. As this is such an important topic, I did a blog post to share my news at the time, which can be found here.

 Luckily the year got better. 

 In March I had the pleasure of doing an author event at Infinite Parentesi bookstore. I had such a great time reading my books to the children and their parents. Here's the behind the scenes of my author event.

I've made some amazing friends this year, and discovered some truly awesome book bloggers. Big shout out to all the crew at the Book Bloggers Group, and of course, to the wonderful team at Bookish Blog Hops.

I also had the pleasure of working with some great people this year, and hope to do even better next year. 

What I Learnt in 2018

Through challenges like Blogtober and BlogMas I learnt the advantages of scheduling posts in advance. Sure I knew this was a good thing already but doing these challenges showed me that I can plan ahead, and better leverage my content. By scheduling at least some posts in advance it took a lot of the stress away too. 

Collaborations can make a HUGE difference to reach. I've always been a fan of collaborating with others on projects, and this year I joined forces with loads of different people. The results of each collaboration were amazing, and I plan on doing lots more in the new year. 

It's OK to take time off. I had some months this year where I only posted a couple of times. For example, in November I only posted 3 blog posts. It was a busy month and I just didn't have the time, or energy, to create new content for the blog. I still got over 10K pageviews that month though. In fact I got 10,616. 

Most Popular Posts From 2018

What I Still Need To Improve On

I didn't do much work on my books in 2018. Life was beyond hectic this year, and I confess, I didn't make writing a priority. 

I was more focused on blogging.  It's somehow easier to find time to write up a blog post or post to social media than it is to edit a novel. This has taught me that I need to set goals, and make time for my writing too. It's also proof of how much I don't enjoy editing. It's easy to put off something you don't like doing.

I have far too many unfinished works in progress saved to my computer. I need to make it a priority to finish them. 

 Lack of time is a big issue for me now. 24 hours in a day is just not enough... at least not without some serious planning and discipline. It's clear to me that I need to get better organised in order to manage to do everything I want to do. This is super important as I have big plans for 2019.

 How was your 2018? What did you learn this year?
2018

On My Shelf: Consequences of the Heart by Peter Cunningham


On My Shelf: Consequences of the Heart by Peter Cunningham

On My Shelf


On My Shelf is a series to showcase some of the books that are sat on my shelves. Each Sunday I randomly pick a book from my shelves to show you. Some will be books that are on my TBR, others will be books I've read in the past but that deserve a little love.

This week's pick


This week I picked Consequences of the Heart by Peter Cunningham




On My Shelf: Consequences of the Heart by Peter Cunningham
D-Day on a Normandy beach. A flip of a coin seals the destinies of two men in love and war. From one of Ireland's finest writers, Consequences of the Heart is an epic story of passion and fate, of cowardice and bravery, of adultery and of murder.



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Best Reads of 2018



Best Reads of 2018

Books We Loved in 2018



 I read some awesome books in 2018. You can read about my top reads of 2018 here.

 But why just share about books I enjoyed reading this year? 

 I decided to reach out to my fellow book bloggers to see what books they rated as the best books of 2018. This is what they had to say:


 @TdySimpleLife picked Sadie by Courtney Summers
https://trendysimplelife.blogspot.com/2018/07/findsadie.html
2018
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