Have you heard of Books on the Rail? It is a movement that aims to spread the joy of reading by leaving books on public transport across Australia for other commuters to find and enjoy. You know you've found a Books on the Rail book when you spot that cute logo sticker on the cover

I'm a public transport user in my day to day life, and I just think it is such a fun idea. I absolutely love working with Books on the Rail and am always thrilled when I receive a box of new (or near) release titles from publishers to drop around the public transport here in Canberra.

Hello and happy Monday! It's a long weekend here this week, and I've had a wonderfully lazy few days full of coffee, kitties, books, and brunch!

With the New Year starting I've been thinking quite a bit about reading goals, but here we are almost in February already and I'm still not really sure where I stand in terms of setting goals for this year.

I've mentally split the types of things I'm thinking about setting goals around into a few categories, and I thought I'd talk about them a bit here today.

Firstly there's the Goodreads challenge, which is about how many books you are aiming to read overall in the year. I know that I'm not interest in trying to read the most books this year, or more books than this year, or any number oriented goals like that, so I've set mine at 75 books for this year.

Next, reading challenges that I want to join in with. So far I only have one on my radar: the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge which I've participated in the last few years and love doing with my book club at work. I really should do a wrap up post on how I went with this challenge in 2018! I tend to not necessarily stress too much about completely every single prompt in this challenge, but more to use it to make me more mindful of what I'm reading, and where there are gaps in the diversity of my reads. You can see the 2019 challenge list on the Book Riot website here.

The last mini category of goals I've been thinking about is the challenges I want to set myself. I have so many unread books at home, and while this doesn't completely freak me out like it would some people, I'd like to focus on getting through some of them. I'd also like to continue my focus on Australian writers, in particular #loveozya, women, and diverse/own voices stories. I think I'd like to try and hit 50% of my books read being by Aussie writers (I don't have a baseline to compare it to for last year because I was terrible at keeping up to date with my spread sheet!). I was thinking maybe I would try to read at least on #loveozya and one own voices book each month, but then these start to really add up to a huge monthly tbr once I add in my book club reads , plus the bookish escape crate books (every second month) and a couple of review copies from publishers each month... all of a sudden I've already 5 or 6 books on my list for the month and that's before I count new things that I come across during the year,

Now that we're home and getting back into a proper life routine again I intend to set aside some quiet time to sit down and do some planning to nut it out a bit more, so hopefully I'll be able to report back with some plans soon! In the mean time, I'd love to hear about any reading goals other have, and how you set them!

xo Bron

If you follow me over on Instagram you will likely have seen that I've been away on a bookish retreat with friends this weekend (I might have been overgramming, who can say?  haha). We had the best time - we rented an Airbnb just outside Canberra from Friday evening until Sunday morning and spent the whole time reading, writing (a couple of my friends are writers working novels, and the rest of us bloggers) and snacking, and it was so wonderful and relaxing! The setting was absolutely perfect for a reading/writing retreat (or, you know, a horror movie!) and the home we stayed in was super comfortable and cosy.  

Of course the gorgeous setting and stacks of books everywhere meant there were so many opportunities to snap some pretty books stacks (and, bonus, since we're all book lovers nobody thought you were weird for doing it!).

This pile here was the result of the books we'd all been reading before breakfast being stacked out of the way when the food was ready. I was impressed with how well they matched each other - and the table cloth haha! Keep reading below for the Goodreads summary on each of these books =)

Jen is at her wit's end. Her fifteen-year-old daughter has just been found after going missing: four days lost and alone in the desolate countryside. Lana won't talk about it. The police think the case is closed. But Jen can't leave it alone. Lana is acting strangely: she stops going to school, she sleeps with the light on. With her daughter increasingly becoming a stranger, Jen is sure the answer lies in those four missing days. 

But will Lana ever reveal what happened?

When I read Whistle on the Dark I definitely spent quite a bit of time, in the back of my mind, thinking about what the 'big twist' was going to be, and when it was going to come alone. I had kind of expected to be reading this on the edge of my seat, holding my breath while I worried about whether everyone was going to be okay, and I was definitely waiting for something sinister to come along at any minute. It was like my brain was confused that the story unfolding before me wasn't fitting into the shape I wanted from a thriller. It was interesting to hear at book club that a lot of people felt similar things - that they were waiting for something big to happen, and for all the clues (red herrings) planted along the way to come together - and that overall people seemed to feel more positively about the book after we discussed it.

Personally, I definitely felt like the 'disappointing' bits of my experience when reading this came from the expectations I had for it to be twisty/thriller-y. Interestingly (I think), I can't actually figure out why I thought it was a thriller in the first place. As you can see from above, it is clear in the blurb that the daughter is home, and there is nothing on the cover that says says anything like "perfect for fans of Gone Girl" (you know, the sort of marketing blurb we're seeing lately). The word 'dark' in the title sounds a bit sinister (although I learned at book club that 'to whistle in the dark' is an expression) and there are birds on the cover (I'm on team 'birds are creepy' all the way), but I really couldn't say what made me so sure I was picking up a thriller when I started.

I think I probably would have enjoyed reading this more if I hadn't had any expectations (or, perhaps if I hadn't had the wrong expectation!) We talked a little bit last night about the sorts of ways you can find your preconceptions changing the reading experience you have with a book - for instance if a book has been really hyped it can feel like a bit of a let down if you don't love it as much as everyone else, or - particularly in kids/YA - when something you're reading ends up being written for perhaps a younger audience than you had thought (or than it is being marketed for). In general I'm pretty good at avoiding developing a view on how something will be before i read it - I tend to let those really buzzy books cool down a bit before I get into them, and doing so much reading on my kindle has sort of got me out the habit of looking at back covers - but it is something that I think is so interesting that I'll probably be more conscious of it in the future.

Something else I thought was super interesting from our book club meeting, that I might talk about a bit more another time, is the fact that the discussion of the book seemed to enhance most people's experience with the book - overall we seemed to walk away with a more positive feeling about it than when we each had read it (yay book club and bookish chats!). This was certainly the case for me - I had rated this one 2.5/5 stars (which means it was ok - I didn't regret reading it or the time I spent on it, but I'm not sure i'd pick it up again) to 3/5 stars. Based on my experience with this one I would pick up Emma Healey's first book, and I'd be really interested to know more about what she would like readers to have taken away from this. There was some pretty excellent social commentary on here, especially in terms of social media, and - like I said above - the writing was fun and easy to get through. The way the narrative was split into little almost vignette-y chapters was  clever - it felt a bit frantic and I thought she did a remarkable job of putting me in Jen's mind.

Next month we're reading Emily O'Grady's The Yellow House - about which I know NOTHING, except that it is the winner of the 2018 Australia/Vogel's Literary award, and I'm hoping to read in the next week or so.

I'd love to know if you've read Whistle in the Dark and what you thought of it! Or if there's been a time where you've kind of ruined a book for yourself because of your expectations!

xo Bron