January Challenge & Goals Review

This is totally going to be boring for those who aren't me, you've been warned. I feel like I need to do a monthly tally of how my challenges are going and whether or not I'm sticking to my goals to make me feel all productive and stuff. Apologies for the total lack of reviews around here lately - I'm working on several but my brain is so scrambled with baby taking care of and waking up in the middle of the night and generally feeling crap lately that I just haven't managed to focus enough to finish any of them. Soon, I promise!

Anyway, I set a few goals for this year, and here's how I've done with them in January:

• Go longer than 3 months and a week without buying any books for myself - well it's been a month and I have only bought a few books for Benji. Nothing at all for myself, so I'm proud :-) To be honest I haven't even been all that tempted to buy, just by the library. Seriously, I have a ridiculous amount of library books out at the moment. It's a little obscene...
• Go a year without buying anything from Amazon - Done. Easy.
• Read more non-fiction than last year - I haven't read any this month (I don't think...), but just started a couple of parenting books, so there's that. Oh, and The Library Book which I'm in the middle of at the moment and which is brilliant and you should all buy it because it's full of awesome essays about the greatness that is libraries and profits go to The Reading Agency, so that's good.
• Complete all challenges signed up for - see below
• Participate in RAK every month - I signed up in Janaury but time got away from me and I didn't actually manage to send anything. I WILL do better in February!

Challenge progress:
(Just a note, the challenges I've signed up for mostly require me to read 12 books, so I should be reading 1 book per month for most of them. In this I have hugely failed and probably will continue to do so..)

• TBR Pile Challenge - so far I've not read a single book for this. I will this month though, really... *shifty eyes*
• Translation Challenge - again, none read yet. I am kind of making my way through The Annotated Brothers Grimm though, so I might finish that this month. And then I'm starting a course on the Ancient Greeks in March which I have to read excerpts of The Odyssey for, so I might just bite the bullet and finally read the whole thing.
• Young Adult Reading Challenge  - not read anything yet, but I am feeling some John Green so I will definitely be reading something for this in February!
• Telling Tales Challenge - finally some progress! I've actually read three books for this so far but only reviewed one. I reviewed Volume 8 of the Fables series, which I loved and it seriously sucks that I have to wait till my birthday to get the next one due to silly buying ban, but there we go. I also read Snow White and watched Mirror Mirror (which was awesome, I'm in the middle of my review at the moment!), and read Beastly by Alex Flinn, which I really enjoyed in spite of myself, and then I watched the film last night which I thought pretty much sucked - Neil Patrick Harris excepted, obviously. What is the deal with changing stupid tiny little things for no reason at all in adaptations? Why do they do that? It seriously drives me a little mad..
• Graphic Novel Challenge  - on target for this one too as obviously Wolves by Bill Willingham counts for that! In February I'll probably read Neil Gaiman's Eternals.
• Wishlist Challenge - I'm in the middle of The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer and previously mentioned The Library Book, both for this challenge, and both of which are great. I have to say this is possibly my favourite challenge of this year, as it's all books that I've really wanted to read for a while, and prompts me to get off my arse and actually order them in to the library!
• Essay Reading Challenge -although I've not completed anything for this yet, The Library Book will count as it's pretty much all essays, and I've also started I Remember Nothing by the great Nora Ephron.

All in all I think I've had a pretty good January, considering that my reading rate is so totally crap at the moment!
Here's what I read:

Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan
The Yorkshire Pudding Club by Milly Johnson
Fables Volume 8: Wolves by Bill Willingham
Beastly by Alex Flinn
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Just about more than a book a week!