Challenge Sign Up: British Books Challenge 2015

Today is my day for signing up to challenges as part of getting back into blogging. As with The Flights of Fantasy challenge I wanted to choose challenges which weren't too restrictive and which would cover books I definitely wanted to read/books I already had on my shelf waiting for me to pick up.

The British Books Challenge is hosted by Fluttering Butterflies and sets participants the task of reading 12 books by British authors in 2015. I've been wanting to read more UKYA (I think I have failed badly at this in the past) and also have a lot of adult books - like all of Dorothy Dunnett's historicals - which I've been wanting to get to.

I'm not going to do a full list of 12, as there are bound to be new books that I grab, but on the list at the moment are:

- Anything by Dorothy Dunnett. I'd love to finish The Lymond Chronicles at least but that is a huge undertaking.

- Arsenic For Tea by Robin Stevens (I loved Murder Most Unladylike and will review that soon).

- The UKYA books I've bought so far in 2015: The Sin Eater's Daughter by Melinda Salisbury; The Last Leaves Falling by Sarah Benwell; and Me & Mr J by Rachel McIntyre because seriously I need to get on top of my buying to reading ratio

- Darkness Hidden and Shadows on the Moon by Zoe Marriott (with a reread of The Night Itself)

There are others, and I will update this post and my 2015 Challenges page as I read and review.

Challenge Sign Up: Flights of Fantasy

I've been wanting to get back into blogging for a while and so was looking for some challenges to sign up for to a) get me to read more, and b) get me to post/review more. I didn't want to go for anything too restrictive though, as I tend to suck at those.

So Flights of Fantasy - hosted by Alexa Loves Books and Hello, Chelly - is perfect. The challenge focuses on reading fantasy, which is one of my favourite genres, and the number of books we set is entirely up to us.

I'm setting myself the challenge of reading 15 fantasy books in 2015. And while I don't want to set myself a list of 15 (because that guarantees I won't read those books) I would like to at least attempt to do the following:

- Reread Throne of Glass and read Crown of Midnight and Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas (preferably before Queen of Shadows is published)

- Finish reading A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin (preferably before series 5 of Game of Thrones starts - I have this in my desk at work and read it during lunch, so I should be able to do this)

- Read Clariel by Garth Nix, and possibly reread The Abhorsen Trilogy (one of my favourites) as well

- Read at least one book by these authors, many of whom are sitting there on my shelf mocking me (the books, not the authors): Leigh Bardugo, Scott Lynch, Patrick Rothfuss

There are numerous other books that I have on my shelf, and there are some rereads I want to do, but I think the above is enough to be going on with. I'll add to this post and to my 2015 Challenges pageas I read/review/update.