Happy 2024! We are so happy you’re here. If you have followed along since the beginning, thank you. If you are just joining, welcome!
We are happy to be back and sharing with you all. The break was refreshing and allowed us to make some goals, which we will be discussing with you as well. Before we jump to the goals though, we wanted to identify what our motivator is this year. There are many ways to identify motivations. You can look at role models, you can identify goals and the steps to get there, or you can go the typical resolution path.
Of course, motivation comes from many different places. Here at Umbra Ex Libris, we are taking a different approach. We identified a word to reflect on. A word that will motivate us to pursue our goals throughout the year and a word to lift us when things are going a little wonky. After some consideration and collaboration, we were able to settle on one word.
2024 Word of the year
Change.
This word embodies a lot for us here at Umbra Ex Libris. Change can be very polarized. Some people don’t like change. I know I can fall into that category at times. However, its important to recognize the goodness of change. This year happens to be a year of lots of change, both with Umbra Ex Libris, but also in our personal lives.
If you don’t follow our socials you will not have heard the big news, but we, Jonas and I, got engaged last November. With a wedding in 2024, plans to buy a house, finish degrees, and so much more. Change is an important thing for us to reflect on and be comfortable with this year. This word serves as our reminder that goodness awaits us through all the changes.
For Marissa, this year is the year for change. She chose this word because it reflects what she wants out of this year. Change for the better, new habits and new opportunities. Having change as her word will allow her to reflect on when these new opportunities arise, a reminder that change is part of the process of growing.
Finally, for Umbra Ex Libris, there are a lot of changes we hope to initiate and see. For one, we hope to grow our following and reach more readers. Having a community who shares the same interests is a change we would eagerly embrace. We also have minor changes to implement, like our running of our GoodReads set up and Pinterest links. There are a few more changes we have in store, but you will just have to wait for those ones.
What word are you reflecting on for 2024? Are there any changes you are awaiting or hoping for? Let us know in the comments, we love hearing from you!
Book Goals
2024 brings about newer and more reading and writing goals we want to share with you all! For example, on our New Year’s resolution we all want to read one book a week. With reading one book a week comes reviewing one book a week. I don’t know how my colleagues feel, but writing reviews is one of my favorite things to write. I feel as though judging a book comes naturally to me. Most people can separate a good book from a bad book. I just have the opportunity to critique those bad books and shout praise to all my favorite stories.
While reading and writing these reviews sounds like a challenging goal we can negate some of the challenge by reading and writing a little bit every day. Just fifteen minutes a day can get everyone started and into the habit. Alternating between long and short books also helps accomplish such a challenging task. If you bring a book everywhere you go, you can easily find that extra time in the week to finish a book. Maybe, some of our beloved readers want to join us on our quest to conquer our to be read list?
Along with wanting to read more we each decided things we want to read more of, or are looking forward to. Our favorite genres, we might’ve read a bit too much of, include both horror and thriller. We could not get enough of these stories. We collectively decided we neglected fantasy books the previous year. Therefore, this year we all look forward to dusting off our fantasy collection or just starting a brand new fantasy series, because why not? We are going to grab our Lord of the Rings book, those Throne of Glass books and lastly, those Iron Flame books. Are there any genres you couldn’t put down? Is there a genre you plan on reading more of this year?
What We Want to Read
Even though our word of the year is change, we want to not change our reading tastes. There are stories we plan on revisiting this year. Marissa decided she wants to revisit Panem in The Hunger Games series because she has yet to read Of Songbirds and Snakes. Jonas plans on revisiting The Inheritance Cycle because he cannot wait to pick up the newest book Murtagh. Roxy plans on rereading Maze Runner also for the newer books that were recently released.
Onto the change, Jonas plans on reading Dexter because he was gifted the books. Roxy plans on reading all of The Chronicles of Narnia because she has yet to. Marissa is most excited to read Court of Thorns and Roses. Some honorable mentions in books are Ruth Ware’s Zero Days, Home is Where the Bodies Are by Jeneva Rose, and We Hear Voices by Evie Green. What books or series do you all intend to read this year? Let us know if there are any books we have to read.
Conclusion
Thank you all for sticking with us the last year and here is to many more years together! Remember you can always reach out to us and tell us what you would like to read about. We will do our best to fulfill your request! We hope you had a wonderful holiday, and are excited for the new year, we know we are. Make sure to leave comments down below; we always love to hear from you. If you haven’t yet be sure to follow our Instagram page here. We like to update our reads on it along with a great many other things. Happy new years and here is to the many more books we are all going to read together in 2024.
As always, happy reading!