January Reading Wrap Up

Well that went quickly! One month of 2022 down already, and I feel like it’s only been about a week. It’s been a very busy month for me, so I didn’t necessarily get everything read that I wanted to, but let’s take a look at how it went.

Books read:

I read 36 books in January, which is a pretty decent month for me. Usually I don’t like to post my wrap up until the 1st of the next month in case I finish something on the last day, but I’m in the middle of some longer reads at the moment so I doubt I’ll add anything else to the list. Though my tally looks like it’s about a book a day, this was actually a really inconsistent reading month, and I had a lot of starts and stops – some days I read four books, sometimes I didn’t read for several days. It was a busy month for me with editing and writing projects, so I sometimes found I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to read for pleasure in my downtime (there’s been quite a lot of knitting and video games instead). It was a mixed bag in terms of quality, too. I had some great reads and some disappointments; I read a couple of underwhelming new fantasies, but I adored Terciel and Elinor and rediscovered how good Wicked Like A Wildfire is, so it was a bit of a strange month!

My Owned TBR:

This was a battle this month! I was aiming to reduce my TBR by 24 books (from 299 to 275), but I had a book token burning a hole in my pocket so I ended up sabotaging myself with quite a few additions to the TBR towards the end of the month. In total I brought in 19 new books; of these, I read 4 and DNFed 1, which means there are 14 new January books on the list.

I ended up with the final TBR count for January at 279, which is at least some solid progress downwards, with 20 books off the list. For February, I’m setting a smaller, less stressful goal: I’d like to hit 270 – just 9 books down over the month.

Backlist/Frontlist balance:

This was a month that was heavy on backlist books, partly thanks to my reading challenge, and partly because I’ve been keen to do a clearout for a couple of months. The final split was 25 backlist books and 11 2022 releases, which is pretty good considering we’re so early in the year still!

Reading Challenges:

This month’s challenge was Duology Do-Overs – if you missed it, see my introductory post for more details. I finished five of the eight duologies on my TBR, so ten books, which is not bad, though I’m a little disappointed I didn’t read any in the second half of the month. I think it was perhaps a little optimistic to put so much YA fantasy all in one month, as I ended up veering off into different genres for a break.

February’s challenge is going to be tied to #Februwitchy – my TBR post for that will be up on Wednesday, so keep your eyes peeled!

Blog posts:

I didn’t quite manage a post on every weekday through January, but I’m going to try my best to stay on track through February.

In case you missed them, here are the reviews I posted this month:

Loki: A Bad God’s Guide to Being Good by Louie Stowell

Terciel and Elinor by Garth Nix

Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham

The Highlander’s Substitute Wife by Terri Brisbin

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh

Scorpica by GR Macallister

I also had two middle grade mini reviews posts, here and here, and some quick thoughts on the duologies from my challenge here, plus a fun get-to-know-me tag.

And finally, I announced the 2022 Februwitchy readathon!