Well, May is here and that means it’s time to look at April’s reading! I feel like this was a long month – the first two weeks were the Easter break for us, but for various reasons I didn’t get as much done as I was hoping in terms of work or reading, so it feels like it was a bit of a dud month for productivity… The most exciting thing that happened was my birthday – I turned 30 on the 30th!
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.
Happy New Year! That’s it for 2021, and what a strange year it was. I’ve been enjoying these monthly wrap ups this year, so I thought I’d reflect on December as usual, with some thoughts about the whole year mixed in, and then set myself some fresh 2022 goals in Monday’s post.
I only set myself three goals for 2021:
One of these goals was a bit of a failure, but two of them I did amazingly at!
Physical Review Copies
I have to admit I completely stopped tracking the numbers on these at some point this year. Counting up now, I have 44 review copies on my desk, which is only a very slight reduction from January’s 47, but I’m pretty sure with the exception of two, they’re all new this year. I do need to catch up, but at least my efforts mean things aren’t lingering quite as long!
My Owned TBR
I didn’t set a yearly goal for this one, but I did say that it was the last year I wanted to see the list above 500 books. Instead, I set quarterly goals, then swapped them out for monthly ones, and I found that really kept me on track – it’s easy to procrastinate when you have a whole year ahead of you, but shorter goals make you focus on consistent progress. And it was really successful! I reduced my TBR from 505 books to 299, which I’m very happy with.
What I perhaps didn’t do so well at is stemming the flow of books coming in a little bit… Since I clearly read more than twice as many books than came off the TBR, it’s obvious that a massive amount of books came in, whether they were purchased by me, gifted by friends and family, or provided for review.
Goodreads Challenge
In December I read 36 books, which is not bad for a month with so many other things to do in it!
I gave up on logging all my books on Goodreads somewhere around March – it’s just such a horribly clunky website to use, so I stopped bothering. I still upload reviews, but I don’t make a point of shelving everything I read, which means I don’t have a nifty graphic this year showing off what I read… but according to my own records, I read 510 books in 2021! I upped my goal several times, but this is beyond anything I hoped for!
Overall, I think December was a good reading month and the year as a whole can definitely be counted as successful! I’d love to know how you got on with your reading goals this year – leave me a link to your wrap up, or tell me how you did in the comments! And keep an eye out on Monday for my 2022 goals…
Well, December is here and the year is drawing to a close. But there are still 31 days of reading left, so despite everyone’s ‘Best Books of 2021’ posts going up on all sides, I’m doing mine at the very last moment possible – for now, let’s just look back at November’s books!
Goodreads Challenge
In November I read 58 books – I can’t believe I equalled last month’s amazing total! That means since the start of October I’ve read 116 books, and it pulls me up to 474 for the year so far. And there was me last month upping my goal to 450! I’m aiming for 500 now, which means I need to read 29 books or more in December – cheer me on!
My Owned TBR
In my wrap up for October I said I wanted to get my TBR down from 328 to 315, but I actually managed to get it down to 300, which I’m astounded by! I’ve been making a big effort to read from the TBR rather than picking up new things, but I did get an absolutely magical array of review copies which raised my numbers again, so I’m genuinely so impressed I managed to lower the number by 28 in total.
My December plans are going to be detailed more fully in a post tomorrow, but assuming that I might get a few books for Christmas, I’m going to set a goal of maintaining the TBR at 300 or fewer by the end of the year. That would be a reduction of more than 200 books over the course of the year, as I started January with 505!
Wrap Up
Least favourite: The Duchess War by Courtney Milan
Favourites: Slippery Creatures by KJ Charles; The Bachelor’s Valet by Arden Powell
Shortest: Two Bears by Patricia Hegarty and Rotem Teplow
Longest: Skyward by Brandon Sanderson
How was your reading month? Leave me a comment below and let me know!
I just had a real moment of huh when I typed that title – how can it be November already?
Goodreads Challenge
In October I read 58 books – no, that’s not a typo! This brings me up to 416 for the year so far. In last month’s wrap up I thought about raising my goal from 365 to 400, but I seem to have overshot that already. I’m now aiming for 450 books for the year, to match 2019.
A lot of this was helped by it being halfterm, so I had more time to read than usual. I set myself the challenge of reading 20 books across the two weeks, but ended up with 42!
My Owned TBR
I was aiming to lower my TBR from 360 to 350, but I managed to get it all the way down to 328! That’s 32 books down from last month – turns out I had a load of NetGalley approvals in the last few weeks, though I was fairly good about buying books.
For November, I’d like to get it down to 315, a drop of 13 books. It’s not a hugely ambitious goal, but I’m a little burned out after the last two weeks, and also, I’m still working on my sequels and want to be able to reread a couple of books to remind myself of the plots. I have ambitious plans for December, and I’d like to be under 300 books by the end of the year.
Physical Review Copies
Eight of the books I read were physical review copies. Five have had their reviews posted already, and two are for blog tours in November!
Wrap Up
Least favourite: Dangerous Women ed. Gardner Dozois and George RR Martin
Favourites: Swordheart by T Kingfisher; Scales and Sensibility by Stephanie Burgis
Shortest: The Greeks by Jonny Marx and Chaaya Prabhat
Longest: Dangerous Women ed. Gardner Dozois and George RR Martin
How was your reading month? Leave me a comment below and let me know!
I’m writing this on a dark and rainy night, so it’s really starting to feel like autumn’s here (which I suppose it solidly is). September felt incredibly long, and like August, the books I read at the beginning feel like they were months ago – but let’s see what I remember.
Goodreads Challenge
In September I read 30 books, which is very good going for what felt like a slumpy month – it hardly compares to August’s 46 books, but I’ll take it! I wanted to let myself go a little slower this month and for the first two weeks I spent most of my spare time knitting and playing Pokemon, which I think gave me the mental space to come back to my TBR pile a little less stressed. That brings me up to 358 for the year, so I should hit my goal of 365 some time in October, and I’ll need to raise it again for the end of the year!
My Owned TBR
I only planned to lower my TBR by five books in September, from 365 to 360, and I managed that, though I did have to put a fair bit of effort in over this last weekend to do it. It was partly a slower reading month, and partly a really bumper month for bookpost – there are so many great books being published at the moment! For October, I’d really like to drop to 350 for a nice round number. A reduction of ten books should be doable if I keep my eye on the ball…
I did want to focus a bit on sequels that required rereads of earlier books, but I didn’t do a great job of it – I only read three sequels in the whole month, and I jumped into all of them without rereading book one (shout out to Mike Brooks, who included a great summary of The Black Coast in the front of The Splinter King). But I suppose that’s better than nothing, and it was really lovely to get back to some worlds I recognised. I’m going to try to make sure I finish at least one series in October, as an ongoing goal.
Physical Review Copies
Ten of the books I read were physical review copies, and I need to crack on with writing those reviews! A couple are up already, and one is written but I’m going to hold onto it until a month before publication.
Yearly Tally
Last year on October 1st, I started tracking the dates that new books came in so I could see how long things were staying on my TBR – I can’t believe it’s been a year already! I acquired 408 books in that year – a mix of ones I’ve bought, been given or lent by friends and family, or accepted for review – and only 141 of them are still on on the TBR, which means I read 65% of my new books in the same year they arrived. I’m actually fairly impressed by that! I didn’t keep track of books I acquired and then DNFed, so there’s probably a couple of dozen of those too.
I’m definitely going to keep tracking this year and try to do even better, as well as clearing that backlog!
Wrap Up
Least favourite: Wood Angel by Erin Bowman
Favourites: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik; The Splinter King by Mike Brooks
Shortest: Magnificent Mabel and the Very Important Witch by Ruth Quayle
Longest: The Splinter King by Mike Brooks
How was your reading month? Leave me a comment below and let me know!
August has been a strange one. I had a great first week, then a slumpy bit, then a panicked final week, so some of my August reads feel like such a long time ago!
Goodreads Challenge
During August I read 46 books, so weirdly I exactly matched last month! That brings me up to 328 books read this year, which is fantastic – I crossed that 300 mark, which was my original year-end goal. I’m now aiming for 365 books read in 2021 – I’ve done it before, so let’s hope!
My Owned TBR
It was a real stretch, and even a week ago I didn’t think I was going to make it, but I did it: I got my TBR down to 365 books! That’s just a single year’s reading for me (on average) so I’m really starting to feel good about my downwards progress. This month it was mostly actual reading, rather than DNFing or unhauling unread books, too, so that’s a lot of effort there. I’m really proud – that’s 25 books down from the start of August. I also read all but two of the books from my Twitter Friends Pick My August TBR post!
Since I’ve hit a major TBR goal, and term’s starting again tomorrow, I’m going to give myself a slightly easier ride in September, and only aim to get down to 360 by October 1st. It’s a reduction of just five books, but any downwards movement is still good, and it will give me a bit of breathing space.
Having a lower TBR goal is also designed to let me shift focus a little – I want to tackle sequels this month! I have a lot of sequels and later books on my TBR for which I really ought to reread previous books to refresh my memory, but when I’m rushing headlong into reducing my numbers, I rarely feel like I can spare the time to reread, as it doesn’t move the needle downwards. In September, I’d like to tackle at least a couple of these that have been hanging on for a while. I’d definitely like one of them to be a reread of A Memory Called Empire so I can read A Desolation Called Peace!
Physical Review Copies
I’ve been focusing on ebooks as far as review copies go, as I noticed my NetGalley percentage had slipped a bit. I’ve been keeping on top of newer review copies, particularly kids’ ones, but I’ve not knocked out many of my older, adult review copies. The sequel focus I mentioned above will hopefully let me crack on with the large amount of second books I need to review!
I made a tiny bit of progress on my 20 Books of Summer challenge, by which I mean I read one more book. The review will be going up this week or next, so I’m going to count it, but that still means I only managed to do 9 of them. I’m going to leave the remaining 11 as a priority, even though the challenge is finished.
Wrap Up
Least favourite: While Beauty Slept by Elizabeth Blackwell
Favourites: A Posse of Princesses by Sherwood Smith (terrible title, but great book!); Marshmallow Pie On Stage by Clara Vulliamy; Catalyst Gate by Megan E O’Keefe
Shortest: Tiptoe Tiger by Jane Clarke and Britta Teckentrup
Longest: Catalyst Gate by Megan E O’Keefe
I’d love to read more wrap up posts, so leave me a comment below if you have one!
July has felt like hard work – between the heatwave, a bunch of other commitments, and my brain, I’ve had to really work for every page I’ve read!
Goodreads Challenge
During July I read 46 books, which I’m genuinely surprised by. I thought it would be closer to twenty, as I’ve really not been in the mood to read, but I’m impressed! That brings me up to 282 books for the year, so that 300 goal is getting closer and closer – I’m definitely going to consider upping my goal to 365 when I hit September, assuming nothing goes off track.
My Owned TBR
My plan for July was to get the TBR down from 418 to 400, which I did and then some! I’m currently sitting at 390, which is the result of a combination of reading mostly backlist books, and DNFing several books I no longer wanted to read. It was even lower than that, but I’ve had a flurry of review copies come in just in the last few days of the month!
I had a few days in July where I’ve really not been excited to read, but I’ve been using that kind of slumpy feeling to pick through my shelves and work out where my tastes have changed – when I started blogging I got dragged into the YA fantasy world because of all the hype, but although there are some gems I love in the genre, over time I’m realising that a lot of serious YA fantasy doesn’t do it for me any more. It’s no problem with the books, they just have a very specific vibe that isn’t what I’m looking for, so they never get picked up – and with so many amazing books in other genres to read, there were a lot I could just strike from the list. I unhauled over 50 books this month, some read, some not, which sounds like a huge amount but honestly, I’m not sure it’s made a visible difference!
This month I’d like to get the TBR down to 365, which is 25 books lower than now. It might be a stretch, but that really would be a single year’s stash!
Physical Review Copies
I’ve really lost track of keeping my review copy list updated, so my numbers are all over the place, but I’m making great progress on cutting the pile down visually. I have three stacks on my desk, and I want to reduce them to two by the end of the summer. I really need to crack on with the books in my 20 Books of Summer challenge, as I’ve only ticked one new one off the list this month, bringing me up to a total of eight.
Wrap Up
Least favourite: Wise Woman’s Telling by Faye Sampson; the Sisters in Fantasy anthologies
Favourites: The Nice and Accurate Good Omens TV Companion (seriously, this is how you do a behind-the-scenes book!); The Black Coast by Mike Brooks
Shortest: Sunbolt by Intisar Khanani
Longest: The Black Coast by Mike Brooks
I’d love to read more wrap up posts, so leave me a comment below if you have one!
June was a real blink-and-you’ll-miss-it month for me. I’ve been so busy with various writing, editing, and other projects – I feel like it’s only been about a week since my May Wrap Up!
Goodreads Challenge
I read 41 books in June, so slightly fewer than last month but still up at the top of my range! #SweepUpYourSmols was instrumental – I read 12 books that weekend alone. That takes me up to 236 for the year so far, so I’m closing in on my original goal of 300. If I hit it before September I’ll consider moving it up to 365 again and seeing if I can get a book a day in… I still haven’t updated my Goodreads, and honestly it’s just so much easier to keep track here on my TBR page, so I might give up on trying to keep it updated, apart from copying across reviews every so often.
My Owned TBR
My goal for June was to decrease the number of books on my TBR by 13 books, and it was a hard-fought battle, but I finally managed it and even got lower than that. After being so good about buying and requesting books in May, I went off the rails in June and had 34 books come in, which is the opposite of helpful (though I’m pleased to have all of them individually)! But I did make it down to 418, for a reduction of 15 books (and 100 books down since February)!
I’m going to try and stretch myself this month and get the TBR down to 400 – 18 books lower than it is right now. It would be so refreshing to have only a year’s worth in stock, as it were!
Physical Review Copies
My physical review copies are down to 48, and I have several half-written or scheduled reviews, so I’m making some progress finally! The 20 Books of Summer challenge is proving helpful, and I’ve ticked off seven of the twenty so far, which is about right for the first month. I need to get a bit more focused though, as there are some long books coming up.
Wrap Up
Least favourite: All a Woman Wants by Patricia Rice
Favourites: Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston; Wundersmith by Jessica Townsend
Shortest: Mooncat and Me by Lydia Corry
Longest: Unfettered, edited by Shawn Speakman
I’d love to read more wrap up posts, so leave me a comment below if you have one!
I’ve changed the name of my TBR Check In this month – it’s shifted over the years to a more conventional wrap up, so I’m going to lean into it!
Goodreads Challenge
I ended up reading 46 books in May, which I’m very happy with! I was vaguely aiming for one a day, but I had a few really productive reading days, especially this last weekend. That takes me up to 195 for the year, though I haven’t updated my actual Goodreads in a good few months – it’s just so clunky to use and takes more effort than simply keeping track on my TBR page… I must go through and copy my reviews across, though. I’m over 60% of the way to my year’s goal of 300, with only 40% of the year gone!
My Owned TBR
My goal for May was to fix the damage done to my TBR by my birthday book haul, and get the total back down from 473 to 460 books – and I’m pleased to report I’ve done even better than that, and I’m down to 433! That’s a reduction of 40 books from May 1st. I didn’t go on an official book buying ban, but I think I only bought two books for myself, and I’ve been trying to keep my requests to a minimum too, so I only had 19 books come in during May. I also DNFed a few older Kindle freebies. This is really starting to feel doable!
I’d like to keep going with the monthly goals, since they still seem to be working, so I’m going to aim to get my TBR down to 420 by the end of June. That’s 13 books down – fingers crossed!
Physical Review Copies
My physical review copies are only down a little bit, to 57, but several more books have been read and are just awaiting review, and a good quarter of books remaining on the TBR are picture books or board books, so they’ll easily be swept up into Kitten Corner posts! I wish I’d made a little more progress, but maybe this month I can get it down to 50.
Wrap Up
My reading was a little bit less intense this month, but I still had some books I really enjoyed!
Least favourite: The Light of the Midnight Stars by Rena Rossner; To Love A Scandalous Duke by Liana de la Rosa
Favourites: The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune; Jackdaw by KJ Charles; Fine Deceptions by Stephanie Burgis
Shortest: Princess Princess Ever After by Kay O’Neill
Longest: Some of the Best from Tor.com 2016
I’d love to read more wrap up posts, so drop me a comment below if you have one!
A Cat, A Book, and A Cup of Tea 