I read one of the worst books of the year already in January, but I also read some really excellent ones as well! I have also condensed my emoji indicators for whether or not it’s something I purchased, received for review, etc! It’s been a few years, and with this new layout and it being a new year/new approach to my blog, I decided to make a small update! I don’t particularly track whether or not something is in audio or ebook for end of year review, so those went away. As I have a track record for not posting my Bookends posts in a relatively timely manner, I’m not including what I’m currently reading in wrap up posts! Even though I have been posting two or more months in a wrap up, I will be posting each month individually every Friday for January through April to catch up, and then my wrap ups will be monthly!
💖 Spells for Forgetting, by Adrienne Young
💖 Babel: An Arcane History, by R.F. Kuang
🌠👻 Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match, by Sally Thorne
💖💞 Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine
💖 The Gossamer Mage, by Julie E. Czerneda
💖 A Kiss at Midnight, by Eloisa James
💖 Dark Prince, by Christine Feehan
I read eight books in January! I think my favorite of the month was Babel: An Arcane History, but I enjoyed Spells for Forgetting and Up All Night With a Good Duke!! Ella Enchanted is a favorite of mine, and I reread it to avoid getting stuck in a book slump after DNFing the Sally Thorne book which was arguably one of the worst books I’ve read this year if not one of the worst books I’ve attempted to read in a while due to its weird interpretation of Frankenstein but as a romance. It gave me the super ick. The Gossamer Mage and A Kiss at Midnight were fine, and I enjoyed Dark Prince more than I thought I would! Vampires seem to have a resurgence lately, and I’m ready for it.
I am an irregular blogger, and I accept this about myself. Without further delay, here is what I read last four months of 2021! January’s wrap-up is in the works!
FINISHED READING
Each month is separated!
I read six books in September! This was the shortest reading month of the year, partially due to a start of a new semester at work that ate away at my brain space and being in a reading slump. My favorite of the month was The Hacienda, and my least favorite of the month was And Then There Were None. I think I may enjoy watching Agatha Christie adaptations more than reading them.
⌛️ Act of Service – Lillian Fishman 📚The Ghost Bride – Yangsze Choo
⌛️The Hacienda – Isabel Cañas
📚💞 Twenty-Five Books That Shaped America – Thomas C. Foster
📚 And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie
🎧💞 Lirael – Garth Nix, read by Tim Curry
I read eleven books in October, a lot of manga to try to catch up on my reading goal for the year! This was a solid reading month with no real duds for me!
📚 I’m Glad My Mom Died – Jennette McCurdy ⌛️ Small Favors – Erin A. Craig 📚 The Year of the Witching – Alexis Henderson 📱 Duke Gone Rogue – Christy Carlyle (Thank you, Avon!) 📱 Tsubaki-Chou Lonely Planet, vol 1 – Mika Yamamori (Thank you, Yen Press!) 📚 Foreigner – C.J. Cherryh ⌛️ The Savior’s Book Cafe Story in Another World, vol 1 – Kyouka Izumi, Oumiya, Reiko Sakurada ⌛️ The Savior’s Book Cafe Story in Another World, vol 2 – Kyouka Izumi, Oumiya, Reiko Sakurada ⌛️ Practical Magic – Alice Hoffman 📚 Nights With a Cat, vol 1– KyuryuZ 📚 Nights With a Cat, vol 2– KyuryuZ
I read thirteen books in November. A lot of them were novellas, but I still count them! I also enjoyed the experience of listening to all of the novellas in the Into Shadow collection.
📚 Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured – Kathryn Harrison 📱 Happy Place – Emily Henry (thank you, Berkley!) 🎧 The Six Deaths of the Saint – Alix E. Harrow 📚 Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor – Xiran Jay Zhao ⌛️ The Savior’s Book Cafe Story in Another World – Kyouka Izumi, Oumiya, Reiko Sakurada 🎧 The Garden – Tomi Adeymei 🎧 The Candles are Burning – Veronica G. Henry 🎧 Persephone – Lev Grossman 🎧 What the Dead Know – Nghi Vo ⌛️ Castles in Their Bones – Laura Sebastian 📚 No Longer Human – Osamu Dozai 🎧 Out of the Mirror, Darkness – Garth Nix 📱 Maeve Fly – C.J. Leede (thank you, Tor Nightfire!)
I read eight books in December! The Book of Gothel was a great fictional historical history of the Rapunzel fairy tale from the mother’s point of view. Undercover only made me want to read more by Tamsyn Muir and revisit The Locked Tomb series. I liked The Queen of the Tearling but I hadn’t realized when I started it that it’s set in the FUTURE, yet it feels very… traditional fantasy sort of thing. I’m interested to see where the rest of the trilogy goes.
⌛️ The Book of Gothel – Mary McMyne 🎧 Undercover – Tamsyn Muir 📚 Star Wars X-Wing: Rogue Squadron – Michael A. Stackpole 📱 Burning Roses – S.L. Huang (Thank you, tordotcom!) ⌛️ How to Keep House While Drowning – K.C. Davis ⌛️ The Thursday Murder Club – Richard Osman 📓 Egypt’s Golden Couple – John Darnell and Colleen Darnell (Thank you, St. Martin’s Press!)
CLOSING OUT
2022 was a weird reading year. I wasn’t motivated to read certain things I’d picked out for myself, for review and for myself, and I came to the conclusion that I’m going to be focusing less on chasing review copies and more about reading for myself and going back to what it was like when I started this blog. I was reading and posting stuff for me, not for obligation and internet points or whatever. I want to maintain the relationships I currently have with a few publishers and contacts, and I still will request things if they come through my inbox, and I’m able to get to them in a timely manner. I also have Edelweiss and Netgalley at my leisure. Posts will be likely infrequent and sporadic, with a few changes here and there in formatting and approach, but I think having less external pressure to have things submitted and put up and done will help with the pressure I put on myself, too.
I have realized since creating the feature “Bookends” that I do not have the mental capacity or energy to do a post every weekend, so my monthly/yearly wrap ups have been renamed to Bookends! I’m not going to change/adjust any of my previous posts, but from here on out, my end of the month/year posts will be filed under this!
CURRENTLY READING
I knew I wasn’t going to finish The Big Book of Science Fiction, but I was hoping to finish A People’s History of the United States and The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem. I am making an effort in January to finish both of those (as well as The Rush’s Edge) so that I at least finish out this month with finishing up the books I read in 2020. It’s a new year, so I need a new start! But the SF one is HUGE and it is kind of fun to pick through and read stories from it every now and then. I do want to read the fantasy ones, so I need to finish this! At this point, I’m not really reading anything new as I just finished my first two books of 2021, so I think I’ll leave this as is until the January post!
The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem – ed. Jeremy Noel-Tod
📚 A People’s History of the United States – Howard Zinn (29%)
📚 The Big Book of Science Fiction – edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (15%)
📚 The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem: From Baudelaire to Anne Carson – edited by Jeremy Noel-Tod (8%)
📓 The Rush’s Edge – Ginger Smith (17%)
FINISHED READING
I read twelve books in December! I really enjoyed the books I read this month, and I think that’s because I leaned into my whims and read what I wanted to read. I did manage two arcs and one published review copy, so I’m pleased with that! I’m trying to use my library more, and three of these were library titles too. I am pleased to be completely caught up (until February) with the ACOTAR series as I’ve had A Court of Wings and Ruin and A Court of Frost and Starlight unread on my shelves for far too long. TBH I think I was just tired of Rhys and Feyre by the middle of book three that I didn’t particularly care (or see a true need) for the novella. I am very excited about Nesta’s continuation, though! 2021 is going to be bringing changes with me, and I am ready for my own ‘tidying festival’ and letting go of a lot of things in my life, including so many of my possessions.
📚 Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and LA – Eve Babitz (4.5/5 stars)
⌛️ Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies – Tara Schuster (4/5 stars)
📓 One Writer’s Beginnings – Eudora Welty (4.5/5 stars; thank you, Scribner!)
⌛️ Mortal Arts – Anna Lee Huber (4/5 stars)
📱 Ruinsong – Julia Ember (4/5 stars; thank you, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR))
📚 The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue – V.E. Schwab (5/5 stars)
📓 A Princess for Christmas – Jenny Holiday (4/5 stars)
📚 The Little Bookshop on the Seine – Rebecca Raisin (3/5 stars)
📚 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying-Up – Marie Kondo (4.5/5 stars)
⌛️ Spark Joy – Marie Kondo (4.5/5 stars)
📚 A Court of Frost and Starlight – Sarah J. Maas (3/5 stars)
📚 Ex-Libris: 100+ Books to Read and Reread – Michiko Kakutani (4/5 stars)
ON THE HORIZON
All of these are physical copies because I ended up buying Persephone Station with a gift card I had! I had an e-arc, but the more I read about the book, the more I wanted a physical copy for my shelves. Last year, I enjoyed Mike Chen’s A Beginning at the End, so I’m curious to see how this new one stacks up! Doors of Sleep was sent to me by Angry Robot, and I’ve been enjoying their newest titles! Laziness Does Not Exist appealed to me on several different levels, and one of my unofficial 2021 goals is to read more nonfiction of all different sorts. Everyone and their mothers is reading and rereading the Bridgerton series, and I ended up buying the whole series on Thriftbooks before the series was released on Netflix. I’m glad I did now, because it’s impossible to find! The Heiress: The Revelations of Anne de Bourgh sounds like something right up my alley because I always love some further explorations of Pride & Prejudice, especially some of the background characters.
Persephone Station – Stina Leicht
We Could Be Heroes – Mike Chen
Doors of Sleep – Tim Pratt
Laziness Does Not Exist – Devon Price, PhD
The Duke and I – Julia Quinn
The Heiress: The Revelations of Anne de Bourgh – Molly Greeley
📚 Persephone Station – Stina Leicht
📓 We Could Be Heroes – Mike Chen (Thank you, Mira!)
📓 Doors of Sleep – Tim Pratt (Thank you, Angry Robot!)
📓 Laziness Does Not Exist – Devon Price, Ph.D. (Thank you, Atria!)
📚 The Duke and I – Julia Quinn
📓 The Heiress: The Revelations of Anne de Bourgh – Molly Greeley (Thank you William Morrow!)
WHAT I ACQUIRED
Me, trying to be on a book buying ban: LOL
I bought too many second-hand romance and fantasy at thrift stores because romance basically got me through some tough times in 2020, but I also need to read the many books I bought last year before I really start doing this thing again… but there’s that meme floating around that book buying and book reading are two completely different hobbies… In addition to the books above in the On the Horizon section, I also bought/received the following. Some were on sale 50% at work, some (like Mrs. Dalloway and The Great Gatsby) were released in editions I collect, some were monthly picks for the store, etc, etc. I really enjoyed the e-arc I read of The Guinevere Deception, so I had to order it in hardcover to match The Camelot Betrayal!
📚 Becoming Duchess Goldblatt – Anonymous
📓 Craft in the Real World – Matthew Salesses (Thank you, Catapult!)
📚 Eva Evergreen: Semi-Magical Witch – Julia Abe
📚 Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
📚 Pretty as a Picture – Elizabeth Little
📓 Single and Forced to Mingle – Melissa Croce (Thank you, Atria!)
📚 Star Wars The High Republic: Light of the Jedi – Charles Soule
📚 The Guinevere Deception – Kiersten White
📚 The Camelot Betrayal – Kiersten White
📚 The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
📓 The Mission – David W. Brown (Thank you, Custom House!)
📚 Winterborne Home for Vengeance and Valor – Ally Carter
ON SCREEN
GAMING: I played Animal Crossing for a bit, but I haven’t had the mental space for a lot of video games this past month. I’ve even been sporadically logging into World of Warcraft, so I don’t have many updates there except for I think I burnt myself out leading up to Shadowlands.
TV: I still have two episodes of The Mandalorian to watch, and then I’m going to finish out Dark and start Bridgerton.
MOVIES: WW84 was disappointing, but I’m seeing it next week in theaters now that they’re open again and maybe that will change it for me..
PERSONAL
I read 118 books in 2020, didn’t finish or even nearly complete any of my challenges, so I decided to go easier on myself in 2021. I’ll have a post coming soon with some goals I want to try to do by the end of the year, but I’m still working on figuring out what those are!
The end of the year while working in retail in the middle of a pandemic is not the best time to try to bring back a blog and instagram with any regular frequency, but HERE I AM. I’m TRYING. And that’s all that we can do, really. I read a little bit more in November than I did in October, but I didn’t really write any posts, so I’m making up for it now.
CURRENTLY READING
I’m still picking at A People’s History of the United States and The Big Book of Science Fiction (because they’re stuck under a stack of books and I’m too lazy to dig them out), and I’m reading a few prose poems a week out of The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem. They make me think about writing and prose poetry’s space in it all, so I’m enjoying savoring it. I also have a problem with waiting until the last minute to read my digital library loans, so I’m working my way through the next Lady Darby mystery, Mortal Arts. Angry Robot sent me a copy of The Rush’s Edge which I’m enjoying! And Scribner’s rerelease of One Writer’s Beginnings is a perfect winter read about writing.
The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem – ed. Jeremy Noel-Tod
📚 A People’s History of the United States – Howard Zinn (29%)
📚 The Big Book of Science Fiction – edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (15%)
📚 The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem: From Baudelaire to Anne Carson – edited by Jeremy Noel-Tod (8%)
⌛️ Mortal Arts – Anna Lee Huber (25%)
📓 One Writer’sBeginnings – Eudora Welty (10%)
📓 The Rush’s Edge – Ginger Smith (17%)
FINISHED READING
I read nine books in November! Most were okay, but some felt like a slog to get through. ACOWAR took the longest for me to read, and I feel like up until the 400th page or so, it was just the same cycle of action and inaction, really, that could have been condensed into a much smaller book. Wuthering Heights was one I’ve struggled with for years, and I just decided at the end of the month to read it and be done with it. The atmosphere was great, but I wasn’t expecting that level of emotional and physical violence and also why people consider it a love story. I’ve been in a nonfiction mood because I don’t really have to use my brain power to follow a linear story, and The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs and Time Travel: A History were great science reads.
📚 Nooks & Crannies – Jessica Lawson (4/5 stars)
📚 The Breakthrough – Daphne du Maurier (3.5/5 stars)
📚 A Court of Wings and Ruin – Sarah J. Maas (3.5/5 stars)
📚 A Duke of Her Own – Eloisa James (2/5 stars)
⌛️ Flyaway – Kathleen Jennings (3/5 stars)
📚 Lady Bridget’s Diary – Maya Rodale (3/5 stars)
⌛️ The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs – Stephen Brusatte (4/5 stars)
⌛️ Time Travel: A History – James Gleick (4/5 stars)
📚 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte (3/5 stars)
ON THE HORIZON
I’m keeping this short and to the point because setting lofty TBR goals has never been one of my strong suits, but I really, really, need to read Real Life, I can’t resist rereading The Princess Diaries after seeing these new covers, and I want to start picking away at my neverending digital galley pile and Ruinsong is calling out to me the most.
📚 Real Life – Brandon Taylor
📚 The Princess Diaries – Meg Cabot
📱 Ruinsong – Julia Ember (thank you, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR))
WHAT I ACQUIRED
I am putting myself on a book buying ban from like… now until the end of 2021, because as I was sorting through my shelves this week and weeding a few titles out, I have too many unread books. I will still make a few requests here and there to publishers and check out books from the library, but I have to stop accumulating so much stuff. The first three books in Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive were on a really good deal, and I couldn’t pass them up. I’ve been holding off on starting this series, but I am also kind of in the mood for fantasy like this. Orbit Books had a great ebook sale over Black Friday weekend, so I picked up The Bone Shard Daughter, Nophek Gloss, and We Ride the Storm as they’re all books I’ve been anticipating reading! (And I also need to get back in the habit of reading things on my kindle/phone, so…) From Atria, I received Astrid Seeds All and To Love and to Loathe (I loved Waters’ debut! So I am excited for this one), and from Hachette, I received Culture Warlords. I’ve been following Talia Lavin on Twitter for a while now, and I enjoy her online presence and the work she’s done, so I’m curious to read her book now.
📚 The Way of Kings – Brandon Sanderson
📚 Words of Radiance – Brandon Sanderson
📚 Oathbringer – Brandon Sanderson
💾 The Bone Shard Daughter – Andrea Stewart
💾 Nophek Gloss – Essa Hansen
💾 We Ride the Storm – Devin Madson
📓 Astrid Sees All – Natalie Standiford (thank you, Atria Books!)
📓 Culture Warlords – Talia Lavin (thank you, Hachette Books!)
📓 To Love and to Loathe – Martha Waters (thank you, Atria Books!)
ON SCREEN
GAMING: I just hit 60 in Shadowlands on my main, and I think I’m going to give tanking a try with the new Death Knight I rolled on the Alliance side.
TV: I finished The Golden Girls, and I kind of don’t know what to watch next. I’m still keeping up with The Mandalorian, and I’m enjoying where that series is going!
MOVIES: Disney’s live-action Mulan was entertaining but it fell flat in a lot of places for me. I also rewatched Trainwreck because it’s one of those movies I watch to cheer myself up.
PERSONAL
Life has been busy with work, adjusting to new policies and enforcing them with customers, and just carrying on with life when it’s so… weird and all up in the air. I know it won’t immediately get better in 2021, but for the first time in a long time, I have hope.
Halfway through September is a good time to do an August wrap up, yes? Time is such a weird thing with the pandemic, and I’m also still struggling about how I want to do this blog, but the more I think about it, the more I just need to do what I want, when I want, and if there’s a week of posts every month, then that’s the case! I know I wanted to do some writing for blog posts and otherwise last week, but with how things lined up at work, I ended up working nine days in a row with little to no time to myself, so that threw me off. I want to try to do three or four posts a week, and if I can schedule/write out a post or two a night, I can keep things on track.
Lately with the weather here in Colorado getting colder, I find myself more interested in keeping up this blog (but who knows how long that enthusiasm will last??), but I have to keep reminding myself that I’m writing for me and really no one else, because I like looking back on what I’ve read and how I thought about the things I read. I think ultimately I’m struggling with social media and Instagram in particular, because while that’s easier in a sense, I don’t feel like I’m getting much out of it anymore. I know I like buying books and collecting books, but I need to actually read them too. I also am making plans to clear out my shelves, reorganize, and weed out everything so that I feel motivated to read what I haven’t read and get rid of what I know I won’t read any time soon. With the library and places to buy used books, I know that if I ever want to read what I’ve let go of I know there will be opportunities to read them again in the future.
I’m also in the process of planning out my 2021 book bullet journal and tying in a book thoughts journal to go with it. I read a lot of books I don’t end up reviewing for one reason or another, but I would like to keep a personal book journal to have a physical thing to refer to in the future if anything happens to the internet!
I haven’t made much progress on any of my challenges and have been reading what I’ve been drawn to, and in August, that was a lot of shorter, easier reads because August felt more stressful with more full days than other months.
In August, I read:
The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison
Letter From Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King, Jr.
The A.I. Who Loved Me, by Alyssa Cole
The Binding, by Bridget Collins
The Duke’s Stolen Bride, by Sophie Jordan
Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward that Deathchamber, by Allen Ginsberg
