April 2024 Wrap-Up

Finally, a monthly wrap-up in 2024!

Reflection

This was a great reading month for me, with my average rating for the month finally getting over 4 for the first time in ages. One reason for this is that I have been DNFing very liberally, hitting a record high of 4 DNFed books in a month. It’s so liberating to just stop when a book starts to feel like a chore! I had a lot of great buddy reads this month too that I’m glad I made time for as they really enhanced the reading experience.

I’ve been reading a lot of indie books and underrated tradpub books I haven’t seen talked about much. I’ve liked pretty much all of them so I hope more people read them!

In non-bookish news, I ran my first 5k ever in April, and I did way better than I expected! Now I’ve committed to a 10k (I’ve never run that far in my life) with one of my friends in the fall, so training starts now!

Stats

Books Read: 9

Books DNFed: 4

Owned Books Read or DNFed: 5

Pages Read: 3,476 (1,196 with eyeballs, 62 hours listened)

Average Pages/Day: 115

Most Read Pages in a Day: 195 on the 19th

Top Ten Tuesday: Petty Reasons I’ve DNFed/Rated Books Lower

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish, and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week’s topic is petty reasons you have DNFed or rated a book lower. As a person who loves a good book rant, this is a great topic lol. This is mostly a list of my bookish pet peeves, which I’ve come to realize as I’ve read more and more books.

1. Instant Retrospection

This is when something important happens, and either the narrative text or the POV character thinks something along the lines of, “and this is the moment that changed my life forever.” It instantly takes me out of the story. In real life, it’s difficult to know, even in retrospect, which single moment changed your life. It’s usually a bunch of little moments and decisions adding up that change the trajectory of your life. So this kind of thing instantly reminds that there is a god–the author–deciding what happens to this character, and telling you point blank that HEY, this moment is IMPORTANT, pay attention, instead of showing you that later. It’s been a pet peeve of mine ever since I read Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng in 2019, as this narrative device is used constantly throughout that book.

2. Mismarketing

I’ve talked about this before with some of the books I read last year. I love science fiction in all its forms, and nothing grinds my gears more than when a book is classified as science fiction but does not fit the genre in any way whatsoever. I have very low standards for scientific accuracy or detail in the sci-fi I read, but I do feel like there should at least be an attempt at a technological explanation if a book is labeled solely as sci-fi and not a sci-fantasy. I find this most frustrating in literary fiction novels that have a light speculative element (that usually turns out to be magical realism or fantasy) but are advertised as science fiction. Recent examples for me include The Moonday Letters by Emmi Itäranta, The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa, and Flux by Jinwoo Chong.

3. Purple Prose

This is a huge one for me. I’ve realized over the years that my brain really likes straightforward prose. I can definitely appreciate very descriptive and visual prose, especially with great rhythm. But my mind wanders when trying to read long sentences, especially with limited paragraph breaks. I also don’t like when a book is constantly using “SAT vocabulary” that requires you to check the dictionary every other sentence, especially when a much simpler word would have worked. The purple prose was the main reason why I DNFed This Is How You Lose the Time War and why I did not enjoy A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine.

4. Too Silly or Unrealistic

This is why I struggle to get along with most contemporary romances. One big reason I like to read is so I can see into the inner worlds of characters, to really understand them as people. I don’t tend to read funny books as I find visual comedy in the form of TV shows or movies more enjoyable. So when characters act in ways that I can’t see anyone acting in real life no matter their personality, I can’t get past it (especially when the book is a mix of seriousness and silliness). I know a lot of people love Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake, but I was so annoyed by the group of 30-somethings playing childish pranks instead of having important emotional conversations with their best friends.

5. Pop Culture References

I’m sure this is a common pet peeve for a lot of people, as it instantly dates a book. It’s especially irritating to me when the author is referencing something they don’t fully understand or haven’t experienced due to generational differences. One recent example of this was in Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline, where a Gen Z character uses Facebook in the 2020s like it’s 2012-era emo Instagram.

6. Uneven Passing of Time

This specifically bothers me when the narrative or a character says that an event will happen “soon,” but the reader has to get through many more chapters before that event happens. This was one of the reasons I DNFed A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys. The first few chapters seemed to have taken place over a span of a few weeks, but when a character mentioned traveling somewhere in a week’s time, there were five chapters in between.

7. Constant Tragedy

Now I love dark books–my third most read mood on StoryGraph actually changed from “reflective” to “dark” just a few days ago. But for me, I can’t really enjoy a book if nothing positive every happens amongst all the tragedy. I feel this most acutely with historical fiction books because it comes off as trauma porn, especially since most past events the general public learns about are tragedies. It seems so limiting and desensitizes us to the real tragedies of the past. This is the main reason why I didn’t enjoy The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, and why I DNFed The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See.

8. Audiobooks: Audible Breaths

I couldn’t think of any more actual bookish content pet peeves, so the last three are petty reasons that I’ve specifically DNFed audiobooks. This one is self-explanatory: when a narrator’s intakes of breaths are so loud that they can be heard. It’s extremely distracting! I DNFed the audiobook of VenCo by Cherie Dimaline less than 20 minutes in for this reason, though I still plan to read it with my eyes in the future.

9. Audiobooks: Unnatural Pauses / Lack of Rhythm

As I mentioned above, I do appreciate prose with a good rhythm. So it’s really annoying when the audiobook narrator disrupts that rhythm with random pauses in places they don’t belong. This was so distracting in the audio version of Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. Alston that it definitely affected my enjoyment (and in some cases, understanding) of the story. I also DNFed the audiobook of Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh for this reason.

10. Audiobooks: High Pitched Voices

Saved the worst for last, lol. I really can’t stand when narrators use an extremely high-pitched voice for certain characters. This is especially awful when it is men narrating female characters, but the worst example for me recently was actually from a woman. The voice the narrator of Abeni’s Song by P. Djèlí Clark used for various female characters was so shrill that it hurt my ears! I quit less than 2% in, which is a shame because I’m really looking forward to reading it, especially since a sequel is coming out soon!

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Well, that was a fun rant, lol. I’ve been DNFing quite a bit this year, and it has felt so freeing to not force myself to finish books I’m not enjoying, even if it may be for a petty reason. Some people love these things that annoy me, and hate the things that I love, so I’m glad there are books out there for everyone’s different tastes. 🙂

Do you agree or disagree with my picks? What are some of your bookish pet peeves?

Happy reading!

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StoryGraph | Goodreads | Bookstagram

Best Books of Q1 2024

Hey, long time no see!

I stopped posting for a while because I pretty much lost the motivation (and time) to write book reviews and format blog posts. I wrote most of my posts last year while at work, since I didn’t have much to do. Work has been a lot busier this year though, so it’s been harder for me to find the time. I had originally wanted to at least post monthly wrap-ups, but I got halfway through my January one and never finished it, so I gave up on that endeavor.

But I wanted to share my favorite books I read in the first quarter of this year, especially since the books read during this time tend to fade from memory in December when I’m deciding on my favorites for the year. And these books deserve to be remembered!

Without further ado, here’s my list! These were all 5 star books for me, and are in the order that I read them.

Anticipated Releases Q1 2024

I stopped posting anticipated releases in the second half of last year, partly because I didn’t feel like writing a lot of posts in general, and also because I felt a pressure (completely self-imposed for no reason, but still) to actually pick up everything I put on the lists. I had a few bad experiences with ones I had posted about, and I ended up removing a few from my TBR due to high proportions of negative reviews.

But it is fun to look ahead to new releases, and publicize some that may be lesser known, so I’m reformatting these a bit. I’m going to highlight a couple new releases every quarter that I definitely plan to read (or might have already due to an ARC), which will probably mostly be from authors I’ve read before. Then I’ll add some additional books that I have on my radar that I may or may not read in the future. This way I can squee about upcoming books I’m really excited about, while still noting down ones that may interest me later!

Must Reads

I have two must-reads coming up for the first quarter of 2024.

Your Utopia by Bora Chung, tr. by Anton Hur
Releasing January 30

Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson
Releasing March 12

After loving Bora Chung’s English debut short story collection last year, Cursed Bunny, I immediately wanted to read more from her. I was thrilled when I first found out about Your Utopia. I have an eARC but haven’t gotten to it yet. I have heard more mixed reviews compared to Cursed Bunny, so I’m trying to temper my expectations while still fully appreciating what weirdness comes out of Chung’s brain next.

I absolutely adored The Space Between Worlds in 2022, and I’m really looking forward to the next book taking place in the same world (seems to be more of a companion novel than a sequel). I plan to reread Space and then read the next book soon after.

My Top 10 Best Books of 2023

Well, I’ve finally gone through my list of books and chosen the best of the best!

I read 124 books in 2023–a new record for me, beating last year by 22, which was also my highest amount read in a year at the time. Of the 124, I rated fifteen books 5 stars (which is a little disappointing to me considering that’s 12%), one of which was a reread. I loosely ranked the remaining 14 and knocked off a few that no longer resonate to create this list. Despite the ranking though, I truly adored all of these books and am happy to share them as the best of the best!

December 2023 Wrap-Up

My last monthly wrap-up of 2023!

Reflection

I know I’m writing this late, but man, December feels like it was a million years ago! I had already forgotten most of these books, which is mainly explained by the fact that I read so many “just fine” books. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever given so many ratings in the 3 star range in one month, which is kind of a disappointing way to end the year. I had such high hopes for so many of them too. I even tried a contemporary romance for the first time in a while, which was yet again a bust. Thankfully I did read some great horror, which was the reading highlight of the month!

Outside of reading, it was a pretty chill but good month. I got to see Patrick Stewart, as I mentioned in my last wrap-up, as well as The Regrettes (which was sadly their farewell tour 😢). My husband and I went on a little trip to Tucson and explored Saguaro National Park, adding another stamp to our national park scrapbook. We’re not big Christmas people, so we just saw our families real quick for dinner.

I hope you all had a fun and/or relaxing end to 2023 and beginning of 2024!

The book covers link to their general StoryGraph book pages, whereas the written titles link to my StoryGraph review.

2023 Goals Recap & 2024 Goals

I’ve been thinking about my 2024 reading goals for the past few months but I’m finally writing it up now!

Here’s my 2023 goals post, and I’ll go through each item quickly here.

2023 Goals Recap

1. Zero books less than 2 stars – Fail (2 books @ 1.5 stars)
I failed my overall goal here but my secondary goal was fewer 1 star books than 2022, and I succeeded in that, going from 11 books/10% to 2 books/2%. So overall I’m pretty satisfied.

2. Half of books by BIPOC authors – Success @ 52%, one-third by openly queer authors – Fail @ 29%
I just missed the queer goal but still pretty happy with these numbers.

3. Read more fantasy – Success
I did so well in this that at one point during 2023, my reading was 50% fantasy, and I started to read other things to compensate!

4. Read more series – Success?
According to my all-up reading spreadsheet I actually read fewer series in 2023 than 2022, but since I read a lot more series in my preferred genres (SFF as opposed to a lot of disappointing romance in 2022), I’m considering this a success.

4a. Read more books from the same author – Success
There were three authors I read 4 or more books by: Tasha Suri, Fonda Lee, and Shannon Chakraborty.

5. 15% of books nonfiction – Success @ 19%

6. More translated and non-Western books – Success @ 15% and 21%
I did a LOT better than 2022 here! I almost quadrupled my ratio of translated books (4% to 15%) and doubled the ratio of books I read from outside the US, UK, and Canada (10% to 21%). Though slight caveat: I am redefining my original intention behind “Western” to countries underrepresented in mainstream publishing / the world other than the countries most like my own, both for ease of tracking and for the fact that books by European authors are still learning experiences.

7. Re-Read – Fail @ 4 books
I re-read fewer books than 2022 (5 books) so I consider this a fail. I didn’t even re-read any Becky Chambers!

8. Don’t force myself to read just for the sake of numbers – Mixed
I didn’t do too well with this goal in the first five months of 2023, as I kept finishing things I hated just to satisfy reading challenge prompts or to diversify my data. But I did a lot better from June onwards (which is obvious looking at my DNF numbers as I only DNFed 2 books from January to May and 9 books from June to December). Regardless, I think I did pretty well considering how much I used to love hate reading and ranting about crappy books. So overall I’m spending less time on books I dislike.

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2024 Goals

I’m not going to set any overall quotas for 2024. I spent a lot of time on reading challenges in 2023, and I don’t want to repeat that in 2024. I also have started feeling a bit icky about looking into authors’ backgrounds, so I’m no longer tracking whether authors are openly queer or not. I am also considering no longer tracking white/BIPOC since it feels like arbitrarily putting people in boxes, especially for non-American authors. I’m keeping it in my personal spreadsheet for now since it’s a decent snapshot of how diverse my reading is, but I don’t plan on publicizing author identity data on this blog anymore.

Now for the fun part!

Science fiction is by far my favorite genre in all media, but 2023 was the first year where it wasn’t my most-read genre (and actually ended up being in third place behind non-fiction of all things!). It was also one of my lowest rated genres in 2023, which was most disappointing of all.

On the plus side, I learned in 2023 that I actually really like horror, especially the ones that cross the border into “what the fuck?” weirdness 🤣 (which tend to be translated).

With both of these facts in mind, I’m planning for 2024 to be the year of science fiction, horror, and weird (translated) lit! As I said, I won’t have any quotas, and I still plan to read fantasy of course, but I really want to dive deeper into these genres.

So, here are my goals:

1. Focus on sci-fi, horror, and weird lit, especially translated

1a. More diversity in genres, especially outside SFF
This might seem contradictory with the above goal, but basically I don’t want my reading to be 50% one genre at any point ever again (plus, weird lit can be any genre!). Before I joined bookish social media, I used to read a lot of historical fiction (especially generational sagas) along with SFF, and I’d like to get back into that again as I barely read any in the past two years.

2. DNF liberally and with no regrets, even for reading challenges
Self-explanatory!

3. Read down my owned books
I plan to make a post about this eventually, but I bought a lot more books in 2023 than usual, so I’d like to get my unread numbers lower. I don’t have any specific number in mind, and I don’t think it’s possible to get to zero by the end of this year, so I think I’ll do what @accipiterf1 is doing and aim to read at least 1 owned physical book and 1 owned ebook per month to get into the habit and still allow myself plenty of library reading.

4. Re-read!
I’m probably going to repeat this goal every year because I want to read more books I love! Since 2022, I’ve re-read one of my teenage self’s favorite book series each year, and in 2024 I hope to continue the tradition by re-reading the Graceling series (which I think has a pretty good chance of holding up!). I also have solid plans to re-read The Space Between Worlds, Jade City, and books 3 and 4 of the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers. So that’s at least 7 books right there, which is more than 2022! I also might re-read some books with sequels coming out this year, but we’ll see.

5. More short stories
I also learned in 2023 that I actually can love short stories (after reading one collection I disliked years ago, I thought they weren’t for me), and I’d love to read more anthologies and collections of any genre.

6. At least 1 non-fiction per month
I’d like to continue reading non-fiction, and I think one per month is a pretty good cadence for me. This is kind of a quota like goal #3 but really I’m just using these to stay consistent throughout the year, rather than aiming for an overall percentage that doesn’t really mean anything in the grand scheme of things.

Supplementary goal: Redirect some time spent on bookish social media to other interests
This is more of a general vibe for this year. In 2023, I spent a lot of time on Discord, YouTube, Instagram, and even this blog just thinking about books or reading other people’s thoughts on books, and I would like to be more selective with my time spent on that and instead focus on other media (I already have a pretty good balance with my other hobbies). I’d like to watch a lot of Star Trek this year (I’ve only watched TNG and some TOS so I’d like to get to DS9 and VOY), plus some Doctor Who, and play some video games. That isn’t possible if I spend all my free time thinking about books and only books. I’m happy with the amount of time I spend reading so I’d rather decrease my time spent online.

I’ve been thinking of deleting my Bookstagram and I probably will do that soon, since I can still get loads of recs from other places anyway with much less of a time suck. I might expand this to social media in general (especially Instagram) but I’d like to start with bookish stuff first.

In 2023 I also started “giving up” some audiobook time to listen to music more (since I spent pretty much all my listening time in 2022 on audiobooks), and I’d like to continue that trend as well in 2024.

I kind of wanted to make a goal to read more standalone books, but like I said, no quotas! But I might end up in that direction based on the above goals.

Last year I made a priority list of books to read (and I actually read all 13 with only one replacement!!), but I’m not going to do that this year since I am trying to move away from strict TBR lists. However, I do have loose plans to read from each of the following authors:

• Octavia E. Butler (sci-fi)
• Ursula K. Le Guin (sci-fi)
• Cherie Dimaline (horror/fantasy)
• Victor LaValle (horror/fantasy)
• Louise Erdrich (lit fic)
• Karen Lord (sci-fi)
• M.L. Wang (fantasy)

I own at least one book by each of these authors, and most of them are writing in my focus genres, so these will overlap nicely with my overall goals for the year. I have some other authors I’m interested in as well but these are some of the authors I’ve had on my TBR shelf the longest.

I think that’s about it! I still have a lot of other end of 2023 and beginning of 2024 posts I want to write, but all in due time. I’m looking forward to this year of reading!

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How did you do with your goals for 2023, if you made any? Do you have any goals for 2024?

Happy reading!

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My StoryGraph | My Bookstagram

2023 Series Wrap-Up

I had planned to post this in December, but alas, life got in the way. I have quite a few end-of-year wrap-up posts planned (in addition to the usual list of best/worst books) but I haven’t gotten the chance to write them yet. So I might be posting this kind of stuff into February… oh well! This is a hobby lol.

Anyway! I wanted to summarize my series progress in 2023 since this was the first year I really tracked it. I don’t tend to have that many open series going because I usually binge read completed series, and I am ruthless in not continuing series when I rate an individual book 3 stars or less. But I’ve had some mixed feelings on my series reading this year. I’ve read some amazing ones, but some others feel more mediocre to me the more time that passes. And there were two series this year where the first book was incredible but the sequel was awfully disappointing. I’ve realized I have a really hard time DNFing sequels to good books, and that a bad sequel can color my impression of the first book. So lately I’ve been wondering if it’s even worth the effort to read 2, 3, 4+ books within the same long storyline when there are so many great books that stand alone.

I don’t plan on giving up on series entirely, but I really do want to be more intentional in the ones that I pick up and commit to. I want to DNF sequels that aren’t as engaging as the first book, and not force myself to continue just to end up even more disappointed (especially if I am eyeball reading, since I don’t have as much time to do that compared to audio reads!).

2023 Reading Challenges Wrap-Up

I did it! I managed to complete all three of the year-long reading challenges I joined on StoryGraph. I did end up skipping some books I had originally planned to read since I got too behind in October, but I was able to complete a few prompts with books I had read earlier in the year.

The funny thing is that in January I was only planning on doing one reading challenge (see my original TBR here for Shimmering Worlds), but I got sucked in to two more and though it was a lot, I’m really glad I finished them! I’m just going to stick with one reading challenge next year though, lol.

November 2023 Wrap-Up

Well at least I’m sort of on time this month, lol.

Reflection

I didn’t read as much in November, and a big reason for that is that I didn’t DNF a book I really should have. It took me almost a month to read, but it was a sequel to a book I loved, so I kept hoping it’d get better. I’ve read too many disappointing sequels this year, and I really need to be more strict and stop changing my DNF rules for sequels if I want to read more books I love.

I also finally finished the seven month long Dracula Daily journey, and spoiler alert: I hated it. But I had fun buddy reading it with one of my good friends, and complaining about it together, lol. Plus, I gotta admit that some of the memes were hilarious. I’ll never forget lizard fashion!

I did read a lot of books in the 4-4.75 star range, which is awesome! And most of them were books I wasn’t expecting to like so much, so that is great too. I also actually reread something for once (yay Murderbot!), which thankfully held up and was a great time. So overall, this past month was a mixed bag but I had some good wins and discussions.

The book covers link to their general StoryGraph book pages, whereas the written titles link to my StoryGraph review.