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)
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 constantlythroughout 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!
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?
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!).
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.
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.
Yes, this is really late, but I honestly wasn’t sure I was going to post a monthly wrap-up this month. These timed posts on my blog are starting to feel like a chore (ugh,I gotta write up something by a specific date), which defeats the purpose of me making this blog, as it was supposed to be a fun little side hobby. I do enjoy looking back on what I read every month though, and since the year is almost out I figured I should at least finish out my wrap-ups for this year and can go in a different direction next year if I want to. So we shall see.
Reflection
Quality-wise, October was one of my worst reading months this year, with over half of my reads being 3.25 stars or less (and honestly I feel like I was generous in most of those ratings!), and no 5 stars. Most of my reading was to fulfill prompts for a Halloween-themed readathon, and since I was on vacation with an unpredictable reading schedule and my book choices limited by what was immediately available on Libby, I felt like I couldn’t DNF anything if I wanted to finish all 7 prompts. So I think that really contributed to the “meh” feeling this month, as I definitely would have DNFed more. I’m thinking I might not participate in readathons next year as they seem to negatively affect my reading to the point that participating with a community can’t make up for (or I have to just get over my need to complete every prompt for no reason or reward…).
Regardless, I did manage to read every day I was on vacation and kept up my StoryGraph streak (next month I’ll hit 365 days!). I probably could’ve read even more considering how much time I spent on trains, but I got distracted by social media too often. I don’t usually have so much uninterrupted reading time in my daily life, lol.
I did have a great time in Japan though! It’s so nice to be in a country with on-time public transit wherever you go, with such courteous people everywhere. And the most delicious food! It was me and my husband’s second time in Japan, which was great since we didn’t feel as much stress to get to everything since we saw so much the first time around.
The book covers link to their general StoryGraph book pages, whereas the written titles link to my StoryGraph review.
Danielle's Reads 