Quarterly Check-In: March 2023

Despite the weather telling me otherwise, it is now April?? Part of me is wishing the time away because I want things to be warmer and for the second half of my pregnancy not to drag, but at the same time life seems to be flying past me. I have a lot of books yet to read and never enough time! And speaking of books, I thought I’d do a check in on how my reading and blogging has been for the first quarter of the year…

Stats

In the last three months I have read 19 books (sad it’s not a round number) which takes me 38% of the way to my annual goal, which is 50 for this year. Last year I read over 100 books, and I may well surpass 50, but since the latter half of 2023 will see me looking after a small human, I anticipate things slowing down a bit. Plus, it’s nice to be ahead of a target, even though I’m not actually that fussed about quantity as long as I’m reading what I want to read. So far I have DNF’d 3 books.

My most-read genre has been fantasy (7/19), closely followed by sci-fi (6/19).

In terms of format, I read 7 in digital form and 12 in paper form.

My most read authors so far are Genevieve Cogman with 4 books and James S.A. Corey with 3.

In 2022 at this stage I had read 27 books, but had only one stand-out, so I am much happier with my current pace and mood-reading focus!

The Books

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Not pictured is my most recent read, which is The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler.

Book Bingo

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The only challenge of any sort that I am doing this year is this wonderful book bingo by The Book Forager, and I feel like two isn’t too bad so far! I am counting Skulduggery Pleasant towards the dancing skeleton for obvious reasons and The Night Animals towards the raven because that is one of the ghost animals the main character sees throughout the story!

On the Blog

I am slowly building up my posts again, but I certainly am not as prolific as previous years! If only I had someone else who could contribute reviews and keep our little blog ticking… *glares at my sister* anyway…

I started the year by Checking In For 2023.

I have written reviews for A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett, and The Cats We Meet Along the Way by Nadia Mikail.

In other posts, myself and my fellow hosts announced Wyrd and Wonder 2023 in all its magical glory! And I made a tentative Spring TBR for Top Ten Tuesday, and have actually read one of the books on that list (The Faithless) and starter another (The Earth Transformed).

Up Next…

A theme for this year is not having very many strict plans when it comes to my reading, and the fact that I have caught up with all of my NetGalley ARCs (and almost finished reviewing them too!) and have no plans to request anymore this year means that I will more and more be turning to my shelves and backlist TBR for my reads. I still have quite a few physical ARCs (now all published alas) lying around and those shall be read in good time! I’m also hoping to coincide Wyrd and Wonder with the start of a Backlist Reviews series, for books that I am either re-reading or highlighting as something I enjoyed in previous years but didn’t get a chance to review.

I have been writing and scheduling a few reviews so do expect a few more posts from me in the next couple of weeks! As I mentioned above, I am currently reading The Earth Transformed by Peter Frankopan, which is an absolute beats of non-fiction, so if I can finish that this year I’ll be happy! Though I have to say that he writes so well that once I actually start reading I can easily get lost in it. I am also finally almost finished reading The Call of the Bone Ships by RJ Barker to my husband, after which I will devour The Bone Ship’s Wake (I said this last year too…). I have a loose ambition to then read all of the Wounded Kingdom trilogy before Barker’s new book comes out in June.

That is it from me, dear reader! If you got this far, thank you for reading, and let me know how your bookish year is going so far!