Reading goals update: first quarter

I posted my tentative reading goals for the year back in January, and I realized I've been keeping track of them on my bookstagram but not on here. So here's how I kept to my reading goals in January, February, and March. 

 

January

• a physical unread book that is sitting on my shelves - I joined a 'read your oldest TBR books' reading challenge on StoryGraph, and started reading the oldest unread book as listed in my LibraryThing library: a C.S. Lewis omnibus containing three of his books, The Pilgrim's Regress, Christian Reflections, and God in the Dock. I skipped TPR as I had just read it in December (if that's cheating, I don't care) and started reading Christian Reflections, which is mostly letters to the editor of Christian theology journals. They are very long, dry, and boring, and I stalled reading this almost immediately. I also read a few recently-purchased physical books, but as they were recently purchased and not sitting on my bookshelves, I'm not counting them for this bullet point. ✅
• reread an old favorite book or series - nope, everything I read this month was new to me.
• read something by a BIPOC author - I read A Piñata in a Pine Tree by Pat Mora and Magaly Morales. ✅
• read an ebook from Apple - I did not do this.
• read something thematic (seasonal, themed day/week/month etc.) - I read two Christmas-themed picture books before the Christmas season officially ended on January 6, three kings day. ✅
• read a library book - I read the first two books of Rachel Reid's Game Changer series on Libby thanks to my public library. ✅
• something that is not prose or a usual genre I read (poetry, comics/graphic novels, essays, short stories, etc.) - I'm counting the CSL omnibus as an essay collection, as that is mostly what CR seems to be (although TPR is a novel). I also read the two picture books but I feel like I read them often enough for them to maybe not count as a format I don't usually read. Counting it. ✅

 

February

• a physical unread book that is sitting on my shelves - nope, everything I read this month was an ebook.
• reread an old favorite book or series - I started rereading The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. ✅
• read something by a BIPOC author - I read two books by Black authors this month: Mules and Men and A Chance at Love. ✅
• read an ebook from Apple - I did not do this.
• read something thematic (seasonal, themed day/week/month etc.) - I read two books by Black authors this month, as it was Black History Month. Mules and Men, A Chance at Love ✅
• read a library book - I did not read any library books this month.
• something that is not prose or a usual genre I read (poetry, comics/graphic novels, essays, short stories, etc.) - I'm counting Mules and Men as it's a nonfiction travelogue, definitely not something I often read. ✅

March

• a physical unread book that is sitting on my shelves - I read Melissa by Alex Gino, which according to my LibraryThing, I've had sitting on my shelves since last year. ✅
• reread an old favorite book or series - I am still rereading The Lord of the Rings. ✅
• read something by a BIPOC author - I am not sure whether any of the authors I've read this month are BIPOC; their author bios do not state if they are.
• read an ebook from Apple - I did not do this.
• read something thematic (seasonal, themed day/week/month etc.) - I read three books for the Trans Rights Readathon for Trans Visibility Day. ✅
• read a library book - I read five library books, 4 ebooks via Libby (the Game Changers series #3 & #4 and The Thursday Murder Club series #2 & 3) and one physical library book (Julián Is a Mermaid). ✅
• something that is not prose or a usual genre I read (poetry, comics/graphic novels, essays, short stories, etc.) - I'm counting the middle grade books I read this month, as I don't usually read those. ✅

 

Overall, pretty good!

Tentative reading goals

As previously mentioned, my yearly reading goal is 50 books a year. I feel this is achievable as there are 52 weeks in the year, so that allows 2 non-reading weeks for reading slumps and busy times. The vague goal is 4 books a month. This has worked for me for the last several years; the knowledge that I need to be reading books every month in order to reach my goal keeps me going, while being flexible and allowing myself grace. 

I also usually have the goal of reading themed books during the different themed months and what not (queer books for Pride month, latine books during Hispanic/Latine Heritage Month, holiday books during the winter holidays, etc.) which I do sometimes end up doing.  

I am not someone who can set a To Be Read list with specific books and stick to it. (I actually had no idea that's what people were doing when they said TBR list; for ages I thought a TBR list was just a list of books you wanted to read at some point in the future.) I am very much a mood reader, and what with the probably-ADHD-thing, just knowing that I need to read something or should read something, that is enough to take away my desire to read it entirely. See what happened last Hispanic/Latine Heritage Month. My brain's mileage varies. 

That said, I have some tentative, loose reading goals. I really, really need to tackle the amount of unread books I own. At best guess, it is 435 (if I have indeed logged allll the books I physically own in my LibraryThing). I just keep buying books from the thrift store and Barnes & Noble and the dollar store etc. and not reading them. This is also not counting all of the hundreds of ebooks I've bought from/on Nook or Kindle or Apple books or Kobo. Your girl needs help. 

For the physical books: I'm thinking if I stick to one shelf from one of my bookcases, that will help make it feel manageable. Or possibly reading one book from each shelf so I don't feel constrained? There's a "10 Oldest TBR" reading challenge on StoryGraph (I joined StoryGraph! My username is mialro; friend me) that seems feasible; you just read the 10 oldest books you bought but haven't read.  The goal is to read through the unread books and get rid of the ones I don't love. At least two shelves from two of my bookcases are double-stacked. It's a problem. 

Getting rid of books I've decided not to keep: I'm going to create a google sheet to keep track of books I no longer want and am getting rid of, their titles and authors and conditions, etc., and reach out to my friends who own a bookstore to see if they'll be interested in buying them. If they are interested in  them, great; if not, I'll sell my unwanted books at my local Book Off. I really should have done that last year with the several boxes of books I unloaded at my work's library book sale, but oh well. 

For ebooks, I think it will be more manageable to tackle my smallest ebook library: Apple books. I think I only have about 20-30 ebooks on there; once I read them, I can delete them. My Nook and Kindle libraries are in the hundreds if not thousands. Maybe I'll organize my ebook libraries by genre etc. so I can find what I want to read more easily. 

Book purchases: I really should do a book buying ban, but let's be real: I'm not going to keep to that. I am going to try to stop buying books from big box stores and stick to just thrift stores, indie bookstores, and Dollar Tree. 

In terms of my loose but specific reading goals, I hope to read at least one of each of the following each month:

• a physical unread book that is sitting on my shelves
• reread an old favorite book or series
• read something by a BIPOC author
• read an ebook from Apple
• read something thematic (seasonal, themed day/week/month etc.)
• read a library book
• something that is not prose or a usual genre I read: poetry, comics/graphic novels, essays, short stories, etc.  

This list allows for double-dipping (or more) and is broad enough that I should be able to find something that applies. 

Other bookish goals: 

--be more active on Bookstagram. I did ok (it was a tough year) but could be doing more. I have some ideas for posts and should try doing more reels. I also need to interact more with the bookstagrammers I follow and who follow me and try to make more friends there.  

--I kind of want to join a bookclub. There's a Silent Book Club in my area that I might actually start going to one of these days. God knows I need to get out of the house more and make friends.

--I want to make the bottom bookshelf of my center rainbow bookshelf be rainbow as well. This will involve removing the larger books from the bottom shelves in order to make another rainbow of book spines on that shelf. I'm confident it can be done. Otherwise, my shelves don't need to be reorganized; I'm happy with them. 

Will I be able to stick to these goals? We'll see! 

2025 Reading Stats

Yet another year is over! Here are my reading stats for 2025.

Total books read during this year: 55

Total books that I started to read but didn't finish: 1

physical books read: 19

digital/ebooks read: 36

physical books started but unfinished: 1

ebooks started but unfinished: 0

Library books read: 7

physical library books read: 3

library ebooks read: 4

Library books started but unfinished: 0

Total books that were rereads: 13 

Star ratings given to books

Books given 5 stars: 1

Books given 4 ½ stars: 8

Books given 4 stars: 32

Books given 3 ½ stars: 7

Books given 3 stars: 3

Books given 2 ½ stars: 1 (my first in ages)

Authors I've read the most this year: 

Sarah Wallace - 10 books

Martha Wells - 7 books 

S.O. Callahan, K.J. Charles, Agatha Christie - tied with 4 books each

#1 most loved book this year (not counting my rereads): 

most loved general fiction: Too Bright to See 

most loved fantasy: I read so many great fantasy books this year but the Legendborn series blew my freaking mind

most loved science fiction: the Murderbot Diaries 

most loved mystery: Murder By Memory

most loved romance: Get a Life, Chloe Brown 

most loved young adult book/s: the Legendborn series again

most loved children's book/s: Too Bright to See again

most loved nonfiction: Handbags: The Power of the Purse or Go Forth and Tell: The Life of Augusta Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller  (per usual, I can't choose)

Books purchased this year: 66  (I am cheating by not counting the books I just bought a few days ago from Barnes & Noble's half-off books sale, since I bought them this year and they're not arriving until next year. Loophole! bwahahaha 😈)

physical books purchased: 59

ebooks purchased: 7 

Books purchased this year that I actually read: 16, or roughly a quarter (if we're not counting books I bought that I have read in the past but not this year after I bought them, 12)

Books I got rid of: probably about 30 (I donated them to my library's book sale) 

I read more books than last year (that is, 2024), which I'm happy about.  My reading goal is always 50 books a year, so that hasn't changed, and I don't see that changing. Unsurprisingly, the one book I didn't finish reading this year was a nonfiction book, and a religious one at that. Very par for the course there. That's only 1 DNF, though, compared to last year's 3.

In terms of books bought, I again counted only the books I bought for myself that cost money. I fucked up by shopping B&N's half-off-hardcovers sales a couple of times. Oh well. Here's the chart my reading spreadsheet from BookRiot calculated for me of where my books purchases came from.

Speaking of my BookRiot reading log spreadsheet, I've been searching for next year's in their website, and I don't see it! Are they not making one for 2026??? I mean I have reading journals I'm planning on using, but I really love their reading spreadsheets :(  Maybe it's because the reading log sheet was originally made by Tirzah Pierce, and she no longer works for BookRiot? But they still made one for 2025...

Anyway, here are the statistics, charts and graphs from my 2025 reading log spreadsheet:

click to embiggen

 

Genres: Fantasy is still my largest percentage, although it dropped from nearly 50 percent last year. A lot of the books I read fit into multiple genres, but the sheet only let me put one, so keep that in mind in terms of genre count. Science fiction has surpassed Romance to become my second-most-read genre for 2025! Last year it was only 3.6%, so it more than quadrupled! This is clearly due to my reading the Murderbot Diaries. Romance is my third-most-read genre at 11.1%; it was 16.4% last year. I read at least 1 more genre category this year than I did last year (9 vs. 8 in 2024). 

Form: 89.3% of the books I read were prose, while novellas, short stories, and picture books shared equal pie slices at 3.6% each (I read 2 books from each of those categories). 

 

Books read by month: I had two high-reads months instead of one like last year, reading 11 books in both February and October! I read zero books in August (my reading slump) but read pretty consistently throughout the other months (2-4 books a month). 

click to enlarge

 

Author/artist gender: The amount of female authors I read went up this year compared to last, with nonbinary authors and male authors tying for second!! Other refers to group authors and authors duos. I'm not sure why the sheet doesn't create an M/F category and an Other category instead of lumping them together, but whatever. 

Nation of origin: A big jump in US books (going from about half last year to about ¾ths this year), while UK books consequently were halved. Canadian books also almost halved. I read 1 book set in Nigeria (Until the Last Petal Falls) and put Ireland as Carmilla's nation of origin since the author was Irish (according to Wikipedia the book seems to have been first published in London though... oh well). 

Protagonists of color (erroneously put as POC Protagonists in the sheet) vs. white protagonists: I nearly doubled the amount of books with protagonists of color that I read (17.3% to 33.3%)! That still leaves two-thirds of the protagonists I read as white or I couldn't tell what they were. (e.g. Murderbot's race is never given, although a white actor plays it in the show and some official? illustrations show it with dark skin and hair. Its appearance is barely described at all.) If I make my own spreadsheet for next year, I'm including a n/a or unknown categories for the rep stats. 

Authors of color (erroneously put as POC Authors) vs. white authors: (not in the above image) The amount of authors of color I read tripled compared to last year, but as that's going from 5.8% to 16.7%, it's not something to hugely celebrate. I need to do better. 

Queer authors: This stat stayed basically exactly the same as last year, with only a 0.5% change! How funny. Insert my usual spiel about how you can't always tell if an author is queer just by looking at their author bio. 

Books with queer protagonists: Remember how last year I had exactly a 50/50 split? This year 68.5% of the books I read had queer protagonists!

Books with trans rep: I don't trust the stats on this because they're collected weirdly, but according to the log I read 11 books with a trans protagonist (again thanks to the Murderbot Diaries as it's agender), and 20 with a trans author/artist. This is no doubt due to all the Sarah Wallace books I read, as the log counts them each time. I read 6 individual trans authors this year, which is down from last year's 7.

Books with disability rep: 46.3% of the books I read this year had disability rep, nearly twice as much as last year's 25%!

My sole translated book was Frida Kahlo y Sus Animalitos, which was originally in English but I bought in Spanish ostensibly for my sobrines (it's at my house and they have yet to see it lol).

An increase in nonfiction books read, at 12.5% (last year was 9.1%). 

Also an increase in the amount of books for adults that I read, 83.9%, and consequent decreases for YA (7.1%, less than half of last year's!) and children's (8.9%). Last year the breakdown was 72.7% adult, 18.2% YA, and 9.1% children. 

16.7% of the books I read were published this year, down from last year's 20.5%.  

Wow, I really made some gains in diverse reading. Overall, a great reading year! Happy new year. 

Reading slump + reading update

I've been on a reading slump lately that lasted over a month. I think it started because I wanted to read one of my many unread books with latine protagonists for Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month, and I think just the concept of "having to" read a specific type of book triggered my brain's ADHD* mental block against reading in general.

 

I did actually read one book (very slowly) during this time: this cute little book about historical and designer purses, which was actually very interesting and informative. I've always loved purses and fashion history, so this was a fun and interesting book to read. It was originally published in 2001, so the book only has purses up to that point, and has kind of a gap for the 1990s (too soon ago at the time to be considered historical). The writing is very similar to fashion editorials like they have in Vogue; lots of glowing praise for the fashion designers' creativity. My only quibble is that I wish she'd put the prices for the designer handbags. I don't remember if she put a works referenced list in the back of the book (another usual quibble of mine when it comes to nonfiction books). I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes purses and fashion history. ★★★★

 

In desperation, I decided to actually bring a physical book with me (safe in its padded book sleeve) to work, where surely the boredom of working the Thursday night shift would force me to reach for the book and read it, thereby breaking my reading slump. It didn't, but it did make me start reading an ebook on my Nook app (my second, sneakier reason for bringing a physical book to read)!

That book was A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by K.J. Charles, a sequel to The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen (flash-reviewed here). This book is about brand new earl Rufus d'Aumnesty, whose hostile formerly-estranged family is fighting tooth and nail against this "interloper", taking any and every reason to question his legitimacy as earl, which brings us to the other lead, Luke Doomsday, whose mother may or may not have married Rufus' ho dad before he married Rufus' mom. Luke was a very young teenager during the events of TSLoCG (he's the smuggler chief's nephew), and he grew up to be a secretary (Gareth the baronet from the first book gave him an education). Rufus needs help sorting out the truth, his office, and the family books (which are all as fucked up as the estates and the family), so he hires Luke as his secretary. They're both super attracted to each other, fight it a bit due to the whole boss/employee thing, and fall in love. Luke helps Rufus with being an earl and dealing with his family, but he has secrets of his own, and his own agenda for being at the estate... This book was excellent, with a bit of a Gothic flair towards the end, and actually settled a mystery that began in the first book. ANG2SaS has the same themes of healing from childhood trauma as its predecessor. Luke has a facial disfigurement (scar from an attack), and Rufus is demisexual and dyslexic. ★★★★ 🌶🌶🌶  DM me for trigger warnings

As is usually the case, this broke me out of my reading slump and I started reading again like it was going out of style. As it was still Ace Week (my reason for picking the above book), I decided to finally start on the Murderbot Diaries, which I had bought (along with several other Martha Wells ebooks) during a charity bundle purchase thing. I'd been wanting to read the Murderbot Diaries ever since I first heard about them, and I'd really been looking forward to reading them ever since the trailer for the Murderbot Apple TV+ series came out (it looks so good. I need to get a free month of Apple TV+ code or get someone I know who has Apple TV+ to let me watch it). I love stories about sentient robots making friends. I was going to start reading them through Libby, but my public library doesn't have them on ebook :((( I started reading these books on Friday afternoon, and as of writing this (Sunday evening), I've read the first six books in the series plus a short story, and that's that I couldn't read for most of Saturday. I lied when I told you I was reading like it's going out of style; it's more than that: I've INHALED them. I am obsessed. They are so freaking good, and I love Murderbot (it/its pronouns). It's anxious and depressed and autistic (hates eye contact etc.) and aroace and nonbinary (duh, it's a robot) and deeply funny and sarcastic. Murderbot (Murderbot is its private name; to others it goes by SecUnit, which is somewhere between a human being going by "Human" and going by their occupation title instead of a name) dislikes humans but also can't stop caring about them. It'll be deeply annoyed by them then be like, "Is anyone else gonna protect these stupid humans and keep them alive?" and not wait for an answer. When its friends make it experience an emotion, it has to turn and face a wall. I love it so much. I need eleventy thousand more books in this series; I'm preemptively mourning running out of them. I recommend this series to anyone who likes sci fi action stories with a touch of mystery, and stories about robots gaining sentience and friends and dealing with what it means to be a person.  ★★★★ DM me for trigger warnings 

I'm writing this blog post instead of reading them because the epub ebooks are all on my computer, and Apple Books didn't transfer them over to my Apple Books app on my iPhone. Ugh. I'm counting down the minutes of this ref shift until I can go home and keep reading the series. This is basically me right now:

 Update: I made some Murderbot memes and posted them to my Instagram (I forgot to include the one above tho). My IG handle is in my Social Media note. 

*undiagnosed, but like let's be real

2024 Reading Stats

Here are my reading stats for this year.

• Total books read during this year: 52
• Total books that I started to read but didn't finish: 3
  
• physical books read: 20
  
• digital/ebooks read: 32
  
• physical books started but unfinished: 2
  
• ebooks started but unfinished: 1
  
• Library books read: 1 (a free book I read and put back lol)
  
• Library books started but unfinished: 0
  
• Books I loved: 11
• Books I liked: 26
• Books I felt neutral about: 10
  
• Books I disliked or found meh: 4
  
• Books I hated: 1. I hated it so much I didn't even count it in my stats
  
• Books I felt strongly about but can't classify as love or hate: 0
  
• Books purchased: 43 BUT that's not counting all the ebooks I bought with a Barnes & Noble giftcard I got from my work insurance's stupid logging health stuff app
• Books purchased that I actually read: 15  (see note above)
  
• #1 most loved book this year (not counting my rereads):
  
• most loved general fiction: Endpapers
  
• most loved fantasy: the Meddle & Mend series
  
• most loved mysteries: A Charm of Magpies series
  
• most loved young adult book/s: Most Ardently, The No-Girlfriend Rule
  
• most loved children's book/s: all the kids' books I read this year were rereads, oops
  
• most loved nonfiction: How to Keep House While Drowning

I read slightly fewer books than last year (that is, 2023) but still more than my reading goal of 50 books, so I'm happy. One of the books I didn't finish this year is Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I started rereading for the 20th anniversary read-along; I hit a wall and took a break (of several months lol), but I finally finished it in mid-January. The other was a nonfiction book, a genre I have a history of DNFing even if I am very interested in the subject matter. The unfinished ebook is actually a Jeeves book that I started reading due to Letters Regarding Jeeves, which for some reason stopped sending chapters or anything at all in October. I'm sad about that. 

I only counted my book purchases that were not gifts and not bought with a giftcard; I have no idea just how many ebooks I bought or downloaded for free. I don't super care. I think it helped that I went to the thrift store way fewer times in 2024 than I did in 2023; I really was making an effort to purchase fewer physical books. 

Here are some of the charts from the excellent reading log google sheet from BookRiot that I use every year:

Here's my genres read breakdown. Nearly half of all the books I read were fantasy! Despite me counting the A Charm of Magpies series as my favorite mysteries, I put them down as fantasy in the google sheet as it only allows one genre to be selected; this is probably the case for several of the books I read. Interestingly, my second-most read genre, Romance, has the same exact percentage as "last" year's! 2023's second-most read genre was General Fiction, my third-most read genre in 2024, so the two obviously switched places. 

In terms of form, 96.4% of the books I read were prose, AKA all but two (1 poetry book and 1 short stories collection).

July was my best reading month, with a whopping 16 books read! Junior high reading behavior. 

click to embiggen

Author/Artist Gender: The amount of female authors I read went down slightly (from 54.2% to just under half), and the amount of male authors I read went down as well (from 35.6% to 29%), giving the nonbinary authors category room to more than double (8.5% last year)!! The "other" category is for probably just one book with two authors of different gender categories. 

Nation of Origin: Roughly the same as "last" year, with a slight decrease for USA and slight increases for UK- and Canada-set books, probably because the two books I read set in the Netherlands were not counted in the stats 🙄

POC Protagonists (should be Protagonists of Color) vs. White Protagonists: increase in white protagonists, decrease in protagonists of color :(

Weirdly, the placements of the charts shifted, so the POC Authors (authors of color) vs. White Authors chart isn't visible in the above screenshot. Also an increase in white authors and a decrease in authors of color :(

Queer Authors/Artists: over a third of my read authors were queer or LGBTQ+! "Last" year it was under 30%! 

I don't know if this is a glitch in the stats, but HALF of the books I read had queer/LGBTQ+ protagonists!! "Last" year it was 31.5%! 

Like last time, the Trans Authors/Artists pie chart cannot be trusted (partially because I read a ton of books by Sarah Wallace and they counted each one as an individual author). 7 of the authors I read were trans and/or nonbinary (8 if you count Emily Dickinson lol)! "Last" year I read 5 trans & nonbinary authors.

I read 8 books with trans protagonists, over twice as much as "last" year's 3! 

A fourth (25%) of the books I read had disability rep; "last" year it was 18.5%!

I read zero translated books this year, weirdly enough.

Only 9.1% of the books I read were nonfiction, down from "last" year. 

Nearly 3/4ths of the books I read (72.7%) were for adults; it was only over half "last" year. Consequently decreased percentages for young adult and children's books read: 18.2% for YA (was 25.5%) and 9.1% for children's books (was 21.8%!). 

Only about a fifth (20.5%) of the books I read in 2024 were published that year, a jump from "last" year's nearly 15%.

I really need to make an effort to read more books by and about people of color! Overall a great reading year though. I finally got a library card from my local public library, so hopefully that will keep me from buying so many books.

Short books update for February through now

 I don't feel like writing up reviews for them, but the other books I read in February include Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Great Divorce (all by C.S. Lewis, of course). I have now finished my CSL class but I feel like rereading Til We Have Faces (the grad student-only read that I skipped as I enrolled in the class as an undergrad), which I only read once at least ten years ago. We'll see if I get around to it. 

I have still not finished reading bell hook's All About Love: New Visions, which I started back in early February. She writes so well, beautifully as well as straightforward, and I am interested in the topic, but I keep dragging myself through one chapter at a time and then not reading again for days if not weeks. I don't know what the issue is. I will say I tend to have this problem with nonfiction over fiction, even if the book topic interests me (remember how I started reading that nonfiction book about the linguistics of/on the Internet right before the pandemic, and never finished it?). I don't want to abandon it; maybe now that I've finished my CSL class I can finish this book. 

I dread going to my [none of your business] doctor for obvious reasons, but I also love it when I have an appointment, because just a block or so away from the building there is a quiet little street that has a cute trendy indie coffee shop where I buy an oat milk latte (mocha or chai or seasonal but always sweet) and then go across that street to an Assistance League thrift store and browse for a while. It's heaven. I bought a khaki mini-skort, two half-priced scarves, and three books, all five dollars or less. The books were 50 cents each (!); one was a Pike Place Market cookbook that I gave my sister (she used to live near Seattle and we visited there once), and the other two were for me: The Eyre Affair and The Daughters of Artemis. I had heard of the Thursday Next series (of which The Eyre Affair is the first) from back when I was reading author blogs (remember blogs?), but I never started it because it felt daunting or something. It's a bookish series that is maybe mysteries and maybe fantastical; I'm not really sure. It being bookish is enough to recommend itself to me. The other one sounds like a thriller mystery book, and judging by the title and summary, I suspect it is sapphic.

This online indie bookstore started by two of my college friends had an International Women's Day sale on their female authored books, so I bought two: Tanglewreck by Jeanette Winterton, who I've read and liked before, and Bookshop Cinderella, a romance novel that is also a Cinderella retelling set in a bookstore. I find the title kind of obvious, but it worked on me, so. Tanglewreck looks like a time travel sci fi book. 

The March Disneybound challenge has been taking up all my free time, so I haven't posted anything about books since February. Also, me reading nothing but C.S. Lewis has been uninspiring for bookstagram posts, even though I love him. Ah well.

Books Read in 2023

I'm literally so late with this but here are my reading stats for last year!

• Total books read during this year: 54
• Total books that I started to read but didn't finish: 1 (a women's devotional my mom bought me)
  
• physical books read: 38
  
• digital/ebooks read: 17
  
• physical books started but unfinished: 1
  
• ebooks started but unfinished: 0
  
• Library books read: 4
• Library books started but unfinished: 0
  
• Books I loved: 19
• Books I liked: 28
• Books I felt neutral about: 3
  
• Books I disliked or found meh: 3
  
• Books I hated: 0
  
• Books I felt strongly about but can't classify as love or hate: 1
  
• Books purchased: 64 😐
• #1 most loved book this year (not counting my rereads):
• most loved general fiction: How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe
  
• most loved fantasy: The Girl Who Drank the Moon
  
• most loved mysteries: The Will Darling Adventures
• most loved young adult book/s: Ophelia After All, Loveless
  
• most loved children's book/s: The Library of Ever and Rebel in TLoE
  
• most loved nonfiction: How to Be Ace, Sounds Fake But Okay

I'm honestly shocked I read so much. Last year I read 45 books, and the years before that I was reading 20-some books a year (not counting my 1st pandemic year reading slump). Shoutout to my Reference Desk shifts for giving me set times to read every week.

I felt embarrassed about how many books I'd bought this last year, but in 2022 I had bought 116, so I'd say I'm doing pretty well! It helps that I'm only letting myself buy books from thrift stores and independent bookstores (with the occasional Bookshop.org deal and cheap Nook ebook). Back then I was buying books from Book Outlet a couple times a month. As it is, I've only bought 9 more books than I've read! I sold several books (a couple boxes' worth) but didn't keep track of how many, so I've eliminated the "# of books sold" bullet point.

Here are some of the charts from my amazing reading log spreadsheet created by Tirzah Price.

Fantasy remains my most-read genre, but the percentage amount has gone down slightly. In 2022 General Fiction was the third-most read genre, while in 2023 it is the second-most read. Last (last) year's second most read genre, Memoir/Bio, was barely read this (last) year (3 books). My third-most read genre this year, Romance, has nearly quadrupled in percentage from last year. The free romance novel ebooks I've downloaded from Barnes & Noble are to blame.

In terms of form, 81.8% of the books I read were prose, while the rest of the pie was tiny slivers of 3-1 books each. 

[A.N.: I had the "books read by month" chart here, but it's inaccurate so I deleted it and the commentary. Some stats don't translate to the charts for some reason.]

Click to enbiggen

Author/Artist Gender: My percentage of female authors has gone up from 2022's 50% to 54.2%. The nonbinary authors percentage has quadrupled from 2.1% to 8.5%! Thusly, male authors have gone down from 43.8% to 35.6%.

Nation of Origin: The US percentage went down slightly, while the UK percentage went up a bit (I think this was the year I reread The Chronicles of Narnia). The Canada slice is due to the L.M. Montgomery collection, Christmas with Anne, that I read every holiday season. The New Zealand slice is due to a very bad and not even fun romance novel free ebook I don't want to talk about.

POC Authors (should be Authors of Color) vs. White Authors: The amount of white authors went up over 10 percent, so the amount of authors of color I read lowered the same amount :(

POC Protagonists (should be Protagonists of Color) books vs. White Protagonist books: How did this come out the same as the previous chart when they were different in 2022??

I'm tired of doing screenshots, so I'm going to write out the rest of my reading data in a list.

- Nearly 30% of the books I read in 2023 were by queer/LGBTQ+ authors and/or artists. Last year (2022) it was only 18.2%! What a jump!

- 31.5% of the books I read had queer/LGBTQ+ protagonists. Last year this was 25%. Yay for progress!

- I think the chart for trans authors is broken like the 2022 chart's was. Counting from the spreadsheet, I read 5 trans and nonbinary authors in 2023. Last year it was only 2 nonbinary authors!

- I read 2 books with trans/nonbinary protagonists this year, 3 if you count Nimona (and I kinda do). I can think of at least 1 other book with a nonbinary side character. Last year none of my books had a trans protagonist. Yay for progress!

- 18.5% of my books had disability representation, up from last year's 4.5%!!

- 3 of my books were translated, up from last year's 2 translated books. One of the poetry books I read had both born-English and translated poetry, so I counted it as translated. 

- I read significantly less nonfiction this year, 12.7% (a little under half of last year's percentage). The rest was fiction.

- Very different, almost flipped, percentages for age range. Over half of the books I read were for adults, 25.5% for young adults, and 21.8% were for children. 

- Nearly 15% of the books I read were published in 2023 (8, I think). In 2022 the percentage was only 4.3%. Clearly, the SimonTeen free digital read of the day was responsible for this percentage. 

- I read 26.8% of the books I bought in 2023. Some were gifts, so. Last year I read 21% of my purchased books.

What a ride! I really have to try reading more authors of color and books about people of color. I also need to read the books I keep buying.

The Bookstall

Just looking at them
I grow greedy, as if they were
freshly baked loaves
waiting on their shelves
to be broken open—that one
and that—and I make my choice
in a mood of exalted luck,
browsing among them
like a cow in sweetest pasture.

For life is continuous
as long as they wait
to be read—these inked paths
opening into the future, page
after page, every book
its own receding horizon.
And I hold them, one in each hand,
a curious ballast weighting me
here to the earth.

~ Linda Pastan, Carnival Evening

December books

As you know, I've been on a cozy mystery kick lately, so I picked up The Glass Is Always Greener by Tamar Myers from the same thrift store I got my Agatha Christie books from (it also cost 50 cents). It's a Den of Antiquity novel, which is a series of cozy mysteries about a mystery-solving antiques dealer in the Southeast. (I refuse to call it the South; that would actually be the bottom third/half of the US. The south of the eastern part of the US should be called the Southeast, to be correct.) That sounded intriguing to me, as I like antique shops and cozy mysteries. Read TGIAG's synopsis here. Anyway, this is the type of book whose calling card is EXTREME ZANINESS. I was choking on it. Everyone is very South(east)ern and insane. I couldn't keep up with all the characters and their weird names and who they were to each other. Barnes & Noble says this was the last book in the series (there were 16?!?!), but I should still not be this lost. With a series this big, a newbie should be able to pick up any book and be able to keep up. The way Abby (the antiques dealer/mystery solver and narrator) described people's physical appearances was weird. Her petiteness (she's 4'7") and that of her mother was remarked upon way too often. The murder wasn't really explained that thoroughly, and even though it's the last? book of the series, it ends on a cliffhanger. I will not be keeping this book and I won't be reading the others in the series. 

Cover notes: The cover has nothing to do with the book at all. I don't think the artist read any of it. Abby's cat (who doesn't even come into the story at all) is shown in front of a broken window of green glass. The green glass in the story is not that of a window. I mean come on.

Trigger warnings: murder, death, corpse found in a freezer near food, stabbing mention, poison mention, homophobia, racist/transphobic character, lots of food talk, touching without consent, characters ignore boundaries

 

 

Next was a Savers find, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy by Frances Mayes, another Southeasterner. Mayes and her boyfriend Ed purchase and restore an old Tuscan farmhouse, and learn how to live and eat in Italy. The book is based on the journals she kept while doing this. Mayes was the head of Creative Writing at the university where she works, so of course this book was written beautifully. Her voice is soothing yet intelligent and interesting, and I liked seeing everything through her eyes. She's one of those writers who is familiar with all sorts of literary and historical sources/works and casually mentions what they say about what she's talking about at the moment (Virgil is mentioned the most). My mouth watered reading about the food they cooked and ate there in Italy. At least once in my life, I need to eat at a dinner party in Italy, surrounded by friends, conversation, laughter, and delicious food. She also talks about the churches, architecture, history, art, etc. of the places she and Ed visited there. It made me long to go back to Tuscany, and while I only lived there a month, I feel like she really captured its essence and light. The book also includes some recipes! Highly recommended, and guaranteed to inspire both wanderlust and hunger. 4.5/5 stars because I didn't want it to end lol

Trigger warnings: corpses of human and animals described, death, car accident(s), sex mentions, some Ugly Americanism, lots and lots of food and cooking talk 

 

 

The last book I read in December was The Reading Life: The Joy of Seeing New Worlds Through Others' Eyes by C.S. Lewis, which is a compilation of things CSL wrote about reading and books. I had wanted it for ages and asked for it for Christmas. It was a fairly quick and enjoyable read, as of course I love CSL and books and reading. It made me want to read his books again. Highly recommended if you're a CSL fan and/or love books about reading. I cannot think of any trigger warnings, although he is scornful of people who only read "the right" and "modern" things (aka nonintellectuals). That does come off as a bit classist. All in all, I really enjoyed this book and am glad I asked for it for Christmas. 4.5/5 stars

I also reread Christmas with Anne, as I do every holiday season.

Rest of November books

I found another Agatha Christie novel I'd missed the first time around at the thrift store (or maybe it had just been donated) and bought it, also for fifty cents. Cat Among Pigeons is another Hercule Poirot novel. The synopsis and blurbs on the book cover don't mention this at all, so it was a delightful surprise when he showed up like 3/4 of the way through the book. The book starts off with an Arab prince and his English pilot friend trying to hide some jewels during a revolution in the Middle East, than changes to an exclusive girls' academy in England where murders keep happening. At first the two stories seem very different, then you see how they connect. I figured out where the jewels were hidden like 1/3 of the way through the book, if that. It was pretty obvious. The first teacher who got murdered was totally a lesbian, and she was written to be really nosy and annoying with poor social skills (also she was the gym teacher lmao). There was also a subplot with the prince's cousin, who also went to the academy. I enjoyed this one, although the ending made me a bit sad. 3.5 stars, giving away. Trigger warnings: murder, guns, racism, alcoholic minor character, adult male character flirts with teenage girls (for spy reasons, but still)

I picked up The Fifth Avenue Story Society by Rachel Hauck at Savers because it sounded interesting (synopsis here). You know I'm all about stories set in or about libraries, and the story society sounded intriguing. It was to my chagrin that I quickly realized the Fifth Avenue library in New York City barely figured into the story at all, and that this book turned out to be a Christian novel. 

Five people are sent an invitation to the Fifth Avenue Story Society but don't know why. They decide to meet every week to find out who sent the invitations and why and become friends. Since this is a Christian novel, things end in romance and God-finding. While I found the Christian stuff to be heavy-handed, I found the emotions and problems faced by the members interesting and handled well. The characters endure true grief and pain, and while they didn't feel real to me, I was interested in their stories and wanted to know what happened to them. My favorite (aka least sad) storyline was Coral's; her cosmetics company was going under, and it was resolved in a very satisfying way. True to form, I also liked Jett's author storyline: his favorite author might be a fraud, and he finds an unpublished manuscript in the Fifth Avenue library that contains the truth. The characters' secrets, ranked from most obvious to least obvious: why Coral left her fiancé, why Jett felt guilty about his brother's death, why Chuck lost custody of his kids, Lexa's relationship and connection issues, and Sam's short marriage to his wife. Of all of them, I never suspected anything about Sam's story. I did think he was so insistent on writing his memoir because he had Alzheimer's. There is a stereotypical mysterious librarian who is probably the one who invited them all to the Society; the secret of how and why is not revealed, and it's hinted that the librarian is an angel. Very annoying. Anyway, I enjoyed this well enough, even though all the non-elderly characters are gorgeous and attractive (do not even get me started on the "Nebraska boy"). 3 stars, giving away. Trigger warnings: deaths, violence mentions, gun mention, child endangerment mention, prison, parental abandonment, grief, anger, drug addiction/abuse and alcoholism mentions

How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen was sourced from the same thrift store as CAtP. It's a short, slim little volume of collected essays on the author's life as a reader, her thoughts on reading, and her favorite books (including lists of book recommendations from her and her friends). I read and liked Quindlen's columns in the newspaper when I was younger and remember her to be a relatable, open, and intelligent writer. If you're a book person, you're probably familiar with this famous quote from this book: "Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home." Don't you just love that? I very much enjoyed this book, although the books she mentions and lists as recommendations are very white and straight. I highly recommend reading this book if you're a book lover. 4.5 stars because I wish it were longer! I'm keeping this one. Trigger warnings: mentions of sex, virginity, birth control, probably trigger-y stuff from books' plots mentioned

Reasons why I don't finish/have a hard time finishing/straight up don't read books

1. the book is really boring
2. the book is really dense and academic and my brain has acclimated to online video streaming and social media so it's not what it once was
3. I have a mental block about reading for some reason/reading dry spell
4. I don't have time; I'm too busy
5. I hate the book
6. lack of energy
7. previous book hangover
8. the cover is weird/off-putting
9. the book is too intimidating
10. I don't read multiple books at a time so I feel like I must finish the book I'm on even though I don't feel like reading it, so I read nothing
11. it's a library book that I have to return so I never finish it
12. I have to spend my ref desk time slots doing homework or helping patrons instead of reading
13. when at home or on weekends, I do chores, run errands, or binge Netflix (or do the BookRiot #riotgrams challenge), so I have no time/energy to read
14. I've hyped up the book in my mind so much I'm afraid to read it
15. I'm not in a proper headspace for this book. or that one. or that-
16. I think this book is going to be sad/scary and I'm too anxious to read it
17. I don't think I'm mentally prepared for this book right now
18. this book sounds too pretentious or frustrating
19. I bought this book ages ago and and still haven't read it so I owe it the bare minimum of leaving it on my shelf to read someday
20. I have a book/some books from a series and don't have all of them
21. I have a series but don't know which one is the first
22. I have a series but don't know if I have gaps in it
23. I loved this book in college/high school/childhood but I'm afraid if I reread it it won't be the same
24. some smart friend/s recommended this book to me and I don't want to let them down (even though we never talk any more)
25. I have to read this book in order to decide whether to keep it and that's too much pressure
26. what if this book disappoints me 
27. this book has themes I know are going to be upsetting/triggering/angry-making to me
28. there are knicknacks on the shelf in front of the book and it's too much work to move them
29. seeing my dusty bookshelves reminds me that I need to clean my house and that depresses me
30. this book is going to be very simple and fun and easy to read, so I'll read it later

Books read in 2015

I realize I forgot to write a post about this. I've been keeping track of my reads in a Google spreadsheet (previous years' readings have been tracked in Textedit table docs, but I needed something that I could access on any device and Evernote doesn't have very good tables formatting in its notes).

• Total books read in 2015: 40
• Total books that I started to read but didn't finish: 6
• physical books read: 21
• ebooks read: 19
• ebooks started but unfinished: 3
• physical books started but unfinished: 3
• Nook ebooks read: 10
• Kindle ebooks read: 2
• Other ebooks format (app/browser/Project Gutenberg type) read: 8 (due to my SFF class that had a lot of old books)
• books I liked: 18
• books I loved: 8
• books I hated: 1 (Frankenstein. I get why it's important but still hate it)
• books I disliked or found meh: 9
• books that impacted me strongly but I can't really say that I loved or hated them: 3 (I included Villette here and in Loved because I feel like it)

I wrote book reviews for almost all the books I finished. They can be found in my "book reviews" tag in the right sidebar. >>>

Roadtrip Reading

My parents and I drove up to the Bay area to see my brother for his birthday this last weekend, and I was able to get some reading in since my parents don't trust my driving and would rather do it themselves. I read:

-Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke: I had actually started this back in like October but stopped reading it because of reasons (length and laziness, mainly. It's the size of a latter Potter). JS&MN is an alternate history of England where magic is possible. It's a story of a prophecy and two magicians and their friends/acquaintances and disagreements and such, all told in the style of Jane Austen (genteel and excellently shade-throwing). It has tons of magical history and stories and footnotes (one of my favorite things in books) and I adored it. 4.99999/5 stars, only because one villain didn't get a harsh enough comeuppance and also one major enchantment should have dissolved when its caster died but whatever. They're going to do a miniseries of it and I can't wait.

-Diary of a Wimpy Kid: After JS&MN I wanted something completely different in tone, plus I had downloaded this from the iBookstore because it was free. It was funny and I can see why it's a kids bestseller. I'd read a later one that was my younger cousin's and found it hilarious, and if this series had come out when my younger brother was a kid he would have eaten them up. 3.5/5 stars, because of character meanness.

-Leave No Stone Unturned (Lexie Starr Series #1) by Jeanne Glidewell: This was the weakest of the bunch. It was a Nook blog Free Fridays pick and the protagonist works in a library, so I downloaded it to my Nook app. Firstly, I was under the impression she was a librarian, and she's not. A part-time library volunteer is not the same thing as a librarian (not knocking them. Library volunteers rock and anyway I used to be one myself). Apart from a key piece of information being discovered while Lexie Starr was helping a patron do research on microfilm of newspapers (do library volunteers even do that?), the library thing was pretty much nonexistent. Deliver on your hook! I was disappointed. Secondly, the writing was just... not good. Tons of telling and little showing, so much clunkiness, Mary Sue-ness, too-perfect and/or too-quirky characters that never really felt like real people, unnecessary details in a misguided attempt to flesh out characters and scenes, et cetera and so on. I would have forgiven the lack of librariana if the writing hadn't been so No. If I'm getting distracted from your story by your ham-fisted writing, you're not doing it right. And the stupid and weird romance thing! I can't even get into it because I could write a whole ranty blog post about it (I'll spare you), but it was just weird and unbelievable and it happened way too fast. The love interest was just too perfect to be true. Also, there was something just really off to me about having one of the main baddies/suspects be a gay tattooed, pierced, drug addicted male stripper with daddy issues. And as half Native American, he was the only person of color in the book! Very negative. Oh yeah, and Lexie immediately starts impersonating officers and exterminators and stuff to get info, and her love interest immediately and without reservations starts doing it with her too! The whole time I'm reading this I'm thinking "this woman is a published author. WHY." And then I felt simultaneously motivated (if she gets published with that kind of writing then I def should be able to) and disillusioned (she sucks and got published and I probably suck less but can't find the nerve to write :/). The mystery was semi-passable, I guess. 1/5 stars.

My shortest iTunes playlist

Books
-"B*tches in Bookshops" by Annabelle Quezada & La Shea Delaney [better than the original (Jay-Z & Kanye West's N****s in Paris) imho. Lyrics at the above link]

-"Book People Unite" by The Roots & friends for Reading is Fundamental

Rereading Emma

Mr. Knightley scolds Emma for matchmaking because she is meddling in affairs that don't concern her and causing her friend Harriet to think too highly of herself. Harriet, someone's illegitimate daughter, is too low of a social station to think of marrying Mr. Elton the vicar, while the gentleman-farmer Robert Martin is perfectly all right for her. Mr. Knightley is correct in his opinion of it and in telling Emma what he thinks, but I find it interesting because he sort of does the same thing himself. It is he who gives Robert his blessing to marry Harriet, and it feels like he's upset in half because his own neat matchmaking was ruined by Emma's. Later on in the book, too, he lets or sends Robert Martin to London to meet up with Harriet and propose to her (which she accepts, since she is far away from Emma's influence). Mr. Knightley may possibly lecture Emma about matchmaking and having strong, often selfish opinions about things and people because he recognizes such inclinations in himself.
Emma dislikes Jane Fairfax because she is the ideal accomplished, elegant young lady: excellent at music, genteel, quiet, pale, never speaks out of turn, etc. Emma is "handsome", true, but she is strong-willed, chatty, witty and not afraid to show it, likes to take control, doesn't practice her music or read enough, etc., and she feels a grudge towards Jane for being so perfect and so much closer to the Ideal Young Lady than Emma is. No one else in Highbury brings to light her shortcomings, except Mr. Knightley. The latter and Emma are friends, but a good chunk of their friendship is them bickering, mostly about her character flaws and things she does wrong.
Also, can we talk about how creepy it is that Mr. Knightley has been the Woodhouses' family friend since Emma was a child and was always trying to improve her character and correct her behavior, and professed falling in love with her at thirteen? He tells her this towards the end of the book, and while it is clear he didn't realize it until Frank Churchill came into the picture as a plausible love interest for Emma some months earlier and Mr. Knightley became jealous of him and realized why (and Emma is twenty to twenty-one years old in the book), that's still seriously creepy. He's sixteen years older than her! He's old enough to be her dad, which in itself is creepy enough, but he's known her since she was a child?? Someone I was discussing the book with once said that they'd read something comparing Mr. Knightley's behavior to child molesters/predators who "groom" their child victims into mentally accepting them as partners later on, or just to accept their abuse as not being wrong at all. Like, they groom them into becoming their perfect mate. Uggghhhhhh. I don't think that was Mr. Knightley's intention, obviously, but it's still really creepy and weird.
I read Emma mostly on my Nook and partially from my Barnes & Noble Classics copy. The Nook book is "25 Favorite Novels" in one ebook, which is nice because it was 99 cents, but there are no foot- and endnotes like in the B&N Classics, and I think it can only hold like ten highlights at a time? I'm quite sure I highlighted my favorite passages from P&P and S&S in the ebook, along with Emma, but I can only see/read the latter book's. It sucks. Also, each book is treated as a chapter, and while there are "Book I" and chapter divisions within each book, you can't jump to the next chapter within the ebook book. That sucks most of all. For some reason the place wasn't kept between my Nook app on my phone and my Nook ereader, so that was a pain.
Anyway, I read the introduction to my B&N Classics copy of Emma, which was an exhaustive essay in the awesome English journal article style on Emma and its characters and social aspects, etc. Those are quite interesting, if you like literary analysis and criticism, but I don't recommend reading the introductions (for sure in the B&N Classics books) before you read the novel because they will ruin it for you. Besides, it's nice to go back and get insight on the characters and plot points etc. after you've already read the book. Anyway the person who wrote Emma's introduction pointed out that Emma chose to befriend and improve Harriet and manage her love life because she sees her as an extension of herself. Like, Emma herself does not want to have a love life, partially because she does not think she can due to her codependent father, but she can be involved in Harriet's love life. She treats her like a human Barbie, almost. A love life by proxy. A fascinating discussion of control (Emma must be first in everything) and self-absorption. Emma does annoy me but I think I mainly like her.

Lists for this summer

Actual, concrete things I need to do, preferably tomorrow or within days:
–mail a book someone Mooched from me
–go to the bank to cash a check (refund from trying a new Kellogg's cereal, holla. I am cheap and a broke college student besides)
–go to the library and fill out a volunteering form Done! Halfway through composing this post my brother decided to go to the library, so I went and filled out the form (yayyy, public library experience. That place is practically a second home to me)
–go to a different library at a nearby university and try to volunteer there as well (have never been there before. If I have, it was years ago. I'd like to rack up some academic/special libraries experience as well)

More abstract list of things I want to do this summer:
–read all the books I haven't gotten to yet that are in my LibraryThing to-read list. There are currently forty-two. Heyyy, the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything!
–finish the YA books series I started ages ago: Artemis Fowl (I just bought my little brother the latest one for his birthday and he's almost done with it), Princess Diaries (I have to reread the ninth and read the tenth), Georgia Nicolson (ninth and tenth), Queen's Thief/Attolia (maybe reread them all, then read the last one). Initially I had wanted to read all the Anne of Green Gables books but with everything else I'm planning to do that would be impossible
–read The Hunger Games books (my brother bought and read all three of them. I've been specifically waiting until summer)
–Clean my room, get rid of stuff (between my sister and me it looks like we were robbed. Clothes are everywhere and it will only get worse when I bring all my stuff home from my apartment)
–Bring all my stuff home from my apartment. I have to figure out when they can inspect it. Also I have to clean the kitchen and my room and stuff
–go shopping. I want to buy white sandals and a silver purse, among many other things
–visit/hang out with my best friend and see her baby
–movie night with bosom friend
–figure out how to join a ballroom dance club or something with her
–get my drivers license (aparently they are vertical now. Mind blown)
etcetera...