Tag: TBR

Categories
General Posts, Non Reviews

March Wrap Up & April TBR (Stats & Shenanigans)

March was a wild month and I spent the majority of it in the UK! While I didn’t read as much I went to my first non US convention, did a whole lot of bookstore crawling in various areas, and saw a lovely spread of different towns & lifestyles. Is this where I also say I met the BF’s family and remarkably they didn’t hate me? Lol!

Ok let’s get this underway because there’s a bit of ground to cover:

April TBR:

This is easy so I’m doing it first.  I’ll spend April mood reading but I have 3 more SPSFC semifinalist books to knock out and they are:

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I appreciate their shorter lengths and will knock them out asap.  April is #IndieApril and there are are two huge sales going on for the first few days of the month.  If anyone wants to feature about indie – general content – or their indie novel on Brunch this month, let me know!

March Wrap-up:

I *technically* finished 11 books but 2 were started in February and at least three of the others were well under 200 pages.  I have gotten into the habit of just sharing my favorite read from each month so … *scratches head* … I didn’t LOVE any of my March reads. Nothing was rated 5 stars.  My gut says give it to Trailer Park Trickster by David R Slayton, so there we go.

I dismally hated my most anticipated read of the year: the Cormac McCarthy bait & switch. I wrote pretty extensive on The Passenger (He’s lost his damn mind) and Stella Maris then dropped the brand new hardcover set in my giveaway box 🤦‍♀️

Either way, I read a solid and balanced mix of sci-fi, fantasy, mystery/thriller, and literary fiction. I hurt my brain but I am happy with what I read and persevered through some difficult books.

So yeah. I actually did a lot of deeper writing this month, including some final thoughts on Avram Davidson that resulted in a cool email from his now publisher saying he likes my blog 😳 I thought I infringed a copyright or something and he was just saying hi! It also created a Twitter thread that ultimately made me question what it means to be well read. More on that next week.

I also did one Sunday Brunch interview with L.L. Stephens as part of a book tour!

Other than that I did two excellent literary crawls while in England and Wales and you can read the bookish travelogues if you want!

The Great London Literary Crawl

Hay-On-Wye, the first book town 

Both posts were fun to write and I enjoyed the trip immensely in general.

Speaking of, I think everyone knows who I’m attempting to internationally date now so here’s a cute picture of us doing star trek at sci-fi weekender 😂 I did a TOS era outfit complete with knee high boots and big earrings 🖖

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I didn’t have a ton of fun at the convention because honestly I didn’t know any names except Dacre Stoker (who went to college near where my family is from and we had a fun chat)! He also reminded me that there’s an industry for tourism related to folk lore and legends, and I plan to keep extending that to books as well with my travelogue posts.  Stoker’s travel stories were the best. I also finally got into the party aspect (the key is alcohol, one of the bartenders was vastly superior to the others)

Otherwise it was entirely too loud music and boring talks, boring games, and one hilarious dude who was screaming obscenities at children, and everyone was so chill about it. If nothing else I appreciate UK parents a bit more now 😂

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And…foul mouthed puppets.

March Blog Stats

Ok, let’s wrap this up with March Blog Stats: literally my best month ever! I had over 1000 visitors! Not views, visitors! Idk how but I smashed every single monthly record including views, visitors, and likes, and for the first time most of my views came from search engines. I even beat out GrimdarkTober by  landslide which is my blog’s biggest draw every year.

So – thank you thank you thank you!

My two main evergreen posts once again took the top views honors but I’m seeing a lot more posts starting to get regular views so maybe 🤞

Last but not least, I’ve been keeping track of my physical hauls & rough book spending.  It’s hard because the spending was mostly in pounds ($0.80 to the 1€) so… I know I unhauled 7 books and bought 10. I’m proud of that since I was in a foreign country going book shopping and could have done much worse 🤣

What do you all have going on for April? How was March?

Categories
General Posts, Non Reviews

February Wrap Up & March Travel Plans

Favorites, stats, hauls & unhauls, and miscellany. Did I even buy books this month? Let’s get to it!

February felt like a slower reading month and  March is going to be pretty vague TBR wise as I’ll be travelling from the 10th-29th and won’t be reading much.

February reading wrapup:

I finished 9 books. All of these reviews can be found on the blog using the search bar if you’re interested.

I was loyal to my TBR this month.

My favorite read was  The Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie but I feel bad for giving him two months in a row.

My favorite new to me/debut/new discovery author was definitely Kate J Armstrong, with her new book The Nightbirds

I also just absolutely disliked a few of the books I read in February, like The Hermes Protocol. I’m bordering a reading slump but I’ll recover overseas so it’s all good.

The breakdown was 5 fantasy,  2 sci-fi, one thriller, and one… Uh… badly reimagined mythology. I disliked The Song of Achilles too (thoughts coming🤣)

Stats wise:

February fell way short of January here on the blog.  It rebounded towards the end but my traffic sucks compared to everyone else so why do I even bother 🤷‍♀️ the most interesting thing though is most of my views are coming from search engines now so that’s something! Even funnier is that it’s my two main evergreen articles bringing the views in 🤣

Book un/hauls and spending

I’m tracking spending now to show y’all that commercialism isn’t necessary to do this. I did spend 27$ on audiobooks but I got eight through Chirp, on sale for a few dollars each and have no regrets.

I forgot my Kindle unlimited was due to start again and I meant to cancel it but ate that charge, and the audible trial. I bought NO physical or EBooks.  So the two subscriptions plus the audiobooks, I’m out like 43$.  KU is done in March, I don’t think it’s worth it.

I only had five books come in, two arcs and three giveaway wins. Thanks all ❤️ so all of that is on my TBR (see below)

I unhauled six books so I’m barely net negative for the month 😅.  The only place I collected more books was free e-copies of indies, with some killer sales this month from Clayton Snyder among others

The last thing I did on here that I liked was a short and sweet article about bookish things making me cranky this month 

How was you guys’ reading in February?
March tbr:

I won’t have much reading time so there are only three books on my TBR. If I blog a lot, it’ll likely be an excessively nerdy travelogue. I wrote one list about books based in London and their related landmarks, so stay tuned for my progress!

Celadon Books was nice enough to hook me up with a late ARC of Alex North’s new book The Angel Maker. I also have an audio code so look for that soon.

Sordaneon is for a blog tour and I’m starting it tonight!

Good Dog, Bad Cop will be a quick read and David Rosenfelt is always reliable for an entertaining mystery. Plus dogs. Thanks to Minotaur Books for that one ❤️

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I also have one brunch interview planned for the 19th with LL Stephens!

Nerdy travels:

I’m heading back to the UK (and already having a bad time with hotels) but I’m psyched to explore literary London, go to a British Sci fi convention, and see my sad nerd SO among other plans.  It’ll be an adventure for sure.

I will be slow here during March but I’ll do my best to update all the cool bookish things as I go!

What’s on you guy’s TBR?

Categories
General Posts, Non Reviews

November Wrap Up & December’s Hopefuls

Oyy I am struggling to put my thoughts on November into words.

November Wrapup

I thought my reading fell off the board but I was pretty on par with 11 books finished, the majority of them sci-fi this time.

The breakdown looked like six sci-fi books, one fantasy, three thrillers, and one non fiction. I rated 5 of those three stars or lower too so I am blaming my slump both on life events and some rough picks.

My favorite (and one of only two five star reads) was Wistful Ascending, an indie space opera action packed sci-fi by JCM Berne

Here on the website:

On the blog, I had 17 posts (a near record) but overall views are on the low side of average. I wrote a few articles that I really liked and didn’t get much traction, so, /shrug. I’ve got a few weeks until the yearly subscription renewal to decide if I’m going to keep the blog up next year and it’s a hard choice this time around.

New books:

i bought way too many e-books due to various indie author sales. As far as physical books I went slightly overboard with Angry Robot’s black Friday sale (half off? Ok come on…) And ended up with 6 books. I have no regrets 😅

December TBR:

My December TBR is practically non existent. I just don’t care about reading lists anymore. I’ve got an early finished copy of The Poison Season by Mara Rutherford that I have to review (out 12/6) and two from Celadon Books that I did not request, but I usually do read and review anything they send me because they’re good people.

I’m about 40% of the way through my last current review copy, Rubicon by JS Dewes. It feels very long as I’m reading it but I hope to finish before I head out on some travels next week.

I don’t know how much other reading I’ll get done. It won’t gain me any views but my mood wants to re start my re reading of all the John Sandford books. Prey was something we were all able to connect over and talk about, so the series feels like it could be a comfort read if I have time.

Misc:

Travel wise, my plans for Christmas kind of got ruined but I’ll be back from the UK mid month and then have a few days to regroup and probably head to my mom’s, so again I’ll see what the month entails before committing to any crazy reading. I believe there is going to be some bookshop crawling while I’m in Birmingham so definitely look for one of my bookish travelogue posts mid month 😉

What do you guys have in store for December?? Let me know in the comments!

Categories
General Posts, Non Reviews

GrimDarkTober & TBR Time

October? I’m just going to tear the calendar off the wall, this is ridiculous.  If you missed my September Wrapup & General Update post, you can find it here.   The final item on it stated that obviously I can’t do GrimDarkTober without Bookstagram, but is that really true?

I had one good friend comment and a few others message me that they enjoyed the content and will miss the festivities, interviews, and such, so I chewed it over and asked some friends for help.  The result is that I’m going to host a hodgepodge of Grimdark content here, from some of my favorite writers in the blog verse, which will all be finalized sometime soon and I’ll post a schedule as I know it.  If enough people follow along maybe I can do prompts and prizes via Twitter next year?

Also if anyone wants to write a spooky themed or grimdark feature to be hosted here, let me know! I’m open to lists of favorites, guest reviews, articles, spooky recommendations, Halloween photography, literally anything you want! 

For now, I have a kind of tentative TBR laid out that hopefully won’t go to trash like last month’s reading.

1) I’m actually almost done with Wizard & Glass, which is turning out to be spooky, sad, and everything else King is known for. I’m definitely an Oy and enjoying “the flashback book”

2) Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen – this is one of the last finished copies I received from St Martin’s Press and I need to get it read and featured asap.  There are ghosts, invisible birds, a murder mystery, lost stories, and more, so it’ll be a good reprieve to read some magical realism after King destroys me at the end of W & G

3) I set it down last month because it was too similar to my prior reads and too dark for me to enjoy at the time, but I’ll pick up Gunmetal Gods by Zamil Akhtar again in the spirit of GrimDarkTober! Idk if he’d be willing to interview but I’m probably going to ask

4) Lakesedge by Lyndall Clipstone – a finished paperback I was sent by the publisher and need to get a move on reading. A haunted mansion, gothic, atmospheric, a monstrous boy that spoiler alert, I bet the main character is going to end up kissing … Judging by the fact that it’s YA and at a 3.5 GoodReads rating, I’m trying to stay optimistic

5) Unrelated to anything spooky but I stole a friend’s copy of Starship Troopers and need to return it, so that’ll be on my list. I know the movie had some disturbing scenes so maybe I can put a dark spin on it

6) GrimDarkTober classic edition – Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde was voted my fall classic by the good folks of Twitter. It’s short and I’ll plug it in somewhere.

7) On the same poll, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne came in a close second.  If I don’t end up scaring off the person/people that might buddy read, I’ll get on that too at some point this month

8) The last one on my definitive TBR is a real Grimdark – The Trials of Ashmount by John Palladino.  He is definitely not my super special Halloween interview guest (Is he?  Can we confirm or deny this yet)? Updates when I know

I’m sure I can squeeze in another book or two but that is my definitive October TBR for you guys!  I keep telling Kevin Ansbro that I’m going to read In the Shadow of Time, and I owe St Martins a review for B.A. Paris’ The Prisoner out 11/1  … So we will see how it goes.

Guest Content: I also have guest posts coming from a few other bloggers so stay tuned for reviews of Norylska Groans by Michael R Fletcher and Clayton W. Snyder from the amazing Dr John Mauro of Grimdark Magazine, The Worthy by Anna Moss from Jamedi at A Vueltas por los Mundos, and, some other confirmed guest content! Get on the list if you want, there’s plenty of time!

What’s on your October TBR?