I’ve decided to start doing monthly wrap-up posts to track my reading throughout the year, especially since, thanks to StoryGraph, I now have a variety of ready-to-use graphs summarizing everything I could possibly want to know about my reading each month! So, without further ado, let’s get into the post!
How are my bookish goals progressing?
I read 16 books this month, leading to my ending the month at 11% of my 2021 reading goal. I’m ahead by three books, and I have the next month off before school starts back up, so I’m hoping to build up that buffer even more to account for the obvious fact that I read less when school is going on.
I’m really intrigued to see how the above chart fills out over the course of the year! I’ve looked at the versions StoryGraph generated for past years, and the fluctuations between different months were quite interesting.
I have not made much progress thus far on my other reading goals for 2021. I only have 400 pages left of War and Peace, so I am making progress towards Goal 3 (read both War and Peace and Anna Karenina) and Goal 5 (read at least 5 books in translation). I’ve maintained a semi-regular blog schedule, which I’m proud of, as well as a semi-regular Bookstagram schedule, so I do have that going for me. I’m definitely behind on Goal 10 (write at least a short review of every book read), but I’m not so far behind that I can’t make up the lost progress.
Here are all of the books I read this month (covers link to Goodreads)!
Of these, I own physical copies of 5, and the rest are ebooks from the public library. Starting to use Overdrive/Libby avidly last year has been very good for my reading, but not so great for my physical TBR pile; I bought 5 books this month, so there was no net decrease in number of books I own that I need to read, which is a suboptimal result.
What books did I buy?
Now for the StoryGraph breakdowns for this month!
I think the ‘moods’ of each book are determined by user ratings. I mostly agree with them, so this breakdown feels pretty reliable.
This adds up to more than 16 because a lot of the books are listed as multiple genres (i.e. Jane Eyre is ‘classics,’ ‘romance,’ and ‘fiction,’ while Be Dazzled is ‘fiction,’ ‘lgbtqia+,’ and ‘young adult.’ I’m not sure how StoryGraph determines the genres, but I don’t always agree with their categorization; for example, Lovely War should definitely be ‘historical,’ but is only ‘young adult,’ ‘fiction,’ and ‘romance.’ For one thing, almost all YA is fiction, so the inclusion of both categories seems superfluous, while ‘historical’ would add much greater specificity to the actual book.
This data I believe is determined by user reviews, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I agree with its categorizations either. There were several books I thought to be slow that are in the ‘fast’ category, and vice versa.
Half-star ratings in StoryGraph are the best, and I love them so much. I read a lot of books I adored this month, which was great.
What have I posted this month?
My 25 Most Anticipated Reads For 2021, Part 1 (January-June)
Review: Be Dazzled, by Ryan La Sila
Review: Again Again, by E. Lockhart
Top Fifteen Most Anticipated Sequels I Didn’t Read in 2020
Top Seventeen New-to-Me Authors I Read in 2020
Review: You Have a Match, by Emma Lord
Here’s a selection of my Bookstagram posts from this month!
What else have I been doing?
I’m not going to lie; January was not a good month for me. I go to boarding school, but we’ve been online learning since Thanksgiving break. First semester just ended a week and a half ago, so much of the month was spent cranking out final projects and tests, which is somehow even more stressful online than in-person. I also got rejected from a program that I really wanted to do this summer.
One non-bookish thing that I’ve been loving is Wandavision. I love the MCU a lot, and I basically grew up watching sitcoms from when my mom was a kid, like The Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island, so Wandavision‘s sitcom basis is really interesting, especially in juxtaposition with the sci-fi aspects. I’ve also been obsessively rewatching Pride and Prejudice (2005); contrary to popular consensus, I much prefer it to the BBC version, because I just feel like it captures the spirit of the book a lot more. I could never get on board with the characters in the BBC adaptation. That is all to say that I have rewatched that movie at least 6 times in the past month. I’ve been listening to Critical Role, a DnD podcast that I’ve been listening to for almost 4 years, a lot, and music-wise, Taylor Swift’s evermore album is essentially the only thing I’ve been playing recently.
I have another several weeks off before school starts back up, so I’m hoping to pre-draft as many of my blog posts through the end of May as possible, except for book reviews, which I obviously can’t write before reading the book. Hopefully that’ll allow me to maintain a more consistent posting schedule than last semester.
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