happy new year

Weekly Wrap-Up: 12/23 – 1/1

So. Yeah. I don’t think this is gonna be much of a wrap-up, seeing as I didn’t post at all last week. But I thought that this might get me back into the groove, and we’ve had a few holidays since then, so I have a little bit to talk about.

Anyway, I don’t have anything else to say. So let’s get on with the wrap-up.

Sunday 12/24: Christmas Eve

Merry (very late) Christmas Eve!! 🦌🎅🔔🕯️ I was baking up a storm the weekend before Christmas, and didn’t have the time or energy to read, unfortunately. But I made a bunch of delicious cookies!

Monday 12/25: Christmas Day

Speaking of which, here’s another very late holiday well wishing for y’all – Merry Christmas!! 🎄🎁❄️🌟 I had a wonderful but busy day, and it was super nice to spend time with family that I only see a couple of times a year. I really missed them. I hope anyone who reads this blog who also celebrates Christmas also had a great holiday.

Sunday 12/31: New Year’s Eve

Here’s yet another late holiday sentiment: Happy New Year’s Eve!! 🎇🎆 I was unfortunately sick this past weekend, so I didn’t feel up to doing anything, which sucked. But I hope everyone else had a nice last day of 2023!

Monday 1/1: New Year’s Day

For this one, I’m actually not that overdue! Happy New Year!! 🥂🍻 Yesterday, I was still under the weather – but this time with something else. My spouse was as well, so we took it easy and had a lazy day relaxing at home. I hope everyone has had a great start to 2024 so far, regardless!

💖🎁 Wrapping It All Up 💖🎁

So yeah, I haven’t done anything regarding the blog since right before Christmas, but my spouse has been off work and I’ve been distracted. That, and de-stressing from all the stuff I did to prepare for Christmas. And then of course, I got sick, and am still sick (though I’m feeling a little better, which is why I’m finally posting).

For the rest of the week, I still wanna relax a bunch and spend a lot of time with my spouse since they’re still off work. So I probably won’t be posting much this week, but hopefully I’ll post at least a couple of times. I’m also hoping to get back into reading – I hit quite the slump in December.

Anyway, thank you so much for reading, and I hope you have an excellent day/night!

See ya ~Mar

Weekly Wrap-Up: 12/31 – 1/8

Weekly Wrap-Up 12/31 - 1/8

It’s been a bit (ei: a month) since the last time I did one of these, but since I’ve gotten my crap back together, I’ve decided to bring this back.

So without further ado, let’s get into the post. (Also, yes, I know this is technically nine days and not seven. … Shh, say nothing!)

Saturday 12/31: DNF’s of 2022, Five Star Books of 2022

On the left day of 2022, I did a double post after a several day hiatus. (I get busy around the holidays, okay?) These posts were concerning the books I read over the past year, specifically the ones that I DNF-ed and the ones that I gave five stars. If you’re interested and you missed them, you can check out the DNF post here and the five star books post here.

Sunday 1/1: Happy New Year

My New Year’s post was about… you guessed it, New Year’s! It was basically just a post wishing everyone a Happy New Year and going over my goals and stuff that I want to do in 2023. You can read the post here.

Monday 1/2: December 2022 Reading Wrap-Up, Majestic Monday #6

On the second day of the new year, I once again double posted. Firstly, I posted my December 2022 reading wrap-up, wherein I discussed my StoryGraph reading statistics from last month. Then, I posted the first Majestic Monday in like a month, but the sixth one chronologically. In this one, I highlighted A Coup of Tea by Casey Blair, The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty, and Echo North by Joanna Ruth Meyer. You can read the reading wrap-up here and the Majestic Monday post here.

Wednesday 1/4: 2022 Reading Wrap-Up, Shelf Control #7

On Wednesday, I did another double post. (I’m noticing a trend here, lol.) The first was my year of reading for 2022, where I go over the my 2022 StoryGraph stats as a whole, and the second post was another Shelf Control, where I talk about Haunting the Deep by Adriana Mather, the sequel to How to Hang a Witch. If you missed it, you can read my 2022 year in review here and the Shelf Control post here.

Sunday 1/8: Anticipated First Quarter Books

Yesterday, I finally posted my anticipated books… for the first quarter of 2023. So January, February, and March. There’s waaayy too many novels on it to list here in a compact manner, so just check it out here if you’re interested in new fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and contemporary novels coming out.

Books I Read in 2022 | A Year in Review

You might have noticed, but 2023 is upon us. Which means that 2022 has ended.

And so has my first year on The StoryGraph.

And the year that I started blogging dedicatedly.

It wasn’t the best year, for me and for lots of other people, but it wasn’t the worst year. And I read more books than I had in years, a lot of which I really enjoyed. So, you know the drill – it’s time for the reading stats.

(Note: I actually read twenty-two novels last year, not twenty-one! I forgot to start my Goodreads reading goal thing until after I read Mickey7. And whatever I did, I couldn’t correct it. So, thanks Goodreads… 😒)

😐 Moods: I had a lot of moods on the mood pie graph last year. The biggest ones were adventurous and funny; and considering that I read seven Dresden Files books and the entirety of The Murderbot Diaries (minus one short story – don’t @ me!!) it really isn’t much of a surprise. My third biggest slice was mysterious which also wasn’t a surprise – most plots have at least a little bit of it, after all, since it makes a lot of different plots more compelling.

👢 Pace: As you can see, my favorite books to read are generally fast-paced. Medium-paced is also usually pretty okay some of the time for me as well, but I cannot get into slow-paced novels. I’m sorry Legends & Lattes. I’m so sorry.

🔢 Length (or “Page Number”): I usually like to read books that are between 300 and 500 pages, otherwise books sometimes feel like they’re dragging me down or they’re too short. There are exceptions, of course, but 300 – 500 is generally my comfort zone.

🎭 Genres: Okay, if you’ve been following this blog for a while, it’s pretty obvious that my favorite genre to read is fantasy. And the bar graph on the left displays that very prominently. I also like sci-fi and YA, with some flavorings of mystery, which the graph also shows. After that, it just gets into the more miscellaneous stuff that’s in the books that I tend to read – aka: the stuff that I don’t care about as much when I’m reading, like romance.

📄 Format: Print or digital mostly, but I did read an audiobook this year, which confirmed to me that I don’t much care for them. (Note: This pie graph is inaccurate because I imported almost all of my book data from last year over to StoryGraph from Goodreads, and I think StoryGraph just picked random formats for all the books that I read or something.)

📖 Fiction/Nonfiction: 2022 was a full fiction year for me. I do have a couple of nonfiction books in my TBR, but I haven’t gotten around to reading them yet. I’ve just kept getting distracted by fantasy novels and stuff.

✍️ Most Read Authors: Not surprising at all. As I mentioned in the Moods section, I read a bunch of the Dresden books and all of Murderbot. And I guess that the only other author that I read more than one book by, courtesy of the Prosper Redding duology, I guess that it makes sense for Alexandra Bracken to be on the graph, too.

📚 Number of Books and Pages: This section is pretty self-explanatory, and the line graph can probably explain it much more succinctly than I can with words, but I guess I’ll embellish a little. My peak months were March and November, which isn’t surprising since I read like eight books in the former, and like five during the later.

⭐ Star Ratings: I gave ten books that I read 5 perfect stars. Which I say is pretty good, considering that that’s almost half the books that I read in 2022. Yay!! My second highest rectangle is right in the middle of the bar graph with 4 stars. Also a respectable rating for a good book. Which totals it to fifteen books that got really good ratings! Yay again! The rest are kind of middling height, so I’m happy to say that I didn’t really read many novels that I didn’t like in 2022. (Except for really The Conjurer, but we don’t talk about that in this house.)

§ • § • §

Annnd… that’s a wrap! That’s really a wrap, actually. Wow, a whole other year is gone already. Hard to believe.

But that just means that everyone and everything has a fresh start once again. And there’s so many new books coming out in 2023 to enjoy – and old ones, too! So, Happy New Year once again to everyone and I’ll see you on the flip side for more bookish things!

To 2023 | Happy New Year 🥂📖

We two have run about the slopes,
and picked the daisies fine.
But we’ve wandered many a weary foot,
since auld lang syne.

Auld Lang Syne; Verse III

Well, it’s once again been another year. Goodbye 2022: you were a pretty good one (at least for the second half). Here’s to 2023 being much better, for all of us.

I’ve got some goals and a bookish New Year’s resolution for this year. I’m very excited about all of it. Here it is.

2023 Resolution

Last year (wow, it’s still so weird to say that!) I finally really started putting effort into this blog. I’d kind of had it for around a year already, but I never did anything with it and it was empty. But a few months ago I really started doing stuff with it, and I’ve never felt so satisfied. I love reading and writing, and having a place to really gab about it has been amazing.

But this year, I want to do more with it. This has pretty much been a book blog, and it’s definitely gonna stay a book blog – I just want to post on it more consistently, and just more in general. I was doing very well for the first six or seven weeks I was doing it, but it kind of fell on the wayside at the end of the year. I want to rectify that. I want to get back that passion and consistency that I had for the first while.

I also want to read more books this year. And meet my reading goal. Last year, my reading goal on Goodreads was originally 20 books, because I was very busy at the beginning of the year, and was under an ungodly amount of stress and anxiety. But then, after everything settled down a bit, I got overconfident and bumped it up to 30 books when I started reading a lot in the second quarter of 2022.

(I shouldn’t have done that. Lol.)

I ended up falling just a few books short of my goal for last year. That’s not gonna happen this time. So, this year, I’m once again going to set my reading goal to 30 books on Goodreads and I’m going to meet it – even go beyond it, hopefully. And that means more blog posts about books I’ve read!

So, my official New Year’s resolution for 2023 is to read 30+ books and post on the blog more (consistently). Oh, and also, publish my first novel. So, I have two resolutions this year!

List of Goals for 2023

📚 Read 30+ books and review them on the blog (part of my first resolution)

📚 Post more (consistently) on the blog (part of my first resolution)

📚 Try to read out of my comfort zone (I’ve honestly already started doing that some, but it can’t hurt to try even more kinds of books!)

📚 Really started writing and then editing my first novel (I have a lot of ideas dispersed between a several page Word document for my older stuff, and several Google Docs files for the newer stuff. It’s time I actually did stuff with it.)

📚 Publish my first novel in 2023 (I know, very ambitious, since I haven’t really even started writing it yet) (my second resolution)

📚 Take better care of Myself emotionally (I’ve gotten much better at this during this past year, but I still feel that I could improve even further)

…Annnd, that’s all I can really think of for now. The resolutions are set and will not change, but I can always add to and adjust my other goals. I hope – No, I’m going to be more proactive with this blog this year. So, see you guys on the flip side for the next (bookish) post. Happy New Year everybody!! Cheers to a fantastic 2023!! 🥂🎇