It’s funny because back when I was reading 150-180 books per year, it would be impossible to actually sit down and figure out all of the books I might read for a certain portion of the year. I knew I’d be reading anywhere from 10 to 25 books per month (!!!) so I never knew what random title may sneak in at the last minute and bump something else from the TBR. Now that my reading life is more depressing (for ME) at 75 books per year, I can almost predict exactly which books I’ll get to in a given month or season. I’ve wrote multiple TBR posts lately (spring TBR with only new releases, my summer bucket list and TBR, my most anticipated books – which included books I have review copies for – of the second half of the year) but thought it would be kind of fun to guess my TBR for the second half of 2022. Here’s where I’m at so far and where I need to go:
Total Read January through June: 32 books
Total TBR July through December to Meet Goal: 43 books (7 per month)
I know I have to be realistic when I look at this number and not just assume I’ll read all of the review copies publishing from July through December plus some owned copies. I know I won’t get to EVERY review copy as my tastes and moods change. I need to spend at least 50-70% of November/December books as holiday books. I have plenty of backlist titles to read and even two titles I’d consider rereading! I’m going to assume the following breakdown will probably happen for the 43 books.
Predictions on Book Source/Format Breakdown
ARCs – Upcoming (15) and Backlist (8)
I have 22 egalleys for books that are publishing between now and the end of the year. I have 15 egalleys that already published in 2022 that I haven’t read yet. I’m hoping that I can get to the majority of the ones publishing in the second half of the year so I went with a semi-optimistic 15 books. As for the ones that already published, I figured I may get to 8 of them. These are somewhat random numbers but I tried to work backwards essentially from the grand total of 43 books needed for the rest of the year and try to determine, based on my usual reading patterns, what makes the most sense. These are two of the top three largest categories for my little prediction pie chart because I usually read a lot of review copies – it makes sense because they’re the ones I’m obligated to read, technically.
Holiday Reads (10)
So the finnicky part of this was trying to figure out how to break down my egalleys overall vs. holiday books vs. holiday egalleys. I have review copies of holiday books for this year and from last year that I would probably read, but I wanted to keep them out of the egalley section for a few reasons. I just thought it would be a lot easier to track holiday books OVERALL. I definitely want to read the Christmassy review copies I have publishing in the fall (4) separately from the 15 review copies I’ll select to count in the above category. I think I have some backlist egalleys of holiday books too but not 100% sure. Either way, I knew this category should stand alone regardless of source or format. I hope to read 10 holiday books – usually that could mean 3-5 in November and 5-7 in December.
New/Upcoming (4) and Backlist/Already Published (4)
I made some of those TBR posts and most anticipated lists for a reason! I realized there are definitely some books I’m jazzed up to read that I (currently) don’t have review copies for that will come out in the second half of the year. I also know that there are some 2021 and 2022 Jan-Jun releases I own that I definitely would like to read. I decided to give this category a total of 8 books between both categories – 4 books that I already own or bought in the last year and a half, plus 4 books that are coming out in the second half of the year that I really want to read.
Rereads (2)
So usually I’m not a huge rereader, but I made a promise to myself that I will reread the second and third books in THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY series because of the show. I reread book one a few summers ago and I believe the audiobooks got new narrators? I’m currently watching season one of the show and believe they just started filming season two, so I hope to finish my series reread before the summer is out!
Potential TBR
I decided to color-code each section of books based on the pie chart above so it’s clear which section of books I’m talking about. First up: the books publishing in the second half of the year.
I finalized 15 egalleys that are publishing between July and December. These are the ones I’m most excited about. It actually ended up that I could be reading the vast majority of my egalleys because 4 of them are featured in the holiday reads section below, which means only 3 (!) of them didn’t get selected to read in the second half of the year. I will be feeling GREAT if this happens because that means I was super on top of my review copies this year haha. There’s a nice mix of genres here between thrillers, time-y/parallel life, sci-fi, fantasy, and different types of contemporary/romance.
As I mentioned above, 4 of these holiday books are review copies for this year! The other 6 books are a combination of backlist and upcoming. The backlist titles are necessary because one of them is a companion to one of my egalleys and the other is just Bayliss’s book from last year I didn’t get to. I’d like to read this one before reading her upcoming release, which apparently has been bumped to next year based on what I’ve selected above haha. Of course, just predictions! Anything can happen!
This category above are review copies I have that have already published in the first half of the year. It was hard to narrow this down as well because so many of them sound great! There’s another good mix of genres here including new-to-me authors and tried-and-true favorites.
This section is for the owned books I have that I need to and want to read still within 2022! This was truly the hardest category to narrow down. Realistically, there are at least two more books that I could have included here because I’m still highly interested in reading them. You’ll see MAJESTY here because I hope to read my review copy of RIVALS (pictured in the previous section). I own physical copies of the other 3 books.
Here are the top 4 books coming out in the second half of the year that I hope to read. Another tough category to narrow down! I can guarantee, out of all of these, I will be reading THE FINAL GAMBIT. And probably also SAGA because I’m sooo pumped its coming back. The other two are ones I’m excited for that seem like the most realistic for me, especially because one of them is my next BOTM pick.
And finally, the rereads. I should have just considered this a freebie category because there’s a decent chance I don’t get to these and end up reading 2 random other books that I could have squeezed into another category. I even have one more cookbook I haven’t read yet that I would almost guarantee I’ll read, so we’ll see.
Conclusion and Bonus Reads
This was really fun! I knew it would be a cool challenge to think hard about my reading choices for the end of the year and prioritize my egalleys, both older and upcoming. It also makes me feel really weird thinking about the fact that we’re in the second half of the year now and my reading life is practically predetermined! I know these are strictly predictions but I wouldn’t be surprised if the vast majority end up coming true – it’ll be really fun to reflect on this next year like I do with my five-star predictions. I thought I would include a few bonus reads of the books I cut out of different categories that I very easily may read instead. Here they are:
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