I’ve talked quite a bit recently about my ARC-related habits, how I plan my TBRs around them, and how I progress through reading them in a mostly timely manner. All of this is well and good but you may have noticed that I don’t often talk about my success with PHYSICAL ARCs. That is because I have very little success with them, to be frank. Here’s why they sit idle and don’t get read (sometimes at all, sometimes in a timely manner, etc.): 1. There’s no real ratio to hold me accountable (like a Netgalley percentage). This is the number one thing here for a reason. Because I don’t have any solid number to associate my physical ARCs with, I tend to ignore them in favor of egalleys. There’s a ratio or percentage that helps you out on Netgalley specifically, so I can tie my overall success to that number. I can find out when to improve it or how much it will take to increase it to 80% at any given moment. If the number is too low, I can’t really get all of the great books I’m hoping for. The NG ratio is obviously a bit annoying to maintain or improve, but its existence totally holds me accountable for reading those review copies. 2. While I’m grateful to get them, many are unsolicited, which often means “not for me.” I’ve gotten more and more unsolicited ARCs lately, which is awesome! I genuinely feel that I am finally gaining […]

I’ve talked at great lengths about how I read very seasonally. (I wrote a TTT post and a discussion post about a seasonal book club I’d create!) I read Christmas/holiday/winter books during that season, super summery/beachy books during that time of year, and a decent amount of other books in between. After reading Stephanie’s discussion about reading holiday books during other times of the year, I thought I’d revisit this topic and discuss how I maaaay have gotten even pickier about this LOL. Fall Reads September Let’s kick this off with my favorite month of the year! Books about football will be read during this month, of course, if I happen to find any appropriate ones! This is a niche topic but the start of football season brings on ALL the feels for me. I also will try to read books about schools or new school years starting up during September since it brings me back to those days of my life. Anything school-heavy (especially boarding school) will probably get read here. Pictures: books about school (2/3 of them), all of them about football! October I don’t read a lot of super scary books, but generally spooky stories (especially mysteries, thrillers, Halloween-themed, and very light horror-ish books) will be read in October. I don’t lean in on this like many of my blogging friends do, but it certainly happens for me. I like atmospheric fall-time reads in October for sure – something that makes me feel the chill in the air and the slow shift […]

Every time I finish a great book, I say to myself “DAMN what a reading year I’m having!” … and every time I remind myself it’s only MARCH somehow, I picture this: Seriously though, it’s been quite a good year already for me. I am having so much success with the books I’ve been picking out. I’ve talked about my lack of five-star ratings from 2018 as well as me generally getting pickier with the books I choose to read and rate so highly, but I’m doing REALLY well so far. Honestly I’m just here today to be excited about some books, share my thoughts on this bizarre phenomenon, and more. Books read so far: 32 Average rating: 3.9 5 Star Reads Girls with Sharp Sticks was one of my most anticipated reads, and I genuinely can’t believe I had the ARC in my possession for months and didn’t read it. I promise you, this book is perfection. I LOVE Suzanne Young and each of her books/series gets better than the last. If you want to hear my entire saga with this duo and thoughts on Crooked Kingdom itself, click that link. Long story short: I put off reading it because I was nervous and then realized I HAD to read it before KoS. It did not disappoint, clearly. And finally, last but certainly not least, The Bride Test (review to come) was an utterly perfect rom-com for me. It didn’t have some of the slightly cheesy sexual dialogue from […]

As I look through my Goodreads shelves and wonder how the hell I’ve acquired so many books on my digital TBR list, I started to wonder how other people use their shelving system. Do you use shelves like “consideration” or “maybe” or “to check out” on Goodreads to track books? These are the books where you think you MIGHT want to read them but probably not? Maybe? … So you put them on your in-between to consider later. Do you ever purge this shelf? Do you leave it as a gray area or book purgatory forever? I have a few answers to all this. My “consideration” shelf on Goodreads is primarily books I’m *considering* reading. I guess it IS that simple, to start with. I don’t think “I definitely want to read this” when I see the book, which is why it doesn’t end up on my main TBR. If I say “maybe I’d read this,” I kind of go from there. I get annoyed at myself when I look at the number of books on there (currently 557) and think: I’m never going to read ANY of these. I have 2,016 (!!!!!!!) books on my actual to-read list PLUS the 348 on my TBR for unreleased books. Do I really NEED a consideration shelf? Honestly, the main reason I keep it around is to keep track of books I’ve seen and keep getting distracted by. Let me explain. I have this whole book cover addiction, as you are aware of by […]

I’ve talked about my love for Scribd on the blog multiple times. It’s set up like a cross between Audible and most library ebook/audiobook apps (Hoopla, Overdrive, etc.). It allows you to pay $8.99 a month to have access to their library of books and other kinds of media or documents. I have used them on and off for multiple years. Their unlimited system was amazing… until they removed it… but then they brought back a lighter version… and now it’s unlimited again! I was so excited to see the changes to a better “credit system” so naturally I was even more pleased with the service now that they’re back to unlimited books/etc. I’m not partnered with them or anything, but they do offer two months of free reading and listening by signing up through my referral link. I also get free months if you sign up! If you like this post and want to try it out, help ya girl out! Okay, back to business – Scribd has gone back to their “unlimited listening and reading” plan. There are a few caveats I’ve learned about, but I thought I’d talk about my favorite service again and how you can make it work for you. What is Scribd again? They’re a website and app service where you pay $8.99 a month to have access to books, audiobooks, magazines, documents, and sheet music. You can save titles to your account so you don’t lose them for later, as well as add them to […]

I know I’ve spoken about this at length in various posts, whether it’s about my ARC habits or how I pick the books for my TBR, but I thought it would be fun to talk about my overall methods for curating a TBR post for each month, which includes picking the specific books and determining the categories I should read each month. I remember back in 2015 I followed Andi on an experiment of using TBR-related categories when picking books for the month. It worked so well for me because my mood reading for a specific book mixed well with the reading obligations I still wanted to follow. The lists would include things like format, genre, publishing year, debut author, etc. – any kind of book you could think of, in order to diversify your reading choices. My current TBR posts follow a similar structure but I am typically able to pick certain books now instead. Here is my current TBR post setup: Required Reading As I’ve discussed before, there are plenty of “required reading” books each month. These are basically books with due dates of some kind. I keep physical ARCs around here because I tend to view them differently than egalleys. I will usually have 1-2 books from the library and 1-2 blog tours on deck in the coming month, so those make up some slots on the TBR. I also have a monthly book club pick. All of these things have specific guidelines of when to finish […]

State of the ARC is hosted by AvalinahsBooks Current/Recent Approach I recently spoke about where I get my ARCs, how good (or bad) I am at reading them, and countless other things under the “how I deal with review copies” umbrella of conversation. I’ve learned that I’m really not terrible about keeping up with them overall, but there are still plenty I leave unread at the end of the year. I don’t want to ignore my review copies from previous years completely, but I need to figure out my new approach to reading ARCs from 2019 to stay on top of things. I am the person who reads a book and writes the review within the next 1-12 hours at most. Yes, every single time. This is partly because my memory is garbage but also because I’m just DETERMINED to do it. I like to be on top of things. This is why I don’t have a problem reading books super early – I end up with posts scheduled months in advance. It feels good to have a more full blog post calendar; I love getting to the next month and realizing I already have at least a few things on there, scheduled and ready to go. I read the book and write the review immediately. Period. No matter the pub date. I’ve been trying to be better about reading my ARCs early enough, mixing in some backlist ones while getting ahead on future ones. One day you’ll see me reading […]

I was thinking about this as I was updating my Instagram stories with my most recent finished books, as well as those I’m currently reading. That seems to be the latest social media trend for tracking book progress and sharing our reads. Last year, we were all updated Twitter threads and moments with books as we finished them, maybe including a mini review too. Lindsey avidly uses the Bookerly app and shares cool graphics for books as she reads and finishes books. Some people do one thing, some people do multiple, some people do nothing. I think it’s fun to watch reading progress from others and (in general) share mine… but I get so lazy later in the year. I’m just not in the mood to take the picture, especially if it’s of my Kindle screen or I have a poorly formatted egalley. Sometimes I screenshot the Goodreads page and that takes an extra step, plus having the screenshot annoyingly saved on my phone. I’ll get into all that later, but thought I’d go through some of my past preferences for tracking my reading progress on social media and why I went with the ~decision~ I did for 2019. 2017 Tracking I used the Twitter moment in 2017, which was kind of annoying for me personally. After finishing the book, marking that on Goodreads, and writing a little review, I would then have to duplicate those steps on Twitter AND track down the photo of the book/Kindle from when I started reading. […]