It’s almost the end of June, and I think it’s time to look back at the past six months of reading and see how it’s gone.
I use Goodreads’ Reading Challenge to track my reading through the year. I currently have a goal of 52 books, and I’ve read 29 books so far, which puts me four books ahead of “schedule”. One of the things that I really like about the Reading Challenge is that you can easily see all of the books you read during the year, which makes it very easy for me to break my reading down into some simple categories.
What I’ve read:
- 7 ebooks
- 18 paperbacks
- 4 hardcovers
Of these 29 books:
- 2 were poetry collections
- 2 were graphic anthologies
- 3 were nonfiction
- 6 were YA or middle grade
- 16 were fiction, horror, crime, or fantasy/magical realism
- 48% were written by women, 45% by men, and 7% by self-defined non-binary or trans individuals
- 3.5 were written by POC
- 7767 pages read total
I’m okay with my gender breakdown, though I would like to see the non-binary and trans author count go up. I’m not happy with my overwhelmingly white author count. I will be trying to make an effort to diversify my authors for the rest of the year. I have several poetry collections and plays written by POC that I already wanted to read, but I will also be pulling more fiction titles written by POC. I’d also like to read more nonfiction.
Now that I’ve started this blog, I want to dedicate more time to writing reviews of the books I’ve been reading. So, a big goal of mine for the next six months is less about reading and more about writing. This will require some serious work, because writing a decent review takes time. But, because this is something I’ve been hoping to start working on for a long time, I’m definitely motivated!
I’ve had several really amazing reads so far, so it’s hard to pick which one I liked the best, but I think The Handmaid’s Tale is currently tied with The Blue Fox as far as deep thinkers are concerned. My favorite fun read is Tony Ballantyne’s Dream London, a series that I actually read backwards unknowingly. As far as the least enjoyed reads so far this year go, The Forest of Hands and Teeth takes first place. I was surprised by how invested I became in The Paper Magician trilogy, which makes up half of the young adult I read these last six months. This has been a pretty good last six months, with mostly four and five star reads, which I hope continues on for the rest of the year!
I’m currently working on a review for The Handmaid’s Tale, which was my book club’s June read, as well as a review for The Bird Box, which is a gripping horror novel (and it was a debut novel for the author, which is pretty amazing). Have a great reading week!
In Libris Speramus 