How is it already October? Part of my reading life is that I’m consistently reading ahead of time and so, honestly, I never really know what month it is. Last month I was reading books for October, and so now I’m just finishing those up before heading into November and then will be January. It’s like living a month ahead, while remembering all these books you read last month.
PSA About My Workload
So most of the month I made a conscious effort to read less. Because I have been looking for jobs, I put pressure on myself to read a book a day. I had the time and I thought if I am not working, I should just be working on my blog every second of my day – and doing other stuff like seeing friends and cleaning and cooking and looking for jobs. So it was ridiculously stressful. But halfway through the month, I made the conscious effort to do less.
I know that reading only a book every two days still is a lot more, but I’m trying to ease out of feeling like I have to, you know? I don’t know. A lot of people in my life don’t really understand what I do, the pressure I put on myself, or the work I do for the blog. But talking to some of my fellow book bloggers, I’ve found a source of comfort. There’s a lot of pressure to read and produce content. If you have seen, for a while I’ve had three posts three times a week. If you think about that that’s over 24 hours of just reading alone. A book requires about 4 hours of reading – not even reviewing or posting about it.
I’ve begun drafting a series where I give people a look at a week in my blogging life. For a little bit of context, I’ve published 44 posts in September with 70% of them, 31 being reviews. How much time I spend scheduling, writing, reading to just get a sense of the work I do. Which I do out of love. And I’m not complaining. I love to read and to shout about diverse books and just great books in general. But some people expressed interest so I thought I’d write it up for y’all. I’m also going to write a blog post about how I manage my blog – where I get review copies from, my reviewing schedule, how I plan my content, etc. Leave questions below!
Books Read – 25
As you may have noticed, this is the first month in a while I haven’t read over 30 books. At first I was a little scared by this (keep in mind that all things are relative and this is just based on my own experiences), but as I looked at my books, I feel really good about what I read. There were so many absolute winners for me! My little cyborg loving heart was totally fueled by Crier’s War and Tarnished Are the Stars while I stated reading the Legend series finally (for a readathon hosted by some great people including May @ Forever and Everly!
By the way, did you know for audiobooks I listen to, I don’t normally post reviews. You can find them all at Goodreads though if you’re interested. Just add me as a friend and you can see those reviews too – plus sneak peeks! For context, I read four books on audio this month – the whole Legend trilogy and Eliza and Her Monsters (our Backlist Bookworms pick for October – details on joining our discussion!!)
I also got to increase my love for Rin Chupeco by reading The Never Tilting World – who is your favorite auto-buy author because Rin Chupeco is 100% one of mine!
And the latter half of the month was full of absolute favorites. Talk about the lyrical Last True Poets of the Sea which was a sapphic Twelfth Night retelling. The amazing Our Wayward Fate that spoke to my childhood growing up as one of the handful of Asian kids in a predominately white neighborhood. Then we have some other fabulous anticipated Asian (American) reads like The Dragon Warrior, Shadow Frost, and Rogue Heart. Not to mention I was able to read Angel Mage from Garth Nix who is such a nostalgic author for me.
Challenge Updates
I just want to offer a little preface. The numbers below aren’t the books I read, they’re the posts/reviews I posted. So I have actually read more (which I’ll take into account at the end of the year), but I have only posted the following numbers this year. So I’ve posed reviews of: 5 backlist books, 3 retellings, 6 YARC books, 31 2019 releases, and 18 Netgalley/Edelweiss books. This month I smashed through my Netgalley goal of 75 bringing me up to a total of 90 books with my new goal being 100! Next month if I have more updates to my Backlist books then I’ll post an updated bingo card!
Favorite Book
Contemporary – Our Wayward Fate
Fantasy – The Never Tilting World
Science Fiction- Crier’s War
I can’t wait to hear your thoughts about blogging, any tips would be great!
Yes! Are there any specific topics you’d like to hear about?
The Crier War sounds so awesome. I need it. And Tarnished are the stars too because ace rep <3
You have been putting in so much hours. Give yourself a break. <3 You don't work that many hours at a job.
Omg yes to all the ace rep! Aww thank you, that’s so sweet of you <3 <3 <3