Blog and Life Updates

2022 in Books

Teal banner with the title "2022 in books", with teal and purple flower decorations around it

I feel a bit late to the party of 2022 recaps, but I didn’t want to do it until it was truly over. 2022 has been a busy year for me, as you can read in my personal note from last month, but in the middle of all that, it’s the year I read the most in probably ever. (maybe I read more in highschool? but who knows. I didn’t count it then. And even so, I don’t think so).

In spite of reading very little in October and December, I read 150 books overall! I think this is best represented by my reading bookshelf :

Hand-drawn books over 2 pages of a notebook, forming a large bookshelf. The books are coloured in, in many colours, numbering 150 books. There are decorative stickers of plants, teapots and books.
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June recap, half year wrap-up, July bingo

For this wrap-up since we’re now halfway through the year I will look quickly at my monthly reads, then my progress so far this year, before delving into my plans for July.

June wrap-up

June was such a great month for me! I actually read the most books out of any month this year so far, with 17 books read in total (and 3 DNFs).

2 of the read books were e-ARCs so I’m once again more or less on track with my netgalley shelf. On top of that I read another 3 ebooks. I’m still very far from my goal of reading 30 ebooks this year, but every single one counts!

I got to say, I read mostly audiobooks, and mostly books under 300 pages. Though, of the audios I read, it’s about half and half between over/under 8 hours. I’m really enjoying the new audio tracking features on The Storygraph that allows you to track how many hours of audio you’ve read, instead of counting those as pages!

So, for this month I’ve read over 2500 pages of paper/ebooks, and 55h of audiobooks! Not bad, if I say so myself!

Which brings me to…

Half Year Recap

Can’t believe the year’s half gone already!

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Life Updates: How I Got Myself A Cane

If you follow me on twitter, you might have seen that I had some trouble getting the cane I’d ordered to arrive to me – least of all in a timely manner for the trip out of town that I’d planned.

This will not be about that.

As annoying as it was, the main hurdle to getting a cane was… me. So my hopes writing about it today is that if you find yourself in a similar situation, that this might help you.

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So what happened to (mer)May?

Just a quick update this time.

As usual, life got away from me. I had Big Plans for May, which included reading all the mermaid books I’ve accumulated, and more. I read about one and a half of that, and the only one I finished was a comicbook from the library. Dent made in my TBR? 0.

Part of it is that, as of the last post, I was still recovering from Covid. I was better, but still exhausted, and I found it hard to read any paper books, so I just gravitated towards rereading audiobooks. I finished my Murderbot reread, and read a few other novellas on Scribd, and left my paper books to collect dust – including some library books I’ve actually started.

I also was in no mood for ebooks (as usual) and quite busy with both work, and a bunch of medical appointments to reschedule and medical tests to do, and that has basically taken all my energy. As a result, I’ve read a few short books and comics, and that’s it. I did read 11 books in total, but 7 of those were in audio, and 6 were under 200 pages. 2 were comics.

And even then, I’m actually surprised I read this much.

For June, I’m actually cutting myself a break. I made a list for myself with like 3 ARCs I do need to read, and the rest is just “stuff I should finish, probably” and there’s no official TBR. Just taking things as they go. My hope is that I read some nice books that way, and I can focus on getting more posts and reviews out as well, and get the blog back to being active.

I’ve also got a week of holidays planned, which could be either great for my reading, or a disaster. And I’m officially taking part in Book Bloggers’ Novel of the Year Award (BBNYA), as a panelist, so this will keep me busy reading too!

April Wrap-up and May Plans

Teal title card reading "April Wrap-Up" with flower ornaments around it.

Another late post, and the reason is… I caught covid and spent the last week being useless, doing nothing but blowing my nose, sleeping, and having insomnia (the irony, I know!) and brain fog. Even listening to an audiobook was hard, let alone write anything…

I’m on the mend though, and I want to get this out ASAP so I can focus on my May plans.

April was a pretty good month as things go, I read 14 books and close to 3500 pages! As always, a lot of audiobooks – and I cleared some old books from my TBR, that I own in ebook but found the audiobook for instead, so that really helped!

That said… I also blew up my budget by buying so many paper books, so while ebooks went down, paper and overall TBR went up… ah well, the curse of the book enthusiast I suppose!

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Let’s talk about the chronic health thing

I keep mentioning it a bit in my recaps but I want to talk a bit more about it. I’m having chronic health issues. Chronic pain. Just calling it that is a new development for me, because I feel a bit of an imposter doing that. It’s only transient, right? it’s gonna go away and then I won’t be in pain anymore? well… not so far. And as it’s sucking more and more of my energy, and to be honest, mental health, I’m trying to embrace the label.

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(February and) March wrapup

Teal coloured title card reading £March Wrap-Up" with flowery teal and purple ornaments above and below the title

So things got a little bit away from me there…

To give you a bit of context, I’ve been struggling with my health (yes, again, that’s the “chronic” part unfortunately, and it’s making me exhausted, and also depressed, so that’s a double whammy there) while having to restart work, and job searching for something better for both my sanity and my health. Oh, and I moved apartments! So, it’s been busy. And in the middle of all that, I kept thinking I needed to do a February wrapup, until it was mid-March and I thought, well… The same happened with reviews, where I’ve been postponing some so much that I just can’t think what I wanted to say anymore.

So here we are, March has just ended, I’m still in the same job, I’m still exhausted all the time… but on the plus side, I’ve read some cool books! I managed to finish the r/fantasy bingo, as you might have seen earlier this week. I’ve read some of my physical books, too, and a buttload of audiobooks because they help me get through stuff when I otherwise don’t have the spoons to focus.

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