Second Quarter Review

April to June 2024

Books Read: 19 (A: 7, M: 6, J:6)

Pages Read: 6,538

Average Star Rating: 3.71★

Most Favorite Book: The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang

Least Favorite Book: Return of the Shadows by Donald L. Marino

I mean....half the year is gone and I'm barely a third of the way into my goal. I'm not foreseeing this year working out to 100 books. I still have the Orilium Readathon in August where I'm going to have a reading list with like 15 books on it? Maybe more than that. I don't remember. I'm still only counting each of his classes as a single one, since he's in the classroom either way. 

I don't think I'm doing super terrible as far as reading goes. So far, April has been the best month by all of one book. June is shaping up to out-strip it by a fair amount. 9 days in and I've already finished 4 books with decent process into 4 more. I'm finishing nearly a book every other day.  I've had one book that was almost a 0★ read. I gave it 1. It was garbage. It was worse than garbage. I didn't think it was feasibly possible to actually be trash, but I was proven wrong. I don't want it, but it's also signed, so like I'm keeping it for posterity? That's stupid. I should get rid of it. 

I did try to read more LGBTQIA+ books in June, but that washed out right after I went to a Friends of the Library sale in my neighborhood. Now I'm reading all kinds of things. I think I am going to have fun letting myself just go wild and mood read instead of setting a TBR. This will be an interesting experiment. 

I managed to actually stick to one of my goals this quarter: reviewing all of the books I read. I don't know what happened last quarter when it all just fell apart. April was in the quarter, though, which was a heavier reading month for me like August will shape out to be. I have to try to keep on top of it for the rest of the year. 

I also failed miserably at hiding away $5 for every book I've read. Right now I'd practically have to squirrel away half a paycheck in order to catch back up to where I ought to be. Which is something like....$180? I know! Maybe on the next really good Fifth Thursday I'll stash the money that should be there into the right account. Or I may forget. Who knows, really. 

For the next quarter, I'm planning on letting myself be a little free from the to-be-read lists that I used to make. August has the Orilium Readathon where I'll need to get through something like fifteen books in order to 'graduate' to the next level. So we will allow ourselves to just read whatever we want until then. I think I have one book that's 800+ pages now, but then I will just do whatever and hopefully find shorter books in the readathon. 

Hmmm...I don't think I've anything else to share right now? I hope you all have a productive third quarter~