This has been a month for lists. I made lists, and lists of lists, and top ten lists, and currently working on my bingo round up lists. You need lists? I'm your girl.
I went to a one day calligraphy course which was lots of fun, exhausting too, but I've never written prettier in my life. Gonna put it to a lot of use bullet journaling and things.
Stuff I read
It was a good month for reading, I finished 3 of the 6 books I was "currently reading" at the end of January, and decided to replace the short-story anthology I was planning to use for bingo. I finished 9 books, and 4 of them were sequels in series, which is something I've not been great with recently.
I finally finished The Heartstrikers series, with A Dragon of A Different Color and Last Dragon Standing by Rachel Aaron. It's been ages since I finished a series, so that was a great feeling. I wrote a review for both books here
The Demons We See and The Nightmare We Know by Krista D Ball, another pair from a series. I could not put these down, and still keep thinking about them. A great series with action, romance and amazing characters. My full review here.
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal gave me an instant book hangover, luckily I got The Fated Sky right after it. I loved these two books, and their excellent narration. I wasn't quite ready for how dark the beginning would be. Review to come
I'd been reading Realm of Ash by Tasha Suri since december, angry with it for not being Empire of Sand. Finally got over myself and really enjoyed the book. Review to come.
Queens of the Wyrd by Tamandra Witcastle was great through and fun. A lot of fun and not afraid to look at the hardships of motherhood. I wrote a full review for it here
Sourcery by Terry Pratchett was my reread this month. I've got the abridged audiobook version read by Tony Robinson. I love Discworld, but the Unseen University arc is not among my favorites.
Rip-off edited by Gardner Dozois was my final bingo read. It's a short story anthology where every story starts with the opening line from a classic. I liked some more than others, my favorite was by far The Lady Astronaut of Mars by Mary Robinette Kowal, set 30 years after The Fated Sky novel.
The Brightest Shadow by Sarah Lin - currently reading, I got an arc for the author with a march release date and forgot to check page count, it's a chonker, but I hope to get my review out within a week of publishing date.
Finally started The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold, I love The Vorkosigan Saga, and had been meaning to read Chalion for months but never quite got round to it.
List, lists and blog posts
I started off with a listy list in The January Round-up. I made a goal to do montly round-up posts as a sort of mindfulness thing. I'm always chasing the next project, so it does me good to look back at completed things. and to make pretty bullet journal spreads. I also found the Monthly Wrap-Up Round-Up by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction , and it was fun finding other people's round-ups through that.
Then I found Top Ten Tuesdays and I love them. The prompts have been very fun, and I love finding opportunities to talk about my lovelies. It's also lots of fun to hop around and see other people's lists, though this has side-effects for the ol'tbr. I'm also having lots of fun fiddling around with pictures and figuring out this worpress editor thing.The top tens were: books I predict will be 5 star reads, relationships I like, books that gave me hangovers, characters I'd follow on social media.
I also did The Bookaholics Booktag, which is sort of like a list.
And then, the big list, Using r/fantasy as a resource to expand your TBR – a guide, I put this together to try and get as many lists together as I could. I hope to manage to keep it updated. I also hope it maybe helps people feel a little less weary about reddit, yeah it has its nasty side, but it also has tons of resources.
I also finally finished r/fantasy bingo, so now I'm working for 2 list posts with all my books for each card.
Beyond the ones I linked to above I also posted my reviews for Beautiful by Juliet Marillier, The Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri, and The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. I found the Murderbot review sitting forgotten in my drafts folder, a nice present from past Dianthaa.
Read what you already own
I was pretty good about buying books this month. I got 6 new books, one of which was free. 3 were sequels to series that I was reading, and have read, so no extra strain on the tbr. I got The Hanged Man on sale on audible, but I already own and read it, just for keepsies. And Chaos Theory I bought cause the author did an AMA or author of the day on r/fantasy and it sounded right up my alley. So that's 6 new books, but only 2 that need reading at the end of the month, I'm calling it a huge win.
Looks really well done. How you did your book journal. I have seen book bloggers enjoy them a lot. I have seen different people do it different way in tracking as well. Some spreadsheet there books as well as what you are describing to do for yourself.
If you would like check out my wrap up post here – https://nrcbooks.blogspot.com/2020/02/monthly-wrap-up-february-2020.html
Thanks! The book journal is pretty new, but I think it will be nice to look back on at the end of the year
Looks like you got some good books finished this month! I love your doodle journal at the end of the post as well. I enjoy Top 10 posts, but often find myself running out of time to do them.
Check out my February Wrap-Up at Lisa Loves Literature.
They were such good books! I like the structure of top ten posts, it lets me talk about books I haven’t necessarily read too recently, and I can just go with a list. I love lists.
I’m really impressed that four of your books were sequels in series. Like you, I keep unintentionally letting sequels fall to the wayside.
I think that was more sequels per month than any month last year!