March Book Haul

I know I'm late to this particular game, but I finally discovered Thrift Books. May god have mercy on my bank account.DEALING IN DREAMS, BELOW, A DAY OF FIRE, and THE PRINCESS AND THE FAN GIRL are all from PaperBackSwap. The rest are from Thrift Books and, thankfully to say, are all simply additions to my library. I've read all of those, so they are NOT being added to my TBR pile! Hooray! 🥳The ebooks, on the other hand . . .I'll start with the ARCs. That's always a pretty short list.See? Nice and short list.Not so much the stuff I collected . . .A lot of freebies this month thanks to book promos. I just can't help myself.

February Book Haul

Books were boughten. I have no shame.Everything's from PaperBackSwap except KRAMPUS. That was actually a preorder I bought in December from Dark Regions Press. It has wonderfully creepy pictures. 😁Ebooks!Just a few . . . Story Bundle had a bundle at the beginning of February for Black History Month and the books looks fantastic. So I indulged.

January Book Haul

This year is moving way too fast, man. It's February already. WTH? Anyway, it's time again for the book haul. It was a banner month for my book buying. I would be ashamed of myself if I cared.Sometimes PaperBackSwap comes in waves, and January was one of those times. OUR SHADOWS HAVE CLAWS, THE GIRLS ARE NEVER GONE, and HORROR HOTEL I bought at my local indie, and the HANGING WITH VAMPIRES book I received as an ARC (and it looks super fun!). Everything else came from PaperbackSwap. It was a busy month on that site for me!Aside from the print ARC (actually, it's a final copy, but the publisher sent it to me so I consider it an ARC), I got a few ebook ARCs as well:I need to keep my ARCs in check. I have enough to read without overloading myself with them. Still, they're so shiny! 😁Now for the rest of the ebooks.I was pretty tame with ebooks this time around, all things considered. Until next month!

December Book Haul

It's not good, guys. It's not good. Or it's fantastic. It just depends on how you look at it. First the physical books.THE STARS DID WANDER DARKLING and THE WEIGHT OF BLOOD I bought from Changing Hands, and THE LANGUAGE OF THORNS and GHOSTBUSTERS I got from Barnes and Noble. SEVEN FACELESS SAINTS is actually an ARC I won through Publisher's Weekly galley grab. Everything else came from PaperBackSwap.Now onto my real shame: the ebooks.I also have a few ARCs that will get read pretty soon into the new year.And a book called NEVEREST by TL Bodine that I'm blurbing, not reviewing. It doesn't have a cover yet.I wasn't going to list my TBR pile count because what's the point? But I want a year-end count for 2022 and I'm going to compare it at year end 2023. I'm not going to bother looking at it over the course of the year because, again, what's the point? It's massive. I know that. You know that. Let's read on, shall we? I am ending 2022 with 1,186 books on my TBR pile. Let's see what kind of dent I can make over the course of the year. Or not.

2022 Wrap-up and What I'm Focusing on in 2023

Another year down that went by way too fast. I am both thankful for that and a little irked by it. I'm okay with time slowing down a little bit, but with that massive dogpile of shit happening in this world, I'm okay not stewing in it for very long, if you know what I mean.When it comes to books, I read 65 this year and learned that The StoryGraph doesn't count DNFs toward the final tally. Luckily, I was able to hit my goals on both StoryGraph and Goodreads by the end of the year. Now that I know that going forward, I'll account for DNFs in the numbers so I don't stress myself out again (totally self-imposed, I know).DNFs: 15 (23%)Eek! That's high. Nearly one in four books I read this year I DNFed. I have found that the more indie and self published authors I read, that number does increase. Ten of those fifteen books are by indie or self pubbed authors. I like to think I'm more forgiving of indies because they can't compete with the publishing standards of the traditional market in terms of editing and product design. But because the quality itself can range so much, I think this is a natural result of that. Plus, I'm probably a more discerning reader than others when it comes to being not okay with things that others are.Star ratings are rounded up on Goodreads so I'll follow that here. Next year I'll do stats solely from StoryGraph. They're far more comprehensive and I can get more granular with the ratings. But I adopted it midway through the year and it's just too screwy to pull both sites together.⭐️: 1 (2%)⭐️⭐️: 7 (11%)⭐️⭐️⭐️: 9 (14%)⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: 10 (15%)⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: 23 (35%)I'm still about 50% of the books I read end up reading being at least four stars, so I'm happy about that. If I liked everything I read, I'd question myself there. Some other fun stats from StoryGraph that I think are worth noting.There appears to be a theme with the kind of books I read. 😁I also very much have certain genres that I gravitate toward, and others that I steer clear of.And my average star rating, which I think aligns with Goodreads anyway, without the granularity.I do have some  ARC commitments for the beginning of the year, but overall in 2023 I'm going to continue focusing on indies more (which, unfortunately, means my DNF count will likely remain higher than I like, I hope it won't, but I'm more pragmatic than that) and read books related to those that I'm writing so I can do those cute "if you like this, then read my book" graphics. This will mostly be YA horror, and even then mostly traditionally published. I still have a whole stack of segregated books on the floor so I can do just that. Indie YA horror is harder to find, but I have a few. Indie adult dystopian that isn't post-apocalyptic Mad Max-like, with or without zombies, is much harder. I think if I dig more, I can find them, but a lot of dystopian is still YA and I absolutely DON'T want to recommend YA readers to my adult dystopian. That would be bad.I would say I'm going to curb my book buying this year, but we all know starting the year off lying to myself is a bad way to start. So I just won't do that. I already know I picked up a bunch of books in December because it's Christmas cozy season so I gobbled. They'll be added to the list for next year.I hope you had an excellent reading year in 2022 and that 2023 is even better!