2020; my favorite and least favorite books of the year

Hi everyone! How are you all? Have you all had a good start of the year? When 2021 started I suddenly had so much motivation to start blogging again and just do everything I’ve been wanting to do and basically just fix my entire life. I know time is just a social construct and that you can start freshly every single day if you want to, but there’s just something about the new year that gives me a burst of motivation to actually do it.

Unfortunately though, our kitchen had to be renovated at the beginning of the year (it was literally falling apart lmao) so we had to stay in a vacation home for a while and being in an unfamiliar place like that makes my OCD a lot worse so I wasn’t able to do anything for the first half of the month, which frustrated me a lot. But yeah. Here I am finally using that motivation and actually blogging, and I figured I’d start off the year by wrapping up my 2020 reading year!

2020 has been one of the worst reading years for me since I started tracking it. My mental health wasn’t good this year so I just barely read, and apparently I also forgot most of what I read because I wanted to say that I barely read anything good this year until I scrolled through my reading challenge of 2020 and that just… isn’t true. I read quite a few good books and I’m really excited to tell you all about them!

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my reading plans for the rest of 2020 (aka the end of year book tag)

Hi everyone! You’re probably all very bored by me saying that I’ve been trying to get back in touch with the book community after I kind of abandoned it because of mental health reasons, but that’s one of the reasons why I’m doing this tag so you’re hearing about it again. Sorry. (The other reason is because my friend Romie informed me that my end of year book tag of 2019 was the first one that showed up when you search for it on Google so, uh, thank you? But also, why?)

Anyway, after seeing a few bookstubers doing this tag I thought it might be fun for me to do a 2020 edition of this tag too. Which might be a little bit late because we only have one month left, but hey, apparently people do this anywhere from September to maybe the last week of December so it’s fine. We’re fine.

Also, this tag was first created by Ariel Bisset over on Youtube! Here’s her 2020 edition of the tag, which I really enjoyed watching. Now, let me get to the questions.

Are there any books you started this year that you need to finish?

I made a whole blogpost on that a bit ago and since then I have a few more books to add to that list; That Kind of Guy by Talia Hibbert, Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers, The Land of the Cranes by Aida Salazar, Fly on the Wall by Remy Lai and The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard.

But as much as I’d like to finish all the books I’m currently reading and start 2021 with a clean reading slate, I don’t think that’s going to happen. And I’m going to try to not stress out about it too much. At this point it’s more important to me that I’m actually reading (because I’ve been sucking at doing so lately) and if that means I’ll start more new books than I’ll finish then I’m going to try to be fine with that.

I’m also aware that Fadwa gave me a TBR of books to read this year but… with the way this year has gone and with how little I’ve read overall I won’t be able to get to these. And I feel really bad about this, but I’m definitely still planning on getting to them someday.

The books I still haven’t finished but really need to (aka the list of shame aka please bully me)

Hi everyone! I know I haven’t been blogging a lot lately for a number of reasons, but today I’m back for one reason and one reason only: to roast myself. Or rather, to let you all roast me. Because there’s no better motivation for me than online bullying, and I need some motivation.

You see, I’ve finally been getting my reading groove back a little, but there’s a problem; I start a ton of books, but only manage to finish about… 10% of them. Because whenever I’m halfway through a book, another book grabs my attention and I start reading that one. And then when I’m halfway through that book another book looks very tempting and I start that and so on and so on. It’s really annoying, and I want to use these upcoming few days/weeks to actually finish the books I’ve started.

So today, I want to share the list of books I’ve started, put down, but really want to finish soon. And then let the bullying commence. Because I deserve it.

A Bookhaul

Hi everyone! I know I don’t do bookhauls very often. I checked and apparently the last one I posted was in September 2019. I have taken pictures for a haul over half a year ago but I never ended up posting that one because… honestly, I’m not sure. I just tend to not really like doing hauls because I do want to include my own pictures but they never look good and blablabla. And usually, whenever I buy books, I just buy one book at a time and it takes me months to feel like I have enough for a haul, and by then I’ve forgotten all about it.

But two weeks ago I was in a huge book buying mood (which happens a lot but I usually ignore it) and for once I gave in and ordered multiple books at once. Eleven, to be exact. I’m incredibly excited about them, and I can’t wait to share them with you!

On Annotating Books and Financial Stability

Hi everyone! I was just sitting outside reading a poetry collection and came across a line that I loved. It was Danez Smith’s poetry collection Homie, and in one of the first poems, “how many of us have them?”, Smith mentions something about two boys being friend-drunk. These specifics don’t matter, really, but the point is that I loved that term so much that I wanted to underline it. Highlight it. Grab my pen, draw a little arrow towards those words, and write “love it!” in the margins. But like many, many times before, I stopped myself.

For the past however many years I haven’t really been treating my books like they’re mine. Yes, I bought them and they were on my shelf, but I made sure to never do anything to them that might be seen as damage. Because, for years, I wasn’t in a place where I was able to buy whatever book I wanted. And if I ever wanted a new book, I had to go to this Facebook group and sell about 3 of my old books.

reading is hard (when OCD sucks)

Hi everyone! It’s been quite a while since I’ve even attempted to write a blog post. I hope you’re all doing well, and that you’ve been able to read some great books lately.

I personally haven’t been doing my best and I’m going to try to be very open and honest about that (please be kind to be, being vulnerable isn’t something that’s easy for me), so I do want to preface this post by saying that, if you need trigger warnings, this post needs them for anxiety, OCD and depression. Please take good care of yourself, and if you don’t feel like reading something that has anything to do with any of those topics then that’s 100% okay. Be safe 💜.

So yes, as far as I can remember I’ve always struggled with anxiety and, when I wasn’t doing well, depression. But these past few years I’ve also noticed that OCD started creeping its way into my life. Whenever I felt really unsafe and wanted a way to make myself feel a little more safe and secure I’d give in to a very nonsensical action. Always putting my left shoe on before my right one. Always having to fill the entire page whenever I’m journaling. Etc. Annoying, but do-able and manageable.

I Deleted All of The Books On My Goodreads TBR and BOY Does It Feel Good

Hi everyone! A couple of days ago I felt like cleaning out my Goodreads TBR. I’d been slumping for quite a while and I just wanted to do something book related because I missed it a lot, and cleaning out that immense want-to-read shelf seemed like the perfect idea since I’d noticed that I’d lost interest in quite a few titles on there. (Or maybe I just needed a little spring cleaning, who knows.)

Now, to preface this I should probably tell you I have two different Goodreads accounts. A main one, which is where I write my reviews and add every single book/comic I read, and then a side one (which I might’ve solely made because an irl friend added my main one and I was scared about outing myself so I blocked him on that one and added him on the side one) where I don’t rate/write reviews, but I only track the novels I read and have a bit of a different Goodreads challenge since I wanted to see whether I’d be able to reach my goal with just novels. It’s a little complicated, I know, but please bear with me here.

Wrap-Up: What I’ve Read in January + February

Hi everyone! I know I basically start every wrap-up the same way and I’m going to do it again: can you believe it’s March already? I’m both sad about this but also very excited because the weather has been really bad here lately (lots of storms, rain and wind) and I’m really excited for spring to start. We’re already seeing some flowers bloom, and we’re growing some things in our windowsill for the vegetable garden which always makes me very happy!

But I’m also a little sad about it because I fell into a slump in February (you can read a bit more about it here) and I just feel like I haven’t accomplished enough this year. I fell behind on blogging, didn’t read as much as I’d like to, etc. Hopefully I’ll be able to be a bit more productive in March, and I hope these past two months were great reading months for all of you!

(or, read these past 2 months. sorry, didn’t really want to make a new graphic)

The Deep by Rivers Solomon – I started this immediately after listening to a voice message from a friend who was raving about how incredible this book was and she was absolutely right because I loved it and while I really enjoyed the fact that this was shorter, I now really wish it’d been longer because I want more.
poems I sleep next to by Shelby Eileen – I don’t tend to read a lot of poetry but I always want to make an exception for Shelby, and I once again ended up really liking their collection. I had a hard time connecting to some of the poems, but I still thought this collection was beautiful.
If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar – This was my first experience listening to a poetry collection on audiobook and, while I did enjoy the experience and thought some of the poems were incredible, I don’t think this experiment was successful because none of the poems stuck with me. I might have to reread this one physically.
Our Wayward Fate by Gloria Chao – I picked this up because I loved this author’s debut, American Panda, and while I didn’t love Our Wayward Fate as much as I did her debut I still really enjoyed it! There were just a few minor things I would’ve liked to see done a little differently.
In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire – I had kind of given up on this series after not loving Beneath the Sugar Sky and just kind of losing interest, but I picked this one up on a whim and I’m so glad I did because I absolutely loved it! This very much read like a fairytale and it was so enchanting, I couldn’t stop reading.

My Reading Tastes Are Changing and I Feel Weird About It

Hi everyone! I haven’t been super active on here (or on any of my other bookish accounts) because I’ve been slumping. Hard. It’s gotten so bad that every time I look at my TBR cart I start to feel sad, and I’ve even considered just covering it with a blanket so I don’t have to see it anymore.

The thing is, this slump has been very unlike any slump I’ve ever had before. Usually I just don’t feel like reading at all even though certain books do grab my attention, and I just sit on my reading chair thinking “wow I wish I felt like reading because I’d love to read [title]”. This time around though, I very much feel like reading. I want to read. But not a single book I own excites me.

So, this morning I thought it might be a good idea to clean out my Goodreads TBR so that I can feel like I’m still doing something book-related, because I miss them. I miss having books in my life and doing bookish things. And as I sat here, deleting lots and lots of books from my TBR, I realized that my reading tastes are shifting quite drastically and I truly don’t know how I feel about it.

My #Pondathon TBR

Hi everyone! As you might know (and if you don’t then you really should because this is amazing) my lovely friend CW created a magical readathon called the Pondathon! There’s a whole backstory and a very thorough explanation of this readathon which you can all find on CW’s blog here, and I really encourage you to read up on it a bit and join too because it’s going to be so much fun! You can join a team, complete quests, create your own character… it’s truly is amazing and I’m in awe of CW and how she put this all together.

Anyway, in this post I’m going to be sharing my own character with you all, as well as the books I’m planning to read.

My character is an adorable little bee called Clover, Captain of the Clouds, and her title might have been inspired by digging through a fantasy name generator for a little bit, haha. It took me a little bit to find her name and title, but once I did it fit perfectly because 1) I love alliteration, and 2) it reminded me very much of a song called Captains of the Sky by Sky Sailing, which I immediately made Clover’s theme song.