I’ve decided to [gasp] start doing monthly TBRs? On average, I read ~2740 pages per month (easier, I think, than worrying about books per month since their lengths can vary so much). I decided to give myself a goal of 2055 pages for my TBR; this is about 75% of my monthly average so it gives me some leeway for mood reading and for slower reading months. I am currently reading Going Bicoastal by Dahlia Adler (~165 pages of 336) and Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse (115 pages of 454). I’ll group these into my leeway category (depending on the results of next month, I may include current reads in my TBR pages).
Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo (496 pages): I just re-read Ninth House in preparation to pick this up and I’m very excited!
The Anatomy of Jane by Amelia Lefay (261 pages): This has been on my polyamory TBR and I’m hoping I enjoy it.
Answering Tough Interview Questions for Dummies (320 pages): A re-read! I graduate in May and need to prepare myself for some job interviews.
A Shadow in the Ember by Jennifer L. Armentrout (647 pages): This is on my owned TBR and I’m excited to pick it up after getting caught up on the Blood & Ash series.
The Edge of the Abyss by Emily Skrutskie (320 pages): I read the first in the series years ago and need to finish this sapphic pirate duology!
Do y’all have monthly TBRs and if so, what are you planning on reading? If not, what do you think you’ll be in the mood to read this month?
In this meme, you choose 5 books you think you’ll rate 5 stars and then come back later to see if you were right. Below is the second round of books I chose, as well as my ratings for them:
Wow, we had NO WINNERS. Also it’s been almost [checks notes] 3 years since Round 2, oops. Waking Gods actually made me decide to DNF the entire series. Rebecca was good and I’m glad I read it. Conversations with Friends was SO CLOSE to 5 stars and probably would have been had I been in a better headspace reading it. I had not looked into Human Acts before reading it and it was VERY different from The Vegetarian; good, but not quite my thing. A Girl Like Her was great and I do intend on continuing the series!
Little Weirds. My best friend loved this and I’ve been looking forward to it.
The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth Trilogy #2). The Fifth Season obliterated me.
So Sad Today. The Pisces is one of my all-time favorites so I’m excited to see what else Melissa Broder has in store for me. (Milk Fed also could have been on here)
I’m sure you’ve all seen this meme going around, the template I’ve seen has been by shadowbooker. The premise is to read 12 books in 12 months recommended by 12 friends. I think it’s a super fun and doable (for me) challenge! So today I’ll be sharing my challenge TBR with you all (in no particular order). If you’re doing this challenge, feel free to link your TBR below!
In an attempt at some accountability, I thought I would share the ARCs I still have to read with you all. Out of the nine ARCs I have, seven are overdue. To be fair to me, 2020 and 2021 have been rough and I have been in grad school and I overestimated what I could read. That being said, here are the ARCs I have left to read, starting with the oldest. Please let me know your thoughts on these, if you’ve read them, or whether you’d be interested in buddy reading any of them!
Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse (pub. Oct 13, 2020)
Transathon is taking place over the entire month of July! The goal is to read books about trans characters and/or by trans authors. I have a large possible TBR shelf on Goodreads and will be trying to read as many of these books as I can. Feel free to recommend anything else you think I’ll enjoy. I’d also love to read some more books by Black trans authors, if anyone has recommendations there as well! 🙂
Last year I made an effort to read the entire Women’s Prize longlist, along with some friends. I ended up reading 10 of the 14 longlisted books and had a blast doing it! We’ve kept up our Women’s Prize Squad group chat and have added some members as the year has passed. This year I decided not to read the longlist along with the group (they kindly kept me in the chat, ha!), as I’ve been working through grad school and (my real reason) had little-to-no interest in the books longlisted. I chose well, as most everyone has found it a struggle to read through the longlist. Since we felt our thoughts on the best books of the year were not aligned with those of the judges, we thought why not make our own longlist!
Without further ado, I present to you the 2020 Women’s Prize Squad Longlist! Using a draft, each of us chose 2 books to come up with the 16 book longlist. We used the Women’s Prize rules so that our list would be somewhat comparable and plan to vote on both a shortlist and a winner. I’ll run through the list here and give you all my thoughts. I am planning on reading all of the books (ideally before we vote) and have already knocked out one since we made the list on Saturday (I’m writing this on Monday)! I’ll hopefully also be making a wrap-up post once I’ve finished most or all of these.
My full list with no commentary is here (and you can find my ratings and reviews there as they’re updated). Fellow Women’s Prize Squad members are (in no particular order):
These were both 5-star reads for me, which bodes well for the rest of the list (I hope!). My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell was one of my most anticipated releases of 2020 and did not disappoint and The Body Lies by Jo Baker blew me away in January and will definitely be one of my favorite books of the year.
Already on my TBR
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. I really liked the SoC duology and already had a copy of this out from the library!
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. I already have a copy of this since it was the one WP book I wanted to read (give me the polyam rep!!) and tried it last month while on vacation. I couldn’t focus enough to get through it so I put it on pause, but plan to pick it up again soon!
The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave. Inspired by real events?? Queer?? Witch trials?? Sign me tf up.
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman. Emily has been stanning this since she read it for the Booker prize (you’ll never guess whose pick this was) and I have been intending to read it but am… intimidated. Understandably. Still tentatively looking forward to it!
Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips. Another book I put on my TBR because of Emily, I’m looking forward to this one as well.
Bunny by Mona Awad. I love dark New England books!
Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater. Another book I put down during a slump with the intention of picking up again. Hopefully now is the time!
Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson. I love Jeaneatte Winterson. The formatting of my eARC made this absolutely impossible to read and I wasn’t sure whether I’d give it another try, but… guess I will!
On My Radar
The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy. Most of my friends loved this, but I wasn’t sure it was my cup of tea. Guess I’ll find out!
The Fire Starters by Jan Carson. I’m not particularly into Irish lit, unlike someone I know, but I’m up to giving this a shot.
Actress by Anne Enright. This feels fairly well-liked by the WP Squad, so I’m okay with giving this a shot as well!
New to Me
Supper Club by Lara Williams seems absolutely amazing and I’m stoked to read it???
The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld sounds like something I’ll enjoy, and I did somewhat like All the Birds, Singing, so I’m excited to pick this up.
I was inspired by Charlotte’s posts to try this. If you don’t follow Charlotte, I highly recommend you do! She shares a lot of queer lit and is half of the team over at Reads Rainbow (which you should ALSO follow).
I’ve tried several TBR memes before, but I like the idea of ranking books with a numerical system! This first post is just going to be playing around a bit. Charlotte rates books based on how motivated she is to read it (1-5) multiplied by how interested she is in the premise (1-5).
I plan to start by using a similar system: priority (1-5) + interest in blurb (1-5) + average friend rating on GR (1-5) / 3. I’ll check out the final result and make my decision from there. I’m not going to make any hard rules, but my guess is a score of 3+ is good enough to stay. Very high ratings will get put on my tbr asap shelf. If none of my friends have rated the book, then I’ll use the Goodreads rating instead.
I was inspired by Charlotte’s posts to try this. If you don’t follow Charlotte, I highly recommend you do! She shares a lot of queer lit and is half of the team over at Reads Rainbow (which you should ALSO follow).
I’ve tried several TBR memes before, but I like the idea of ranking books with a numerical system! This first post is just going to be playing around a bit. Charlotte rates books based on how motivated she is to read it (1-5) multiplied by how interested she is in the premise (1-5).
I plan to start by using a similar system: priority (1-5) + interest in blurb (1-5) + average friend rating on GR (1-5) / 3. I’ll check out the final result and make my decision from there. I’m not going to make any hard rules, but my guess is a score of 3+ is good enough to stay. Very high ratings will get put on my tbr asap shelf. If none of my friends have rated the book, then I’ll use the Goodreads rating instead.
TBR at Start of Series: 1282 TBR Today: 1435 (lolll help me) TBR Now: 1425
I removed a whopping 10 books today. I also added 1 to my tbr asap shelf. The reason I removed so many more than usual is because I sort of changed how I did my ratings. Before, I had been rating “interest” based on what I thought my personal rating would be if I did read the books. I felt like that wasn’t really a fair indicator of interest, so I’ve decided to think of it in terms of how likely I would be to add the book to my tbr if I saw it for the first time today. There are plenty of books I bet I would rate 3 stars, but also would have no urge to add to my tbr. This seems like a more honest way of looking at things, and makes it easier to remove stuff.
Let me know if any of you decide to try Charlotte’s reorganizing as well, I’d like to see how it works for others. 🙂
I was inspired by Charlotte’s posts to try this. If you don’t follow Charlotte, I highly recommend you do! She shares a lot of queer lit and is half of the team over at Reads Rainbow (which you should ALSO follow).
I’ve tried several TBR memes before, but I like the idea of ranking books with a numerical system! This first post is just going to be playing around a bit. Charlotte rates books based on how motivated she is to read it (1-5) multiplied by how interested she is in the premise (1-5).
I plan to start by using a similar system: priority (1-5) + interest in blurb (1-5) + average friend rating on GR (1-5) / 3. I’ll check out the final result and make my decision from there. I’m not going to make any hard rules, but my guess is a score of 3+ is good enough to stay. Very high ratings will get put on my tbr asap shelf. If none of my friends have rated the book, then I’ll use the Goodreads rating instead.
TBR at Start of Series: 1282 TBR Today: 1439 (lolll help me) TBR Now: 1428
I removed a whopping 11 books today, which is 55% of the books I looked at. I also added 2 to my tbr asap shelf and had 1 already on it. The reason I removed so many more than usual is because I sort of changed how I did my ratings. Before, I had been rating “interest” based on what I thought my personal rating would be if I did read the books. I felt like that wasn’t really a fair indicator of interest, so I’ve decided to think of it in terms of how likely I would be to add the book to my tbr if I saw it for the first time today. There are plenty of books I bet I would rate 3 stars, but also would have no urge to add to my tbr. This seems like a more honest way of looking at things, and makes it easier to remove stuff.
Let me know if any of you decide to try Charlotte’s reorganizing as well, I’d like to see how it works for others. 🙂
I was inspired by Charlotte’s posts to try this. If you don’t follow Charlotte, I highly recommend you do! She shares a lot of queer lit and is half of the team over at Reads Rainbow (which you should ALSO follow).
I’ve tried several TBR memes before, but I like the idea of ranking books with a numerical system! This first post is just going to be playing around a bit. Charlotte rates books based on how motivated she is to read it (1-5) multiplied by how interested she is in the premise (1-5).
I plan to start by using a similar system: priority (1-5) + interest in blurb (1-5) + average friend rating on GR (1-5) / 3. I’ll check out the final result and make my decision from there. I’m not going to make any hard rules, but my guess is a score of 3+ is good enough to stay. Very high ratings will get put on my tbr asap shelf. If none of my friends have rated the book, then I’ll use the Goodreads rating instead.
TBR at Start of Series: 1282 TBR Today: 1437 (lolll help me) TBR Now: 1432
I removed a mere five books today, which is a sad 25%. I’m really excited that I’ve started doing this, since it’s clear there are so many books I’m no longer interested in that are bogging down my TBR. Let me know if any of you decide to try Charlotte’s reorganizing as well, I’d like to see how it works for others. 🙂
Sarah Ames-Foley 