Project TBR Zero: 4 years and counting

If my TBR numbers don’t change, am I even moving towards shortening my TBR? This very laid-back challenge has concluded its fourth year. Like, I can’t believe that 4 years ago I read 9 or 10 books in June, felt so good about it that I decided I wanted to take that energy for the rest of the year and shrink down my TBR. To be honest, I really want to repeat a month like that again. I know it was really hard and I did nothing else with my free time apart from reading, but man, it felt good afterwards to reach a milestone I never thought possible. As the kind of reader that I am, I would never have imagined I could read close to 2-digit numbers in 30 days.

I’m sad the Whateveraton doesn’t happen anymore. It was really a nice fit for me and one of the readathons I had the most fun at, even despite my complicated relationship with them. Although I think I’ll embark on a new adventure, it is coming back for its third year in a row. It starts with H and ends with -ardest reading challenge you’ll ever do. HRCYED 3.0 is back, and I’m taking part. But that’s a post for later in the month.

Before focusing on the months ahead of us that I’m really excited about, I need to take a step back and look at the past 4 months. The year didn’t start strongly to finish books, but most of that progress wasn’t in vain. I’m already on track with my Goodreads goal, so I’m keeping a steady pace. To recap, by the end of January, I was reading 4 books: Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, We Need Your Art by Amie McNee, the second volume of Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, and The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante.

February

The first thing I did at the start of the month was to read the book of the hour, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (I clearly wasn’t in the middle of enough books already). With the movie inspired by this classic piece of Gothic literature coming out, I had to jump on the trend. Did I plan to watch the movie? Not in the slightest. After finishing the book, do I want to watch the movie? Not a chance. Wuthering Heights isn’t the best book I’ve read this year. It’s one of the best books I’ve read in my life. This book was written for me. I am the perfect reader for this book. I want to dissect every little thing about it. I want to write multiple essays exploring some of the most outlandish ideas about the story. What if this story were something like Lost? Don’t see a connection? Me neither. But let’s read it again and explore that possibility. If I could only read one book for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t mind Wuthering Heights to be that book.

The first book read was also the best, and I’m determined that it is a good omen for the rest of the year. I also reread Missing Pieces by Carly Anne West, the first book in the Hello Neighbor middle-grade series. Since I bought the rest of the collection in the previous month, I wanted to reread the first books. By the end of the month, I decided I wouldn’t spend any more time reading Red, White and Royal Blue. I’ve watched the movie twice already and really like it, but the book spends way more time with the politics side of the story, and I seriously don’t care one bit about it. So I shook hands with it, and I wish it my farewell.

March

In the first few days of March, I finished Erased by Miha Mazzini. This was an ARC kindly sent by the publisher. There’s a review already up going over all my thoughts on this book, but long story short, I really liked it. It focuses on an incident that happened in the early 90s in Slovenia, where a portion of the population got erased from their new computer system, leaving them without an identity. And while this story is fiction, it illustrates so well the problems immigrants face and how systems are used to discriminate. In a world growing more and more individualistic and egocentric by the minute, stories like this are needed. The ones that make you look around and realise we don’t know what someone is going through. Stories that can teach so much-needed empathy.

I also started Waking Nightmare, the second Hello Neighbor book, but shortly after, I stopped reading and put it back on the shelf. I wasn’t feeling it. I usually can’t read series back-to-back. I need a buffering time, and this one wasn’t going to be an exception. It was dumb of me to think otherwise. So I picked up The Beauty by Jeremy Haun and Jason A Hurley instead. There’s a new adaptation on Disney+, and the trailer kind of confuses me. It gave The Substance vibes, as in focusing on developing a drug that makes you beautiful, but the comics are not about that. They simply establish that there is a disease that makes people pretty, but it has a major setback. People explode. And so, we follow a team of police detectives trying to save everyone.

When I first read The Beauty, I never went past volume 1. So this time I decided to check it out and was a bit disappointed. Not only does the story start to follow a completely different set of characters, but I felt the second volume wasn’t about the disease. Then I searched for the other volumes, and it appears the story follows multiple characters. And later on, they will come together. But since I didn’t care much for this volume, I don’t think I’ll continue to read any more. I like the premise of the story, but I’m not a fan of how it’s being told.

Then I started Poster Girl by Veronica Roth because why not? Apparently, I’m determined to ignore the books I’m in the middle of, so why not start a new one? It was nice to read Veronica Roth again, and in the sci-fi genre. I knew very little about this book and enjoyed it quite a lot. It actually motivated me to pick up 1984 by George Orwell again and read it properly this time. I think it will increase my enjoyment and understanding of Poster Girl way more. There isn’t a direct reference to 1984, but both deal with oppressive regimes, propaganda, and the control of information, so I think they can complement each other quite nicely.

And before the month ended, I finished The Story of a New Name. Stop everything, close down the streets. It’s time to light the firework. She finished a book she started in January! Yes! Victory! Character growth right here. I don’t know why this has been such a struggle. And I enjoyed the book. So why am I feeling so much friction to bring the books and read them? The brain can be such a fussy little thing sometimes.

April

One thing that never changes for me is the urge to open a new book whenever I finish one. And since I finished March closing one, I started April opening another. After an early false start, I was determined to give another chance to The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. It was an incredibly hard book to go through. That’s why I stopped the first time I tried to read it. The writing didn’t grab me at all, so I had to make a conscious effort to keep my attention on the book and not let my mind wander off. That didn’t get any better as I read along. I think Stuart Turton’s writing and I simply don’t mix up well. I can’t pinpoint why. It also didn’t help that the mystery didn’t grab, and the low-key fatphobia was really unnecessary. But you can read more on that in my review.

After being done with Evelyn Hardcastle, I started Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, and I’m still making slow progress with it. I thought the writing would be more dense and heavy to go through, like with Dune by Frank Herbert, but instead, it’s accessible. There is sort of a mystery to uncover the motivations and intents of certain characters, so I’m excited to see how it will all develop and where the story will go.

Completely unplanned, I got two new addictions to the TBR. I was just giving away some books and was gifted two new ones as a thank you. We were talking about how much I was surprised by the soap opera feel of the French classics, and so now I have The Three Musketeers and Captain Richard by Alexandre Dumas. Neither book is in my immediate plans in the slightest. Once I finish Les Mis, I’m planning to write a post about French classic literature and why you shouldn’t be afraid of it for a second.

May

While I still try to get back into a good reading rhythm, I picked up Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery as part of the Game of Tomes reading club hosted by CarolynMarieReads and emmie on Fable. These girls motivated me to read The Count of Monte Cristo, so I was hoping they would motivate me again to try this beloved book. That didn’t go well. I have a full review of it. The positive side is that I don’t have to read the rest of the series now.

I also finished Save the Date by Mallory Kass. I was beyond excited when I received an email asking if I was interested in reading it. While I’m not usually a romance reader, I’m a Kass Morgan reader, so I couldn’t pass on the opportunity. And I had a great time. It was cute, funny, no red flags, and even got my eyes a little wet by the end. It’s still in the back of my mind to read more Kass Morgan books, but now I also need to keep my eye out for the ones by Mallory Kass.

And then I did what I’ve been putting off for a long time. Finishing Heartstopper by Alice Oseman. The final few pages of chapter 8 finally came out and concluded a story of about 10 years. That’s dedication. And now the story of Nick and Charlie is over. They are the sweetest. It’s not by chance that this series has such success. Alice really created some of the best characters for the reader to devote their love to. There are some things I wish would be done differently, but now I have all the backlog of Alice Oseman to read, and I know there’s a book about Nick and Charlie. So it isn’t a goodbye for me. Only a see you soon.

And that’s all the books I’ve read in the past four months. With all the books accounted for, I read 11 books. That’s pretty good. Despite not feeling that satisfying since they weren’t all from my TBR, it’s still impressive and more than many people read in a whole year! I didn’t want to mark the end of another year of this challenge while living Les Misérables yet to finish. But after going month after month, planning to finish and then not going through with it, I decided to finish it whenever I do. I’m enjoying the story way more than I enjoyed The Count. I just lost my momentum, and it’s hard to get it back. And that’s why I’m hoping HRCYED 3.0 might help me with creating a steady reading habit again, because that is what I’m missing.