Tag: Books

I want to keep these updates monthly and neat… And I’m doing a terrible job! I swear I’m not taking this long to read the books. Once again, I bring you another late update for the Hardest Reading Challenge You’ve Ever Done. Please don’t be confused. I know we are at the end of September, but this post is about the books I read in August. I’m already writing the next update, so it will be on time. Before I get ahead of myself, let’s travel back to the 7th of August. The books of August I started the month reading The Bachelorette Party by Sandra Block. I received an ARC to review closer to its September release date. It’s a thriller quite fast and intense, verging on horror. I already have a review here on the blog if you are interested to know more about it. Sadly, I couldn’t …

Please note: This is the 2024- 2025 edition of this challenge, not the HRCYED 2.0 for 2025-2026. Often, I spill here and there about a readathon I’m excited about. I can’t resist. I see a readathon, I see a challenge, I’m in. And the hardest, the better. Now, do I finish the readathons I started? No. So far, I’ve only had one completed readathon, but that doesn’t push me away to keep trying. When I saw on my YouTuber feed, in big bold letters, The Hardest Reading Challenge You’ll Ever Do, I knew I was in even before hitting the play button. Qwordy is a channel I’ve never seen before, but that didn’t push me away from this challenge. And to be honest, I need to spend a little more time browsing the interwebs because there are so many reading challenges and readathons for every taste that comes from small …

It has been two years. Two years since I decided to tackle my TBR and reduce it to zero. Am I closer to that number than I was when I started? I like to think that I’m crushing it! Although I’ve only managed to cut it down to about 20 books. So, 10 books read per year. At this rhythm, it will take me a decade. At best! Looking back, the project was structured to force me to read the books I already own. That has changed completely. I ended book-buying bans, went through reading slumps, and thought about ending the challenge altogether. But life continues, and I’m still determined to see this through. I imagine I’m just taking a stroll, enjoying the view, and sizing down my TBR in the meantime. February I was still feeling the high of finally being out of the reading slump, and I got …

Last year, I went through my annual reading slump. Although it hit harder than usual. And since I’m in the middle of what I call Project TBR Zero, where I try to read all the books I own, I was aware of how bad it was. My reading slump lasted from April to October. I still managed to read a book here and there, but I was never excited to read. I would much rather be doing something else. How it started A year ago, I started January reading only one book at a time. This is not normal for me. Since I’m a mood reader, I tend to pick up whatever is on my mind. Usually, I’m in the middle of two to three books. But I was trying something new to see if I would enjoy reading this way. Short answer: no. I reread A Game of Thrones …

I’m so excited to finally do an update on Project TBR Zero! I’ve spent the entire month of January counting the days to write this post. I want to look back and see my progress. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, here is the first post where I introduced the challenge. My quest is to finish every single book I own. So welcome back to the second quarter update of Project TBR Zero. The Second Quarter October For a quick recap of where my reading was standing in September, I had 81 books in my TBR. As I said at the end of the last post, I was in a reading slump. And I carried that feeling until the new year. It didn’t stop me from reading, but I wasn’t overly excited about what I was reading. Not even a reread of Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and …

Last week, I posted about all the 49 books I read and how my reading year went. Although I kept out my rating for all those books to now do a little world cup/tournament bracket/let’s find my favourite book of 2022 by comparing them against each other. This “game” has been going around the online book communities and looks fun. Also, I’m curious to see how the results compare to the rating I gave to each book. So, I went to my reading spreadsheet and grabbed the title of my top 16 books. All of them are 4 stars or above. I needed a multiplier of 2 for the brackets to work perfectly, and I’m not doing 32 books (mostly because there is no point in going so far back). The order of the books is completely random and doesn’t reflect the rating I gave. Without further ado, let the …

In 2022, I read 62 books. Although, I actually didn’t. I only read 49 books out of the 52 I was aiming for. But then, where do 13 books come from? Thin air? Ghosts? They actually come from everything I read last year. I’m just counting them differently. Last May, I published a post where I tried for a month to track how many words I was reading instead of pages or books. The main reason was how much pressure I felt to finish books and keep on track with my Goodreads challenge. I found tracking by reading progress through books alone wasn’t fair. Not all books are made the same, so why should they be quantified the same? And so it began my word-tracking adventure. At the time, I really enjoyed the experience and was renovating my motivation to read. So, I kept doing it for the rest of …

After a particularly spectacular reading month back in June (you can read more about it in this post), I felt I could conquer the reading world. I saw how much I could accomplish if I dedicated the time to reading. And after finishing one book, the next thing I wanted to do was to finish another. So having read 9 books in June, almost double the amount of my best reading month ever, I was pumped! At that moment, I made a decision. I was going to read my entire TBR, both physical and digital. This decision was not motivated purely by an exceptional reading month. My first reading experiment of the year made me realise the books I buy are based on my mood. Although, I tend to feel guilty for prioritising a shiny new book over the ones collecting dust on my shelves. And if I avoid reading …

I need to start by clarifying that reading is not a competition or that I think it should be. Reading is a hobby, a source of entertainment, therefore, should never be a competition. And in the golden age of online sharing, I know it can be hard to avoid comparing our reading with others, especially when some are capable of hitting double digits every month. But this post isn’t about reading more than other people. Every time I mention competition or competing, I’m talking about doing it against myself, challenging myself, and pushing myself as a reader, not comparing myself with others. Keep in mind this is purely an experiment to get even more enjoyment of reading. To be completely honest, I decided to make this post on a whim. I had a couple of ideas left for reading experiments to do this year when I came across a video …

The title is very self-explanatory. I decided to experiment for a month to track words instead of books. Yes, I’ve managed to complicate something so simple. Although, I have a good reason. I am a slow reader, as in I usually read at a speed of 180 words per minute. And my original idea for this experiment was to keep me motivated to read, possibly to read bigger books. Every time I look at a book with more than 400 pages, my first thought is how many weeks or even months it will take me to finish it. And that discourages me. So I was on the hunt for a way to allow me to fall in love with reading, no matter the size of the book. How the idea came to be One day in February, I found a YouTube video about reading 30 books in 30 days and, …