June 2020 TBR

Summer is on the doorstep and it's time to get some good reading in out by the pool...in our case that's the inflatable kiddie pool, but it keeps the kids happy and gives me a break from chasing them around since I have strategically placed it inside of the outdoor playpen so they can't escape. *Insert evil mom laugh here*

Like every other month thus far this year, I have PACKED my TBR with a pile of books. I won't likely get to them all within the month, but I like to have options and I would rather have extras than run out of books in the plan. I know it's weird, heaven knows I have a hundred books just waiting to be read so I could easily scout out another, but it works for me.

The June slate is an eclectic one, with middle grade, YA, and adult books represented. There are also fantasies, historical fiction, contemporaries, scifi, and even a horror. It's quite the hodgepodge, but I'm very excited for these reads. 

(I have them listed in a bit of an order based upon some readathon plans I have for the month, but that's never a guarantee that I will read them as listed.)

Let's take a peek at what's on the list:

              

1. Sin Eater by Megan Campisi - Historical Fiction (2020)

2. Last Memoria by Rachel Emma Shaw - Fantasy (2020)

3. Lifel1k3 by Jay Kristoff - Science Fiction (2018)

4. Nevertell by Katharine Orton - Middle Grade Fantasy (2019)

5. American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins - Contemporary (2020)

6. Open Book by Jessica Simpson - Memoir (2020)

7. The Claires by C.L. Gaber - Supernatural Fantasy (2020)

8. The Kiminee Dream by Laura McHale Holland - Magical Realism (2020)

            

9. The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune - YA Fantasy (2020)

10. Postscript by Cecelia Ahern - Contemporary (2019)

11. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte - Classic (1847)

12. In Five Years by Rebecca Searle- Contemporary Romance (2020)

    

13. Dev1at3 by Jay Kristoff - Science Fiction (2019)

14. House of Shadows by Darcy Coates - Horror (2020)

15. Good Boy by Jennifer Finney Boylan - Memoir (2020)

16. Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas - Gothic Mystery (2020)

  

17. The Goddess Twins by Yodassa Williams- YA Fantasy (2020)

18. The Court of Miracles by Kester Grant- YA Fantasy (2020)

19. The Glamourist by Luanne G. Smith - Fantasy (2020)

20 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley - Dystopian (1932)

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21. The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna - YA Fantasy (2021)

22. An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim - Dystopian (2018)

Keep an eye on the blog, my Goodreads, and my Instagram for updates and reviews on these books as I read through them in June. Are any of these on your TBR?

January 2020 TBR

Welcome to the new decade! It's a really fun part of the year for reading...it's when I get to check in on all of the stats from last year, set my goals for the new year, find a bunch of fun new reading challenges, and complete my BOTY bracket to find the prior year's best book of the year!

There's a lot of work to be done for posts to wrap up last year and get going on this year, so let's start with a simple one as I wake myself up out of the holiday haze. January's TBR pile!

If you follow me on Instagram, you've already seen a post of my new bookish bullet journal (more to come about that in future posts) that featured this month's TBR. Now let's take a closer look at the reads I have on my schedule for January.

Already Finished

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn was my first read of 2020 and it was a great one! It had been recommended to me by my friend Patti last year and I took forever finally getting to it. A historical fiction novel about female spies during WWI, it was so incredibly good and I wound up giving it 5 stars. It was the perfect start to the new year and got my reading off on the right foot.

Currently Reading

I am currently physically reading The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae by Stephanie Butland, buddy reading Frostheart by Jamie Littler with my niece, and listening to The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan. My buddy read will probably take a while, but I'm hoping to finish the other two during Bout of Books (taking place right now!). In fact, I'm hoping to finish both of them by tomorrow.

Coming Soon...

Circling the Sun by Paula McLain is on deck as my next read. It will fulfill my prompts for both my Monthly Motif and Monthly Keyword challenges for the month of January. I'll be listening to this one on audio.

My upcoming print reads are a pile of highly anticipated ARCs. I'm very excited to get to these and have high hopes for them (I'm anticipating at least 2 five-star reads and probably at least 3 four-star reads.

The Will and the Wilds is probably the one I'm most excited for. I love Charlie N. Holmberg's books...this will be the fifth novel I've read from her. Follow Me to Ground by Sue Rainsford is also highly anticipated and has been chosen to be the first read for Jenny Lawson's (The Bloggess) new Fantastic Strangelings Book Club. Obviously, this announcement didn't hurt to pump up my interest.

The final book on my list, The Girl Who Stole an Elephant by Nizrana Farook, is the pick for the Middle Grade Monthly book club. It is currently on its way to me from Amazon and I'm not sure I'll finish it in time, but I'll be reading it nonetheless. The plan on my middle grade reads is to pass some of them on to my niece when I'm done or purchase her an additional copy so that we can buddy read them together. It'll be an experiment for 2020.

There will likely be another audiobook or two tossed in before the month ends, but these are the books I know I want to try and get to. I'll be tracking my TBR success this year to see how well I'm planning. I typically put too many choices on my plate, but tracking this will help me to fine tune for next year's plans and ARC requests.

What are you reading this month?

A Late December TBR

I appear to be riding the December strugglebus. I'm balancing "normal" life with Christmas shopping, holiday fun with the family, and a project I'm working on for the new year (which I will be sharing in early January).

I've also been attempting to stay warm while winter rears its ugly head. I'm already sick of snow...not a great attitude to have when we likely won't thaw out until nearly April. Ugh.

Believe it or not, there still has been some reading occurring. I'm loosely participating in a couple of reading activities, but I'm not full-fledged diving in to any read-a-thons this month. There's just too much going on this time of year for me to try and organize myself enough to make that happen. Also, I have some ARCs that I would really like to finish up this month so that I can start next year's reading with a somewhat clean slate and little to no ARC backlist.

That being said...here's my plan for this month (including the books I've already completed thus far).

Print/E-Books

  

I have already finished these first three. All a bit of magical realism with the first one being more of a Chick Lit and the second two being more mystery, they all rated pretty well...you'll see them in December's wrap up in early January, but you can see my reviews now on Goodreads.

 

I finished Athena's Choice a couple of days ago and am now about halfway through Nevernight. Nevernight is a bit of a longer, slow burn fantasy novel, so it's taking me a little while. I'm hoping to finish it in the next 3-4 days. That will leave me with about 10 days of the month remaining.

 

Typically, I finish a print read in about 3 days. This means that I can realistically plan to finish Finding Henry Applebee, The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae, and The Memory Thief before the end of the month with little struggle. That will leave me with 4 ARCs that I had hoped to finish before the end of the year.

 

If by any miracle I finish Nevernight sooner, then I may also be able to check Dorothy in the Land of Monsters off the list. This one is also a chunker, at nearly 450 pages. So...Ivory Apples, Nameless Queen, and The Patron Saint of Pregnant Girls will likely be rolling over into January 2020.

My last print read is Frostheart by Jamie Littler. I'm buddy reading this with my 9-year-old niece and we are almost half way through. We're reading a couple of chapters a day and then doing a FaceTime chapter read and discussion about once a week. I'm hoping we'll finish it by the end of the year. She has told me I'm not supposed to read ahead, but I may have to...just to make myself feel like all loose ends are tied up by the end of the year.

Audiobooks

   

I've also already finished my first three audiobooks. All three middle grade reads that I ended up picking up following Believathon last month. I am just finding myself loving middle grade and they make for wonderful audiobooks...especially in the car.

 

Right now I'm listening to Meg Cabot's No Judgements. This is a Chick Lit novel. I used to love Meg Cabot and read her quite a bit in college, but I'm not really feeling this one yet. It may not be a comfortable genre for me anymore or it may just be a factor of listening to the audio instead of actually reading it. We'll see...I'm only about an hour in.

I'm on the hold list for a couple of other audios, so it's a little up in the air as to what I'll be listening to once I finish No Judgments. However, I'm hoping to get to The Alice Network in addition to the final two books in the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan.

So...there you have it. Hopefully I can clear off some of my ARC list and get things all ready to roll for 2020. Since I already (spoiler) have my TBR set for 2020, I'm trying to prevent having too many things bleed over into the new year. Wish me luck!

What are you reading? Do you have any end-of-the-year reading plans? Are you crazy like me and have already started planning your reading for 2020?