Wow.
Well… shows what I can do when I set my mind on something and actually stick to it. At the end of my Top 10 books of last year post, I mentioned that I was setting a goal of reading (/listening to) 50 books in 2025. Gotta say, I’m off to a better start than I had thought I would be…
Read
Clockwork Boys: Clocktaur Wars Book One – T Kingfisher
Have I Told You This Already: Stories I Don’t Want To Forget To Remember – Lauren Graham
Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All American Combo – Jo Koy
Wow, No Thank You – Samantha Irby
The Wonder Engine: Clocktaur War Book Two – T Kingfisher
Six Wakes – Mur Lafferty
Reading
Still Life – Louise Penny
More than six full books? In a month?
Listen, I know people do that — hell, one person I just started following on Mastodon read I think she said 121 books last year. That’s… what, almost 2.5 books a week?
Crazy.
There have been plenty of times I don’t finish one book a month. But as I’ve been saying, all hail the convenience of audiobooks. Suddenly doing stuff around the house isn’t just doing stuff around the house but also getting through some books while I do it. Win-win.
You’ll also notice that I didn’t have any Started and stopped category this month. That was largely due to luck — I genuinely liked the vast bulk of what I heard/read — but it was admittedly also somewhat strategic to see how many books I could practically get through if I didn’t let my tastes get in the way and just finished whatever books I started. I didn’t suffer through anything, but let’s just say there was one book in particular that I may have stopped and put down had it been a normal month for me.
But, now that I know that I can crank through several books a month without bending over backwards to push through more with every free moment (I had one ~6-hour road trip this past week when I could probably have gotten through another short audiobook, but I opted to be present and pay attention to the kiddo, my co-pilot for the trip, instead), I know I’ve got a bit of wiggle room for playing favourites. Even with a whole book or two less per month for the rest of the year, I’ll still pretty comfortably get through 50, so I’m not going to make myself endure anything I’m not really enjoying. Although there is something to be said for seeing what I can manage by just grinning and bearing it all…
Hoping to keep the trend going well through February.
Onward!