In Short: January

Posted 31st January 2021 by Sia in State of the Sia / 0 Comments

I thought it might be interesting to try and do a summary of my reading habits at the end of each month, just to see how the numbers go up and down. So let’s see how I did in January!

Books Read

This month I managed to read 14 books, which Goodreads tells me is Not On Track for reading 200 books this year, but I think is pretty okay, personally.

Books Reviewed

And I wrote reviews for six of them! That does not strike me as totally terrible, especially considering that a few of them were quite long reviews. I’d like to do better in February, though.

Books DNF-ed

In fairness, most of these are not books I’d call bad; they’re just books that didn’t fit me very well.

Click on the titles for links to Goodreads!

The Stone Knife – this was just an issue of me being a wimp. The story, worldbuilding, characters, and prose are all amazing! It’s just that I’m not very good with grimdark-style gore, and while I’m not sure I’d classify Stone Knife as full-on grimdark, it is bloody in parts. This goes on the ‘try again later’ pile; I think I could handle it if I was in a steadier headspace, and it really is very good.

Lava Red Feather Blue – premise was nice, but the actual writing was pretty bad, so, nope.

The Witch’s Heart – a good book, just not for me. The style used to tell the story is one I dislike, but lots of other people will love this book a lot. Justifiably!

Wings of Ebony – clunky, info-dump-heavy writing with simplistic worldbuilding. I wanted to love this so much, but I hated it pretty passionately instead.

Free Chocolate – this is the second time I’ve tried to read this – the premise is ridiculously fun and interesting! – but I really struggle with the Spanglish. I’m not sure why; I’ve read books with multilingual narrators before and been okay, but this feels really clunky somehow.

Victories Greater than Death – most readers are going to love this, and they will be right to; it’s a very good book, but first-person narration usually doesn’t work for me, and this was not one of the exceptions, unfortunately. I also wasn’t expecting how much Anders was going to shift in tone from her Adult works to her first YA, which is on me, honestly.

The Unbroken – I just couldn’t stand how blunt and bare the prose was. Again, this is a personal preference issue; it’s not a bad book, it’s just not for me. Which makes me pretty miserable, because I was so excited for it. ALAS!

Rise of the Red Hand – I don’t know how else to say it: this is a mess of really bad writing. I thought at first it might be a deliberate effort to convey the feel of this future world to the reader, but I checked Chadha’s other novel and no, this is just how she writes. Broken rhythm to the prose, info-dumping, clunky sentence structure, missing words and continuity errors – this should have gone through at least two more rounds of editing. At least. Vehemently anti-recommended!

Arcs Received

…I have no idea what I’ve done to deserve all these amazing arcs – I’ve been very upfront about being a baby blogger!!! – but I wish I could send thank-you letters to all the publishers! (Are we allowed to send thank-you letters???)

The Witch’s Heart was a DNF, and I read and reviewed The Queen’s Weapons. That leaves seven more to finish reading and review! So far I’m head-over-heels in love with all but those two DNFs. Based on what I’ve read so far, they’re all going to be getting 4 stars or higher from me!

Arcs Outstanding

These are the arcs I received before January and still haven’t reviewed yet. I’m in the middle of reading A Summoning of Demons, Hall of Smoke and A Desolation Called Peace, but I haven’t even started Catch Lili Too or Route of Ice & Salt. Or The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, but that’s because I’m rereading the rest of the Wayfarer books first.

I think I won’t be requesting any more arcs for a while, not until I’ve gotten through most of the ones I’ve already got!

Looking Forward

Including the books I already have arcs of (which I also have preordered – do other book reviewers still buy books they’ve had arcs of, if they liked them? I do and will continue to do so regardless, but I’m curious) these are the releases I’m most looking forward to in February!

All in all, a pretty good month. Here’s to February being even better for all of us!

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