The Best and Worst of 2023 + New Reading Goal

Hello everyone and welcome back to the blog! It's been a wild ride, and I have a lot of thoughts to share about my reading journey this year. I really like being able to document my reading trends, habits, and overall stats.

My reading goal for this year was 75 books. Last year I read 65 books, so this felt like a much bigger undertaking for me. In order to reach my goal, I wanted to read at least 6 books a month at the minimum. This proved to be hard in some cases. I could not spend a lot of time on a book that just wasn't doing it for me. I only DNF'd one book throughout the year, but I plan on returning back to it when the stakes aren't so high.

My worst reading month was May with only 4 books, but my best was February with 9 books. My strategy is to set myself up for success early in the year but reading way more than my minimum requirement. That way if I do have a bad month mid-year I'm still in a good place to reach my goal.

As I said my goal was 75 books and I read 75 books! It took me almost all of December, but I made it.

Out of 75 books, 12 were five stars: (SJM series are being counted as 1 entity)

What Lies in the Woods by Katie Alice Marshall
Exes & O's by Amy Lea
The entire Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas
The first two Crescent City books by Sarah J. Maas
Happy Place by Emily Henry
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood
The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson
They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

Okay, actually...this is a lot more than I originally thought.

On the flip side, there were some not so great reads. Those w/ a rating of 2 or lower are:

After Anna by Alex Lake
The Yellow King and Other Horror Stories by Robert Chambers
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
The Last Word by Taylor Adams
When in Rome by Sarah Adams
Good Bad Girl by Alice Feeney
Ghost 19 by Simone St. James

There are definitely a lot more on this list than I also thought there would be. Trying to remember my ratings is hard. The beginning of the year feels like one big blur.

Overall, this was one of my best reading years. Even better than last year. Looking forward to next year, my new reading goal is going to be 75 books again. Reading 75 books calls for a minimum 6 books a month. Anything more right now is just not obtainable for me. I would need to not have a full-time job/half the responsibilities I do now. So we're going again. Eventually, I would like to be able to read 100 books in a year.

Overall, I am so happy with how everything turned out, and I'm hoping 2024 is just as good!

Alright folks, that is all I have for today! Come back next week for more content! As always thank you for reading:)