Looking Back at 2022 & New Challenges for 2023

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I’ve admittedly been very unmotivated to put this post together, though it’s actually no later than its equivalent last year. For me, 2022 was a bit of a dud as far as reading goals go. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, my freelance job has made getting reading done a lot harder, more so than I thought it would, and this was felt all throughout the year. By no means would I spurn a job I find to be worthwhile for a hobby, but it gets you down all the same.

All this being said, I’m really re-evaluating how I want to be approaching reading going forward, in a much more serious way than last year. But first, I would like to review just how my challenges ended up with all said and done.Read More »

Top 5 Books I Read in 2022

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Transitioning to a new year of reading has been going slowly, as it turns out. I’m still trying to finish up my final read from last year (a fact that will keep bothering me at least a little bit), so I haven’t even given myself the chance to start reading anything new for 2023. As my editing workload increased after the end of 2021, I managed to have less and less time to read throughout the year, so I actually read an even smaller number of books than I was expecting. Still, I did manage to finish a decent amount, and as I’ve done the last several years, I’d like to list my five favourite reads from the past year, in no particular order. As is always the case, these are not books that came out in 2022, simply the five books I enjoyed the most.Read More »

New Books & Novel Discoveries (December 2022)

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This was another surprisingly quiet month as far as new books go. As it turns out, I didn’t receive any gift cards for books for Christmas this year. It’s fine, I still really appreciate all that I did receive, though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little sad that I won’t be going on a small book-buying binge. I hope everybody else has enjoyed their holidays too and continues to enjoy them with New Year’s Eve tomorrow

Enough about the holidays, on to the books!Read More »

WWW Wednesday – December 28, 2022

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WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

A Carnival of SnackeryLast week I was absent from making one of these posts, as I was celebrating an early Christmas out of town with my family, though I don’t believe I had made much progress on anything to have had much to say anyway. Fortunately, I have finally been making some progress in A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris. I really have been remiss in letting this book sit for so long, because I am reminded upon picking it up just how much I enjoy his writing, even just these bite-sized diary entries. Based on certain entries, it seems like he’s an author who would be really fun to see at a meet and greet, though I feel like I would succumb to the self-imposed pressure of wanting to have something interesting to say or talk about briefly with him. Hopefully, I can finish this book by the end of the year, but seeing as that is on Sunday, I have my work cut out for me. I’ve made progress, but I still have several hundred pages left.

Recently Finished

Nothing this week, since I was busy visiting family last week and I’ve actually been busier than you might expect with work this past week. I’m hoping I can fit in some short stuff alongside A Carnival of Snackery, but we’ll see.

Reading Next

Anything I’m going to read next I have talked about already. Right now, though, so long as I haven’t started them yet, I’m happy to let them wait until the New Year. What’s really going to bug me is if I don’t finish what I’m currently reading, so that’s going to take priority.

I hope everybody has a fun and safe New Year’s weekend. My inhuman work schedule still has me working, despite it landing on a Saturday this year, but I will try to make merry in my own time.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – December 14, 2022

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WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Nothing to update here this week.

Recently Finished

Tracking the ChupacabraA couple of days ago I managed to finish reading Tracking the Chupacabra by Benjamin Radford. It feels weird that it took me as long as it did, since it’s not even 200 pages long with all said and done. I think perhaps the font size and number of words per page makes it appear deceptively short. At any rate, I really like this book, but I would say my experience with it was just good not great. It was well written and well researched, but what stood out most to me was that I am perhaps not the target audience for something like this; it was more or less preaching to the choir the entire time. I needed no persuading, it was not a topic I was even agnostic about. Still, it made for an interesting read and I’m glad I did it.

Reading Next

Manga Diary of a Male Porn Star 2It is becoming more and more apparent to me that I will probably not be reading another full book this month, other than A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris, if I can manage to actually pick the damn thing back up again. Nevertheless, I have some comics I’d like to get through to get myself to a certain point in my Goodreads challenge, even if I’m far from my goal of 50 books overall. I’ve just been able to borrow a copy of the second volume of Manga Diary of a Male Porn Star by Kaeruno Erefante, which I’m looking forward to as a nice amusing read. It’s been a little over a year since I read the first volume, but I think I remember enough that that won’t be a problem.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

Books on My Winter 2022–2023 To-Read List

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly book meme run by That Artsy Reader Girl. I always like topics like this for these posts because it’s a great way to get thinking about what I feel like reading, not just what I may have laid out ages beforehand. This is especially considering a new year coming up, with presumably new personal reading challenges to be had that I haven’t really thought about yet. Though this will include 10 books, I’m fairly certain I won’t read all of them listed here during winter; I’ve just been too slow lately. Nevertheless, these are all books I’d really like to get to in the coming winter season.Read More »

WWW Wednesday – December 7, 2022

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WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Tracking the ChupacabraI’ve managed to make some more decent progress in Tracking the Chupacabra by Benjamin Radford since last week. The chapters I read through were a lot more up my alley, as they dealt with looking into actual supposed sightings and even recovered bodies of supposed chupacabras, as well as the experiences of the people who found them. I was especially interested in one account where the woman who found the body, who has turned it into something rather lucrative for herself, remarked about assumed photos of the creature from 100 years ago. It’s fascinating that the common assumption among people, including myself growing up, is that the chupacabra is old folklore. The most startling thing about this book is still the fact that accounts of the creature only date back to 1995. I want to try and get this done before next week, as I really need to move onto other books if I’m going to get them finished before the year is out.

Recently Finished

Nothing this week either. I really need to crack open some comic books.

Reading Next

The Myth of SisyphusWith only three weeks remaining in December, I’m really not sure if I can start anything bigger than graphic novels or Galatea by Madeline Miller. I really want to try though, so we’ll have to see how things go. What is most important to me is that I finish reading A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris rather than something I haven’t even started yet, though, so I will be prioritizing that. Another prospective read that has popped up for me though is The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, which I bought a little while ago. It’s only a little under 150 pages long, despite looking longer than that, so I’m considering maybe squeezing that in. We shall see.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – November 30, 2022

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WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Tracking the ChupacabraI am ashamed to say I’ve still kept my streak going with neglecting A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris. I have to finish it before the end of the year or I will lose my mind, though, so it’s getting done one way or another. In the meantime, I have been able to make some decent progress on Tracking the Chupacabra by Benjamin Radford despite the last six days having been busier with one of my jobs. It finished up examining the folkloric side of vampires and the like, with the latest chapter recounting the author undertaking an expedition to Nicaragua to search the jungle for the creature. I may have been projecting, but the chapter had a tongue-in-cheek feel that I related to but also found myself impatient with. I can gather that the author doesn’t take the creature’s existence seriously and nor do I, but this resulted in this chapter feeling more like a waste of time. It was still fun to read, but I just couldn’t shake that feeling either.

Recently Finished

Nothing this week.

Reading Next

Wolf in White VanI still intend to read Galatea by Madeline Miller sometime soon. I probably just need to set aside a single sitting to do so. With it being December tomorrow and knowing that visiting home for Christmas will likely result in no time spent reading there, I have to wonder what other books I can actually expect myself to finish before the New Year. If you don’t know, I don’t like books to bleed between years. I’m sure this is a common sentiment, but I’m equally sure others aren’t held back by this, so it bears bringing up. I’ll have to take some time to consider what I think is actually realistic for me; some of the books on my to-read list for this year, like Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle, don’t seem to be too long, so I may pick one of those.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

New Books & Novel Discoveries (November 2022)

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Well, the daylight has become more and more scarce once again, and the holidays are just over the horizon. November feels so much like a liminal month for me sometimes, being a void of time between the holidays (at least here in Canada) and feeling more subdued as the weather transitions to darker and colder. Somewhat in keeping with that all that, it has been a considerably low-key month for me as far as book buying goes too, but I did manage to pick a little something up for myself anyway.

On to the books!Read More »

WWW Wednesday – November 23, 2022

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WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Tracking the ChupacabraI managed to get a nice modest start on Tracking the Chupacabra by Benjamin Radford finally, though regrettably I didn’t get to any of A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris as well. At any rate, I’m enjoying the book quite a bit, as Radford’s style is making the subject a lot of fun to read while still being critical and informative. One of the early chapters is a brief history of vampires, since the creature is vampiric in nature, which led things down a path to how deeply colonialism has influenced the folklore of certain places in the world. I had no idea there were urban legends of white colonizers stalking the streets, wanting to harvest body parts from innocent bystanders caught unawares. Can’t say I blame them, all things considered. It was also amusing to have it pointed out just how inconsistent accounts of what the chupacabra is supposed to look like are. It seems a chupacabra can be whatever you want it to be.

Recently Finished

Nothing this week. Boo.

Reading Next

Galatea (book)I’ve still not made up my mind about a bigger book to read next, but I have recently made a purchase that I’m going to read through as soon as I can: Galatea by Madeline Miller. The book is actually a short story that Miller first published ages ago; in fact, I already own it on Kindle. Nevertheless, once I heard they released an actual book, I knew I had to buy it. Even at it’s tiny size, the story is only 50 pages or so long, so it should take virtually no time at all to complete, and I look forward to finally reading this story. I’ve put it off long enough, but I guess being a bit of a Luddite with Kindle has paid off; I get to enjoy this physical book now.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.