January in Review

February 3, 2016

month in review

Newsworthy

Wow! It’s hard to believe Death by Tsundoku has been running for a month already! It’s been a wild ride, for sure, but the momentum isn’t slowing down at all, thankfully.

I’ve learned a lot in the last month. I have started to understand WordPress and CSS templates. I’ve done research and made new friends in the blogisphere. I’ve started to understand social media and its place in the world. Blogging is a time consuming process– but it’s incredibly rewarding! Can’t stop, won’t stop, as they say. I hope this momentum keeps pushing long into 2016.

Blogging aside, most of my free time this month has gone to reading… Are we surprised? No.

List of Reads

I read quite a bit in January. Not all the books I read end up getting a blog post, actually. Part of that is due to completion dates for reading. Some are due to a lack of content. Others are because I’d like to keep a whole series in order and I don’t want to start in the middle.

January Books:
Read – 15 total booksJanuary Books 1

January books 2

January Books 3
Currently reading – 4 books

  • The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
  • Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
  • All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doer
  • Influencer: The Power to Change Anything by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler

YOU MUST READ this month:
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl: This book is everything I want a YA “cancer book” to be. It’s real. It’s relatable. There are no huge revelations. And the audiobook is rivveting. Read it now. Or listen to the audiobook. Then watch the movie. Do it.

DANGER! Avoid this month:
The Heist: Predictable, dull, and written in a distracting way.  Generally a boring heist with unneeded half-hearted romance. I didn’t get much out of this, and I definitely won’t recommend it to others.

 

Challenge Update

I LOVE reading challenges. However, I might have overcommitted to my challenges this year… This just means I’ll need to work harder to ensure I get my challenges met! Also, I will definitely need to take a serious look at how many books I can double-dip in multiple challenges.

I elected to participate in a single monthly challenge in January. It was a Marathon of reading! My page average was 2800 pages a month in 2015, so I aimed for 3500, a little more than a quarter again my average. I blew this challenge out of the water with 4019 pages read! Looks like I’ll need to push my reading more in 2016.

Check out my challenge statuses as they update here.

 

Tsundoku Life

It wouldn’t be tsundoku if I didn’t have a gigantic pile of books waiting for me!

When I originally wrote this post, I listed all the books I added to my To Be Read list (TBR) this month. But that got boring quickly– no one wants to look at that list! (When I hit 30 new books, I stopped adding) So, instead I’m just letting you know what’s on the docit for February. If you want to see my entire TBR list, you can check it out here.

It’s a long month this year with 28 days, so I’m confident I can get through a lot of this… Maybe?

TBR: Library Books
(Man! Why are there so many graphic novels…. Huh.)

  • Tales of the Otori Book 1: Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn
  • Lone Wolf and Cub, Vol 5 by Kazuo Koike
  • Lone Wolf and Cub, Vol 6 by Kazuo Koike
  • The Sandman, Vol 5 by Neil Gaiman
  • Nursery Rhyme Comics by Various Comic Artists
  • The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Vol 2 by Eric Shanower
  • The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Vol 3 by Eric Shanower

TBR Planned reads for Feb

  • Book Clubs
    • Our Shared Shelf- TBD
      • Plus My Life on the Road, which I just started today…
    • Kids Lit – The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chobsky
    • West Side Stories – The Martian by Andy Weir
    • Books n’ Booze – Yes, Please! by Amy Pohler
    • Brunch Books – The Gunslinger by Stephen King
    • Friends Kinda – Americanah by Chimamanda Nozi Adichie
  • Challenge Books
    • Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
    • Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
    • Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
    • Briar Rose by Jane Yolen

 

Whew! That’s quite an update, and we’re only at the end of my first month of blogging! How did you do this month? Any new favorite books? Any goals broken? Any challenges started? It’s still a new year– we have a lot of reading time ahead of us!

I look forward to many more months with all of you. Happy Reading,

Jackie B.

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2 Comments

  • Mike Anderson February 3, 2016 at 11:51 am

    Even if I were young again and didn’t fall asleep while reading I wouldn’t be able to keep up with you! Lately I’ve been reading a lot of history. Some of those books are rather long with tiny print. I recently finished the first two books of Rick Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy, “An Army at Dawn” (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for history) and “The Day of Battle.” Each one is about 650 pages of story and 200 pages of notes. Before that I read “Lawrence in Arabia” by Scott Anderson and “Empire of Shadows” by George Black. I’m currently reading “American Apostles” by Christine Leigh Heyrman and then plan to read the third volume of the Liberation Trilogy. I usually sweeten the histories by snacking on books about cat’s pajamas or photography and keeping up with my nephew’s scifi stuff.

    • Jackie B March 22, 2016 at 9:01 pm

      Wow! You’re reading some great literature, Mike. I’m super impressed. I don’t know if I could read 650 pages of history now. I read the first two of Churchhill’s The World Crisis books in the early 2000’s. 1600+ pages of history. It was good, but not something I was ready for at the time, and it still haunts me a bit. Perhaps I’m ready to try some deep history books again? What did you think of the Liberation Trilogy?

      Also: I completely believe in snacking on books. Well, I mostly snack, and then occasionally eat a meal. 🙂

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