Well. 2020 continutes to remind me why it was such a dumpster fire.
I finally decided to brave looking at my Goodread’s Reading Challenge for 2020. I knew I didn’t finish it, but I wasn’t expecting it to by so much! Though there were some… mistakes listed along the way. Let’s go through it, shall we?
January 2020: Let’s set the scene. The year has just started, and we are just hearing the first whispers of the virus. But, no stress yet, right? I only read three things during this month, two novels and a graphic novel from my library via cloud library. I opened the year with Reverie by Ryan La Sala, as the first pick for Barnes and Noble’s YA Book Club for 2020. It was a fun little read, which sparked a good amount of discussion during the club. I also read The Year They Fell by David Kriezman, which I honestly don’t remember a damn thing about, and Lifeformed: Cleo Makes Contact, a middle grade graphic novel by Matt Mair Lowery and Cassie Anderson. This was the graphic novel that proved that I could read them on my phone… though I remember not being very impressed with the story. (2 novels, 1 graphic novel. 3 total.)
February 2020: Things are now getting serious in the world. I made it a point to reread the entire Harry Potter series over the month. This was something I started doing in college: picking a month during the year and rereading all seven novels. Obviously not something I’ll be doing any time soon anymore, but that was then. I also read Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen for the Book Club, and we had thoughts about this book. I really want to revisit this one sometime this year. And I also read my first five start book, Seven Deadly Shadows by Courtney Alameda and Valynne E. Maetani. Anime inspired writing filled with Japanese legends and folktales… what’s not to love. I really enjoyed this one. (9 novels. 9 total.)
March 2020: Okay, here is where things started going off the rails. I only read three novels this month, though you wouldn’t know it if you just looked at the stats. I started, as always, with the Book Club pick, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson, another five star book that blew my mind. A sequel is coming in March 2021. Also, there was The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow, which was a disappointing read for me. Ignore my GR score for this one. And then there was Legend by acclaimed YA author Marie Lu… which just didn’t do it for me. Whoops. And then. There is everything else. I reread the entire Magic Knight Rayearth manga series by CLAMP, all six volumes. It’s a series I hold near and dear to my heart, even if the anime is almost trash compared to it. Then there was the beginning of Sword Art Online Hollow Realization, a kinda manga retelling of one of the SAO games. I read the first three volumes of that. I also got my hands onto two graphic novels this month: The Oracle Code by Marieke Nijkamp, which is based on the DC character Barbara Gordon, and Nimora by Noelle Stevenson, an acclaimed graphic novel that didn’t click with me. (3 novels, 9 manga, 2 graphic novels. 14 total.)
April 2020: Okay, in the real world, I quit my job midway through the month, and almost had a stress-induced breakdown because of everything. In the reading world, I read. A little. Not a lot. I did read one of the books that is fighting for my favorite read of 2020: The Light Between Worlds by Laura E. Weymouth, which was an amazing Narnia retelling. I also read one of the Narnia stories, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis, because of this. (I never finished because I was discussing the stories with an ex-coworker, and she still feels betrayed that I left.) The final novel I read was These Witches Don’t Burn by Isabel Sterling, which I really liked, but in hindsight, I think it was more of a 4 star book, not a 5. I’ll get to that later. I also read the other two volumes of Sword Art Online Hollow Realization, which were nothing to really write home about, and ended on a massive cliffhanger. I still haven’t finished this one… and I’m not sure if I want to. (3 novels, two manga. 5 total).
May 2020: May. May was a month. I think I spent more time playing video games and sanitizing the apartment then reading. I did read four novels, and a non-fiction book, so that has to count for something! First up was a reread, City of Bones by Cassandra Clare. I wanted to read (and reread) all of the Shadowhunter Chronicles last year, but spoiler alert, I never got past this one. My brain just said NO. I also reread The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, in preparation for suffering through the prequel in June. For new books, I read this month’s Book Club book, They Went Left by Monica Hesse, and was not a fan. Then again, I don’t really read historical fiction, especially based around and after World War II. Then I read How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff. I watched the movie that is based off this book a few years back, and I finally had the chance to read this, but I think the book was better done (and it had a young Tom Holland in it!). Finally, the non-fiction book I read was Speedrun Science by Eric “Omnigamer” Koziel, which was all the history and technique of speedrunning video games. It’s a thing. (4 novels, 1 non fiction. 5 total).
June 2020: Alright, we began this month with a big disappointment. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins released, and I dragged myself through it. It was horrible, it was unnecessary, it brought nothing to the series. I’d rather read a prequel about Haymitch (or however you spell his name, you know who I mean and I just don’t have it in me to double check.). This was a waste of my time. I also discovered the Wayward Children series and read all five novellas by Seanan McGuire. They are, in order, Every Heart a Doorway, Down Among the Sticks and Stones, Beneath the Sugar Sky, In An Absent Dream, and Come Tumbling Down. And I loved them all. The only other novel I read this month was a middle grade called Con-Quest! by Sam Maggs, which was a lot of fun. I read a graphic novel called Witchy by Ariel Slamet Ries, which came with an Owlcrate, and I was not impressed. I also read two comics, the first two issues of Zodiac Starforce by Kevin Panette, which I have no memory of. And finally, there was the manga. I read the first volume of Orange by Ichigo Takano on Crunchyroll’s site, but I didn’t continue with it. Then there was Not Your Idol by Aoi Makino, which was a good little beginning. Also was Bloom into You Vol 1 by Nio Nakatani, a yuri novel that was amazing, and I continued reading it. Oh, and there was Ao Haru Ride by Io Sakisaka, which was a waste of my time. Complete waste. (2 novels, 5 novellas, 1 graphic novel, 2 comic issues, 4 manga. 14 total.)
July 2020: July is a month that I could see in two parts. The beginning of the month, I participated in the Reading Rush, which was… a travesty. For that, I only read three of my planned seven books. The two novels were Redemption Prep by Sam Miller, which was probably one of my least favorite books of 2020, followed by Lemonade Mouth by Mark Peter Hughes, which didn’t live up to the Disney Channel Original Movie. I also read the first Sword Art Online Progressive manga, which wasn’t terrible. Outside that, I read two other novels. One was This Coven Won’t Break by Isabel Sterling, which was fine but didn’t live up to the first book. The other was Girls Save the World in This One by Ash Parsons, a zombie horror that just did nothing for me. I also read the next three volumes of Bloom into You, which continued the story that I was loving. And finally, I started reading another short manga called Our Wonderful Days.
As for the second half of the month… on July 28th, I discovered The Old Guard. So I read all ten issues of the series, though Goodreads marked the first five as just the anthology instead of five issues. So yeah, that happened. (4 novels, 6 manga, 6 comics (1 anthology, 5 issues)). 16 total.
And then…
Then I basically stopped reading anything published. I feel into the Old Guard fandom, HARD. I also was blasting through the end of my Lego Challenge, and also rediscovering my love for films. Then I started prepping for NaNoWriMo, and I did Blogtober. So yeah. I did a lot, except actually reading.
November 2020: So, this was the month I started reading again. At least, I gave it my best shot. I finished The Martian by Andy Weir, mostly because I wanted to see the movie (since I have my rule of reading the source material first if I can), but also because one of my favorite new fanfics was based on movie, so I wanted to have all the knowledge, because I’m like that. So, I didn’t do much, but it was also a stressful month (US election much?). (1 novel. 1 total.)
December 2020: So I actually read some of this month! Back in October, I started a classic novel titled Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy, which was the novel that inspired one of my favorite Matthias Schoenaerts films by the same name. I ended up not liking the novel, but I’m happy that I read it, and I have a new appreciation for the film. (Also, Gabriel Oak was written for Matthias Schoenaerts, I swear to all that is holy. The other novel I read, I ended up almost DNF-ing, but dragged myself through. I’m so sad that I didn’t like Seasons of the Storm by Elle Cosimano, because I wanted to love it so much. But it just didn’t do it for me. I also read two random manga dojinshi, which I don’t even want to name because they were… terrible is a good word. And finally, I ended the year reading the prequel comics, all five of them, for Marvel’s Avengers. And wow. I was not impressed. So I ended the year on a low note. (2 novels, 2 manga, 5 comic issues. 9 total.)
So yeah. That’s a weird year for you. And since I could…
Stats: (With pie charts!)
This is the breakdown of the types of books I read in 2020. The telling thing for me here is that there were so many alternative reading items, meaning graphic novels, manga, and comics. Normally I won’t care, but if you add those together, they are more than the amount of novels, novellas and the non fiction book that I read. And I’m sorry, but I’m here for the novels. So, that’s gonna change this year.
This one is a fun one. All the months that I read something and logged it on Goodreads, and how many books I read that month. It’s interesting to me. Though, I am tempted to redo this without comics, graphic novels, and manga, just to see the difference. But I’m not going to. Not counting the three months where I didn’t read and log anything (because I don’t log fanfiction, that’s rude to the authors because half the time they don’t know about it), my biggest reading month was July, followed by March. My smallest was November, followed by January.
Okay, one last chart, and this one is a bit different. I noticed when I sat down to type this up that I had a disproportionate amount of 4-star books. So I graphed it out. And wow. This is a problem for me. I think in my head I always thought that 4-star is good, but not great. 3-star is below that, and then of course 2- and 1-star books are not to my taste. 5-star was reserved for favorites or ones that blew me out of the part. Seeing it all laid out for me changes things. I am going to redo how I rate books, starting with my third book of the year (since I already have two up for the year, so it really wouldn’t be fair). But I’ll discuss that in a later post.
Finally, I wanted to go over my top and bottom books. If I exclude the Harry Potter series (which is going to be out of rotation for a long while, thanks JK Rowling), I had seven 5-star books. Adding together my 1- and 2-star books, I have five.
My 5-star books, in no particular order, were:
- Seven Deadly Shadows by Courtney Alameda and Valynne E. Maetani
- A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson
- These Witches Don’t Burn by Isabel Sterling
- This Coven Won’t Break by Isabel Sterling
- The Light Between Worlds by Laura E. Weymouth
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
- Con-Quest! by Sam Maggs
My 1- and 2-star books, in no particular order, were:
- The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
- Ao Haru Ride by Io Sakisaka
- Girls Save the World in This One by Ash Parsons
- Redemption Prep by Sam Miller
- Marvel’s Avengers Thor (and the rest of those comics should have also been on this list, whoops)
In Conclusion to this year: Looking back on everything I read this year, I have to change this up. So, we shall see what the future of my reading holds. I do know one thing, I’m really going to focus on novels this year. Or at least, I’m going to try anyway.
Until next time!
