June Reading Wrap-Up

It’s time for the June Reading Wrap Up!

Writing this post and attempting to reference my own blog, I noticed that 1) my blog has no search feature and 2) when you click on “blog”, it lists only the latest post. That’s on my goal to fix sometime this summer!

June was an interesting month for me! Unfortunately I didn’t get to go on my trip because I had a Health Flareup, but I also got approved to take a drug holiday (a holiday where I go off my immunosuppressants) so that I can get a tattoo and get my ears pierced next month! So very interesting ups and downs. I also have gotten used to working two separate jobs, both of which I really like. I also had an eye appointment this week, so hopefully soon I will get some new glasses and become even better at reading! (This will not happen. I am nearsighted. I guess maybe I will get better at reading novels far away? This isn’t usually a situation I am in, but who knows what July will bring!)

At the end of May, I said that I wanted to read the following books:

– Baking Bad by Kim M. Watt

This was my only specific TBR I wanted to read. I did not even start this book. I am writing this blog post a little early, before the end of June, so I could still finish it, I guess, but I probably won’t.

I also had some challenges that I wanted to tackle from my Yearly Reading Challenges specifically:

From the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge, I wanted to read:
– Women in STEM
– A Grieving Character
– An Omniscient narrator
– Nominated for the Booker Prize

For the 2024 Read Harder challenge, I wanted to read:
– A cozy fantasy
– A middle grade horror novel
– a middle grade book with a queer main character
– a book in translation from a country you’ve never visited
– a book recommended by a librarian
– a comic that has been banned.

I was…. somewhat successful?

For the Read Harder Challenge this month, I read:

My Friends Call Me Monster by R. L Stine for Middle Grade horror novel
The Year My Life Went Down the Toilet by Jake Maia Arlow for Middle grade with a queer main character
You Just Need to Lose Weight by Aubrey Gordon for a book about media literacy
and Vicious by V. E Schwab for a challenge from a previous year (a book that you started but did not finish).

For the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge, I read

The Cybernetic Tea Shop by Meredith Katz for Women in STEM
They Can’t Kill Us Til They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib for a grieving character
Vicious by V. E Schwab for part of a duology
Vicious by V. E Schwab for a revenge story
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeannette McCurdy for an author “everyone” has read
Seven Surrenders by Ada Palmer for an abrupt ending
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber for Nonfiction recommended by a friend
Vicious by V. E Schwab for set in a city starting with the letter M
and The Sunshine Court for a book published in 2024.

My seven favorite books this month were, ranked in order:

1. The Cybernetic Tea Shop
2. The Year My Life Went Down the Toilet
3. They Can’t Kill us Til They Kill Us
4. Bullshit Jobs
5. Vicious
6. I’m Glad My Mom Died
7. You Just Need to Lose Weight

I finished 15 books in June:

Vicious
The Big Book of 30 Day Challenges
Decorate: 1000 Professional Ideas
You Just Need to Lose Weight
Cozy Case Files, Volume 19
The Cybernetic Tea Shop
Bullshit Jobs
I’m Glad My Mom Died
My Friends Call me Monster
Jessi Ramsey, Pet-sitter
The Year My Life Went Down the Toilet
Seven Surrenders
They Can’t Kill us Till They Kill us
The Sunshine Court
Pushing Up Daisies

While I read fewer books this month than I read in May, I read more books with a higher page count — in May, I read 25 books with a total page count of 4.7k pages, whereas in June I read 15 books at 4.9k pages. So, in the same page range so about the same “amount” of book, but fewer actual finished books. Neither month, of course, includes information about how many books I made progress on but did not actually finish.

While I love Storygraph, I am often finding that I am buying or reading books that don’t have Storygraph pages, or are listed differently or in weirder ways. I want a good way to track my TBR, but I also don’t want to be influenced by any algorithm that suggests me different books to read: I want to rely exclusively on other people and social media posts by real people rather than on what an Algorithm tells me to read. I also want to read a lot of cozy mysteries that are often not cataloged correctly on Storygraph. They are often cataloged correctly on Goodreads, but I am loathe to use any Amazon product. I’ve been working through two solutions so far: obviously the first is my book blog, where I publish reviews of everything I’ve been reading. The second is a custom Notion template, which I’m also using to keep track of how much money I’m spending (or not spending, in the case of library books!) on books. My third option will be to start using a physical book journal. However, none of the books journals that I’ve met so far are Exactly Right for my Bookish Needs. The answer to that, of course, will be a Bullet Journal, or going back to a bullet journal. I don’t want to abandon my Hobonichi though, which I’ve grown to really like, in favor of the bullet journal, so I’m going to continue tooling around in Notion for a while. We’ll see how it turns out.

Okay! That’s my June Reading Wrap-Up. Tune in tomorrow for my July Reading Goals!