State of the blog - Q3 of 2023
2023 - what a year so far
2023 has been one of the fastest years for me; sometimes I reflect on the fact that it feels that the year just began. Instead we are already at the end of the third quarter!
With that said, Q3 was not my best reading quarter of the year. I am hoping this is the worst of the entire year as I have a relatively ambitious last stretch of the year and a few days of holiday which I intend to enjoy at its limits!
Also, on reading challenges; it is important to normalize this. It is normal to have fluctuations - at least this is how this works for me - and I cannot wait to get back into full reading mode!
Let’s see how we are doing with regards to my original soft goals of the year and the additional goals I gave myself for the end of the year!
The “it could be better” side of things
The year of Ursula K. LeGuin is not happening in 2023. I could improve my performance by the end of the year but I would just no have done enough for this goal. With that said, I do not want to abandon this goal; I will repurpose this next year. It is important for me to focus and understand what I want from my reading experience through Ursula K. LeGuin’s work; and for next year the plan is to focus on her sci-fi in particular. I need to come up with a definitive plan for this!
I have not read Sanderson since the flop - in my opinion - of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. So I am hoping that the last book of the secret projects will live up to the expectations. And then I can finish mistborn era two with The Last Metal and I really like Wayne and Wax, they are a fun duo.
On top of these less than appealing results, my 80s fantasy deep dive is at a hault. I truly want to get back into Jennifer Roberson’s series Tiger and Del. I just want to return to one of my favorite couples in fantasy, a modern take on a wonderful partnership that keeps giving and giving.
The average
While I love everything about The Shadows of the Apt, I really want to make sure I keep myself on track and I want to finish the story before the end of the year; it is an aggressive goal but I just love this series so it should be more than do-able!
And I keep to keep my eye on The Wheel of Time and, while I can make slow progress, I want to make progress and feel good about feeling this juggernaut smaller by the end of the year.
The positives
I keep holding myself accountable to the finishing series. I keep making sure that I start new stories but I do so pushing myself for completion. I am not at 100% but I am certainly doing better than in the past and I want to continue feeling this positive approach coming my way.
With the year-end goals, I am making progress on the fantasy series that I want to finish by the end of the year: Rook & Rose is “only” one book away from the end; I am working through my way of The Trouble with Peace, making me half-way through the Age of Madness. My journey through Greatcoats is about to start and I cannot wait to make my way through this re-read!
On the even better note, I made significant progress on the stand alone books (or beginning of new series), with The Malevolent Seven and The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi.
Overall Q3 is feeling glass half-full
So overall I feel like I am still going strong in my year; I am still about 125 books so far.
But numbers are only a small fraction of this wonderful experience: I got to experience urban fantasy and I fell in love with so many heroines (in fact, I was able to work on my own post about heroines in fantasy, inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of my favorite shows growing up, the link here) and that makes me want to experience even more in urban fantasy!
I also spent quite a bit of time in historical fiction and it was a glorious experience, one that I would like to repeat every year, although I might want to keep a bit of diversity in my monthly reads!
What I expect from myself in the next months?
So I cannot wait to push myself for the next months getting to the goal of the end of the year (and I am getting excited about the reading possibilities of 2024 and I cannot wait to start brainstorming about what stories I will want to get to!).
With that said, my main goal for the rest of 2023 is to fall in love with reading all over again! My passion for reading is what defines me as a person (among other things) and I want to makes sure I get this mojo back!
My current main distraction is Grey’s Anatomy; it keeps pulling me back in and there are “only” 19 seasons to go through. With that said, there two things that I really love about the series: the reflective approach to each episode, starting and closing episodes; and the fact that this is essentially space opera (with doctors, blood and a lot of sad stories).
Last but not least, although not entirely connected to the reading experience but correlated to it, I really need to start focusing on the other chapter of this process, the podcast. I have been postponing publishing episodes for a long time; it is time for me to get into this wonderful world and I cannot wait to share with you my adventures there!
What do you have planned for the rest of the year?
