Miranda’s September Reading Wrap-Up

September has come and gone, and somehow I managed to read 17 books. Unfortunately I don’t have any stats to share, because I, uh… accidentally deleted the spreadsheet I was using to keep track of my 2022 reading. Oops.

Instead of going back through and entering all my information again, I’m just going to leave it empty until 2023. It is what it is! I’m also doing something different with my reading journal. I’m waiting until the month has passed to add it to the journal and fill in my details, instead of setting it up before the month starts. We’ll see how that works out for me.

I’m surprised I managed to get through 17 books, though as you can see a few of them were graphic novels. I’m still really enjoying SPYxFAMILY. I also very much enjoyed Over My Dead Body, as it was clearly a response to J.K. Rowling becoming a terrible person and what an HP fan wishes HP could have been.

My favorite, however, was Ava Reid’s Juniper & Thorn. Considering I found her debut to be just fine, the fact that I loved Juniper & Thorn is a little surprising. I read a lot of negative reviews about it before reading it, and while I can see where they were coming from with their criticisms–such as the love story being a love at first sight or the book having too much sex in it–I ultimately ended up disagreeing. There’s a reason for everything in the story, and it truly lives up to the horror part of Gothic horror.

Another standout was I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. I never watched iCarly (I was more of a Disney Channel girl, and also, I think I was past the age of enjoying iCarly when it was on the air) but after hearing about this book nonstop on twitter, I decided to give it a go. The first half is gut-wrenching, and frankly, I’m glad her mom is dead too. The second half didn’t flow as neatly, and I did find McCurdy to be a little sparse on details at times, but otherwise, I’m not sorry I read it.

So that’s it for me! What did you read in September, and what were your favorite reads?

Miranda’s June Reading Wrap Up

Happy summer! I’ve been in a bit of a slump since June, though thankfully not as bad as the slump I was in during February. Part of it is that work has been busy, so when I get home I don’t have much energy to sit down and read; I also can’t listen to a lot of audiobooks because I had to be more active at work. Things should hopefully calm down now that work is slowing down again.

Of course, now I get to show off the spreads for my reading journal in June. And since it was Pride, of course I put rainbows everywhere.

After receiving the June sticker pack from Pipsticks, I decided to use all of them in this set up. I also used some scrapbooking paper. I especially loved the butterflies in the sticker pack.

I did manage to read 17 books and listen to 7 audiobooks in June. Three of them were rereads. I also DNF’d 6 books. Overall I read 3,116 pages and listened to 4,668 minutes of audiobooks. My favorite book in June was She Gets the Girl by Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick — I swooned. My average rating for June was 3.5, which is the highest it’s been so far!

This is the second month I’m trying out a calendar in my reading journal, and I’m still really enjoying it, although I’ve found I forget to actually sit down and put the tape and stickers in (as you can tell by the absence of both in days 23-30). I’ll try to be better about it in July.

Last up is my mood tracker and a new feature I added in June!

I trimmed down the number of moods I tracked in July and drew a Pride flag as my tracker. Save for a handful of bad days (thanks, Supreme Court!) June was mostly okay for me.

After I wrote down my key, I still had a large space of unused paper on the left hand side. In May’s spread, I used it to stamp some flowers and color them in, but I didn’t have anything that I felt really fit in June. Then I decided to add a “gratitude log”. I tend to be a negative person, and with the world the way it is, I thought adding a gratitude log would maybe help me. This was added about a week into June so a lot of early days are blank because my memory is awful and I couldn’t really think of anything. It’s a work in progress, I think.

Now for the books I read in June…

I reread the first three volumes of Witch Hat Atelier, then got caught up to what the library has available. I also finally read Nimona, which was great. My favorite physical book was probably SPYxFAMILY, which was charming as hell.

I didn’t burn through as many audiobooks this month, which is a bit sad, but overall I liked most of the ones I listened to. The only one I was underwhelmed by was Daughter of Sparta, which started out strong but ultimately went on too long and proved not to be to my taste as far as the romance went. But, my favorite audiobook (and overall book) of June was She Gets the Girl, as I said before. Loved it. I hope these two authors write more together soon.

So that’s it for me! What did you read in June? If you have a reading journal, how did you decorate it last month?