End of Year 2023 Reading Wrap-Up

Hello… it’s been a while.

I don’t want to write too long of an intro because the focus of this post is BOOKS!! But I must address the elephant in the room… Blogging has been a bit rough for me. It’s more the result of a lack of time than anything else—this past semester was the busiest I’ve been in a while, and I barely had time to even read—but it also reflects my inactivity in online spaces as a whole. 

Like I said before, I just want to take it easy and come back to blog whenever I am able to or feel like it. I will probably continue to be sporadic on my blog, and I hope that I can at least post once a month. I miss the community a lot, but I think I feel nostalgia for the past more than I feel the need to return to it. Blogging regularly is no longer feasible for me, but I also have gotten so used to not blogging and sharing things that I feel fine not doing it. (But if you’d like a “life updates” post from me, feel free to let me know!)

To wrap this all up… I had a busy year, and both my reading and blogging took a hit. But I still had a decent reading year of enjoying most of the books I read, thankfully. Let’s take a closer look!

Romance Subplots Are Better than Romance Books…? 12 Book Recommendations

Ever since romance has become a more and more popular genre for people to turn to with the rise of Tiktok, I’ve wondered why I rarely feel inclined to pick up a romance book now. Maybe I hate happy books, since most of what I read is quite devastating. Maybe I don’t care for the romance books that are popular, whether it be romcoms or dark romances. Maybe I just don’t like romance itself.

But I actually love romance—just not when it’s the main plot. It can really hook me in and make me more invested in the characters and their dynamic, and when done right, I can become completely obsessed with them.

2023 Mid-Year Book Freak Out Tag & Reading Check-In

I’m struggling this year.

Last year for this tag, I said that my reading had bene unprecedentedly slow. Well, this year I can say again that I’ve set yet another precedent of low reading numbers! But I think I actually prefer having less books to look at when doing the mid-year book freak out tag, so that I don’t feel like I’m not leaving out a large part of my reading when I don’t talk about them. (This is me lying to myself.)

(I wrote and scheduled this post at the end of June before I left for vacation, so numbers are probably a bit off by now!)

Quarterly Wrap-Up: April – June 2023

I can’t believe we’re halfway through 2023 already… I know each year I’m in disbelief over how quickly time passes, but the past two months in particular went by so fast since I’m on summer break! This quarter’s wrap-up actually has lots of updates, since more has been going on than just boring old school.

I’m actually enjoying the quarterly wrap-up format so much more than the monthly, since I really enjoy compiling things together and I think it works better for all these updates. Though I’m afraid it lets me get a little carried away and ramble for a while…

50+ Anticipated Releases: July through December 2023

I’m back! With my labor of love!

These anticipated releases lists are truly one kinds of my favorite posts to do. Even though it takes me hours to research, compile, write, and polish them, I just love getting to find all the exciting new books coming out—and to share them with you all!

As usual, there are a wide range of genres, from queer Asian fantasy to folkloric horror to thought-provoking sci-fi. I always think that I won’t add a lot of new releases to my TBR (especially now that I’m focusing more on backlist books), and then I end up with over 50. So I hope you can find something new too!