March wrap up

Posted on April 4, 2018 by Emma @ The Stacked Shelf

After a fairly disappointing reading month in February, things picked up again in March.

I finally got around to reading Wrath by John Gwynne, the final book in the Faithful and the Fallen series – which was on my list of 8 books that I’m definitely going to read in 2018. So far this is the only book I’ve read from this list – so I’m not doing well! I’m going to aim to get through a couple more this month though.

Wrath was actually a great read and such a satisfying end to an epic series. If you like fantasy, I’d definitely recommend giving these books a try if you haven’t already!

Another book I really loved this month was Ready Player One. I’ve had this on my shelf for about a year, and I have no idea why it’s taken me so long to get to it. I devoured it in just one evening – it was action packed and I couldn’t put it down! I’m looking forward to seeing the film adaptation of this to see if they did it justice. If anyone has seen it already – let me know what you think!

I was fairly disappointed with one read this month though. I’ve been reading DS Aector McAvoy series by David Mark – a crime/thriller series that I raved about a couple of months ago. It took me over a month to get through the seventh book in the series, and I really struggled to get along with the story. Usually I race through this type of book, but I found this one quite confusing and hard to follow. I’ve been finding this with a few book series recently, which have seemed to interest me less and less with each book, and it got me thinking about what writers need to do to keep a series fresh and interesting. Maybe one for a longer post another time!

One thing I’m still way behind on blog-wise at the moment is reviewing books, especially ARCs, so I need to try and pick this up in April!

text divider

Books read:

Scorched Earth DS Aector McAvoy #7), David Mark
Wrath, John Gwynne
Ready Player One, Ernest Cline
Dragonfly in Amber, Diana Gabaldon
Everless, Sara Holland

Blog posts published:

Goodreads Challenge 2018 progress: 20/80

What were some of your favourite reads last month? What books are on your TBR for April?

February wrap up

Posted on March 6, 2018 by Emma @ The Stacked Shelf

Compared to January, which was a really good reading month for me, February was definitely a bad month! I managed to read just three new books.

One of these was the latest book in the Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch. I was really looking forward to reading this one as I loved the first few in the series, but even though I did enjoy this one, I feel like after six books the series is getting a little repetitive and might need a bit of something different to give it life again.

I’m blaming this on the fact that February was a shorter month, and the days just seemed to fly by. I had a lot on at weekends in February as well, so my reading time was eaten into. I’m also struggling at the moment to find a really good book to get into. I’m finding myself reading the news or browsing social media instead of picking up a book on my commute – which is usually prime reading time for me – so that might have something to do with my lack of productivity!

As well as the new books that I managed to read though, I did re-read the first five books in the Throne of Glass series, as I’d completely forgotten what happened and wanted to catch up before reading the latest one. If you count these into my stats, February actually wasn’t that bad. But in general, I don’t include re-reads in my Goodreads totals.

I feel like other people might have different views on this though – does anyone else include rereads? I don’t reread books that often and when I do, I tend to read them faster and skim read sections that don’t interest me, so they don’t feel like ‘proper’ reads.

Books read:

Nameless, T. C. Edge
The Witchfinder’s Sister, Beth Underdown
The Hanging Tree, Ben Aaronovitch

Blog posts published:

Goodreads Challenge 2018 progress: 15/80

I hope everyone else had a great February! What were some of your favourite reads last month? Any plans for March?

January wrap up

Posted on February 7, 2018 by Emma @ The Stacked Shelf

January was a really good reading month for me. The month felt like it went on forever – and the amount I managed to read reflects this. In total in January I read 12 books – mostly ebooks but I also managed to fit in 3 audiobooks and two paperbacks that I already owned.

I finally got around to reading A Conjuring of Light and I don’t know why I waited so long – it was great! I also got to the latest in The Invisible Library series – which in case you haven’t read it, is a brilliant adult fantasy series based around a secret library that connects worlds, book loving librarians and all sorts of other fun stuff like dragons.

This month I also binge read most of a UK crime series that I’d somehow missed out on but is rapidly becoming one of my favourites. If you like crime novels and haven’t read any David Mark, I’d suggest checking his books out.

Reading more physical books at home is one of my goals for the year, as over the years I’ve managed built up quite a collection of unread books that I really want to start making a dent on. Earlier this year I published a blog post on the books I really wanted to read in 2018 – I haven’t managed any of these yet, but most as physical books that I do really want to get to sometime soon.

My blogging schedule over the past few months has slowed down quite a bit, as various other commitments have been taking priority and I just don’t have so much time to dedicate to post writing. This year I’m going to try and take it as it comes, write about what I’m interested in and not put too much pressure on myself to post at set times – I hope you all bear with me! Continue reading →