Another year has begun and the first month is already over. Let’s see how things went, shall we?

January Reads

• Passion by Lauren Kate
• Rapture by Lauren Kate
• Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis
• A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green
• Truth of the Divine by Lindsay Ellis
• The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• Apostles of Mercy by Lindsay Ellis
• Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

That is nine books to start off the year. I’m pretty happy with that. You may also notice that I have a new reading tracking app. I started using Bookmory and, I have to say, I really like it so far. I don’t think anything will ever fully replace GoodReads, mostly because I have so much history on that platform and trying to replicate that somewhere else would be very tricky. Bookmory also doesn’t have any online features – you can’t see what other people are reading, share reviews, or even sync between devices. It does have some really cool statistics features that I like that breaks down your reads between formats, number of pages, and other nifty stuff (including a book calendar, which you can download and share on your blog – see above!). I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to keep it or not, but I have enjoyed playing with it so far.

Challenge Updates

GoodReads Challenge: My goal is to read 75 books this year. So far I have read 9, which according to GoodReads, is 3 books ahead of schedule! I think I always try to read a bunch in the first few months, just to get that little bit of cushion in case of reading slumps. So a very good start to 2025.

GoodReads Awards Challenge: My goal was to read all 14 of the winners of 2024’s GoodReads Choice Awards. I have so far read nothing towards this goal, but that’s okay. Still plenty of time (famous last words, I know).

Complete the Series Challenge: My goal was to complete 7 series that I have not finished (you can see my list here). I definitely finished one series, the Fallen series by Lauren Kate, and I also technically finished a second one with the Noumena series by Lindsay Ellis. I say technically because that series is not itself complete (I thought it was, my mistake). I have read all the books currently out though, so it will come off of this list and move down to the list I have of series where I’m waiting for the next book. BUT, for the purposes of this challenge, I have completed what I can, and therefore can say I have completed 2 of 7 series so far.

That was a lot of probably unnecessary explanation, but there you go.

Blog Updates

Here’s a little secret. Since I had fallen off blogging through the holidays and I knew January was going to be a much quieter month, I set a goal for myself to post every day. I didn’t quite make it, but I did very nearly catch up on a bunch of old reviews and get reviews up for everything I’d read so far in January (except for Apostles of Mercy, but I only just finished it – the review is coming soon). Here’s the breakdown:

• Month/Year in Review: 2 posts
• 2025 Challenges: 1 post
• Audio Round Up: 1 post
• Teaser/Top Ten Tuesday: 4 posts
• WWW Wednesday: 4 posts
• Book Blogger Hop: 4 posts
• Reviews: 12 posts!!!!

That’s 28 posts out of 31 days in January. Got to be a new record for me. I am not planning on keeping up that pace going forward though. My current plan is to post Monday through Friday, with occasional weekend posts. Might bring back Sunday Posts too, depending on how I feel (I actually completely forgot about doing those in January – they might have pushed me over the top).

Overall, January was a good month for me, both reading-wise, blogging-wise and otherwise. I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out.

Categories: Month in Review

Tags: books, Month in Review