firewhiskeyreader

A Decade of Reading In Review

I really wanted to make a list of my best books of the decade, but the thing is, that’s impossible. I was watching one of Kayla’s (booksandlala) videos where she talked about recency bias and also that as she’s gotten older, she’s started reading books that are better tailored for her. They’re also more diverse. And that’s kind of how I felt looking back at the early 2010s because (a) the books I read then were very white AND I was in college so I read a lot of free books on iBooks, (b) my tastes have changed so very much, and (c) I really think I’m reading better books now. So let’s talk about my reading journey in the last decade. Also, apologies in advance, but I’m not hyperlinking the majority of these books because it would take such a long time and I’m not feeling up to it today.

2019 Surprises & Disappointments

2019 delivered a lot to the world, both good and bad. For me, in my reading life, I read a lot and there were some books that caught me off guard by how much I loved them and books that I thought I would love that just really disappointed me. I wanted to share a list with you of some of my biggest surprises and those disappointments, just to sort of reflect on how well or not well I know what I should like at this stage in my reading life.

navy blue background with gold dots and text that reads 2019 Surprises and Disappointments — 2019 Surprises and Disappointments

January Wrap Up, Part One

The first part of January also contained Smutathon, so I’m not going to talk in detail about the books I read for that Readathon here and will instead direct you to my wrap up post. So what you are going to see are the books I read from January 1-3 and the 12-15th. I had a sort of half-hearted resolution to read less this year, but I have to say, I’m not sure that’s going to work out well.

Best Non-Romance Reads of 2019

In creating this list, I discovered that while I’ve been very conscious of my overall diversification of my reading, I’ve slacked on ensuring that diversity across genres so unfortunately for my reading, this list leans heavily toward white authors and likely titles you’ve heard of numerous times. The truth is that I don’t read a ton of non-romance titles, but I do still read enough that making a list like this feels important to me. And I do love each of these books so I hope, despite the limitations, that you’ll find some books to love on this list too. And please feel free to leave me recommendations for urban fantasy by authors of color because right now I’m really into that genre. (It will need to have a romantic subplot, though.)

Best Romances I Read in 2019

This list contains the best romances I read in 2019 that were not released in 2019. I read 228 romance novels and 59 were 2019 releases so that leaves… 169 romance novels that I read that were not published in 2019. Which is a whole lot of books. So narrowing this category down to ten? Yeah, it was a challenge, but I think I’ve got it.

Smutathon Wrap Up

All in all, I would say my reading this week was quite successful. I didn’t get to every book on my TBR and without doubling up didn’t quite clear the BINGO board, but I found a few books that I absolutely adored and finished up my February ARC reading! So let’s get into it. I’m reviewing these in the order I completed them this week rather than following the BINGO board, just as a heads up.

2019 in Review

I’m pulling prompts for this from a whole bunch of places, which is a little annoying because I swear a couple years ago, I had a specific person’s blog post that I based my post off of, but whatever. Here we are, my post where I give you more statistics than you probably care to know and answer some other fun questions. Let’s get started!

Quarterly Favorites: Fall 2019

I know you’ve already gotten a preview at some of these titles thanks to my Top Ten Releases of 2019, but I’m still so excited to share with you my favorites from the final three months of 2019 in their own post. This list was actually incredibly hard to make and caused me to realize that I completely spaced on including The Kingmaker or Hook Shot on my best of 2019 list! An oversight and I’m very sorry, but fortunately, I make a lot of lists. So basically, what I’m saying is, don’t ignore my quarterly favorites just because I have so many other year end posts coming your way.

December Wrap Up, Part Two

And that’s another year in the books. How weird. I’ve loved sharing with you my reads this year and I’m excited to do that again today with my last many reads of December. I hope you’ll enjoy the myriad of posts coming your way wrapping up my end of the year posts and the other fun posts I have. But before we get to those, here are the final books I read in 2019.

Smutathon TBR

I know I say this every time, but I still don’t like that the name of this readathon is Smutathon. Now, setting that aside, I have a ton of books to read in January so I’m really excited to kickstart my reading with a readathon from January 4th-January 11th that will help me get through many of the books on my TBR. This readathon is hosted by Riley at Riley Marie and Lainey at gingerreadslainey. This year, the hosts created this really pretty 2020 themed Bingo board and there are nine prompts. I have books on my TBR for six of the nine. I don’t think I’m going to add any more books to the list, if anything, I’ll just hope some of the books allow me to double up. With that said, let’s get into the list!