I’ve been trying to do better. I really have. I swear I haven’t been requesting as many books, but I’ve been (luckily) getting approved for most of what I request. So, despite my best efforts, my feedback ratio hasn’t changed much. I’ve been approved for a ton of great new books, including some of my most anticipated releases of the year. I’m pretty excited about it even if it means reading them on a faster schedule to get the reviews done before publication. I read and reviewed five books, and I’ve been approved for eight new books in the last month. I’ve also read two more books whose reviews haven’t been published yet. You can see where I was last month in my most recent check-in post. My feedback ratio thankfully managed to climb one percent to 61%. It went up as far as 63% at one point, but after a few new approvals it dropped back down again. I’ve completed 37 ARC reviews out of the total 53 for which I have been approved. I now have 23 books available to review on my shelf, which is once again the most I’ve ever had at one time.
Today I’m excited to introduce you all to my character for the Magical Readathon. I participated in the novice path of this readathon back in September. I finished the path but didn’t get to the character creation prompts. I’ve been working on them over the last couple months, and everything is finally ready. This is great because there is a Gear Up mini-readathon this week, which will allow me to gear up my character to get ready for class to start at the academy. That’s right. I’m doing a readathon within a readathon. Two of the books I’ve chosen for Trope-ical Readathon will also be used for prompts in this readathon. Without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to Padwin O’Sohkan, one of the newest recruits at Orilium!
Character Description & Background
Mood board I created for the character
Padwin is a young male Iltirian who grew up in the underground cities of Darkmeadow. He has spent most of his life roaming the halls of the Great Underworld Library, where his parents work as researchers cataloguing occult knowledge. Padwin is extremely shy and would consider books to be his closest friends. However, he has always been fascinated by people and often perches in the stacks of the library while in his crow form to watch others as they spend time together. Part of him longs to be included, but he finds others too overwhelming and unpredictable to be worth the effort most of the time. He has decided to leave home for the first time to attend Orilium in order to learn new secrets about magic that are available only to those who join one of the guilds. He is nervous about this new adventure, especially being above ground for the first time and the necessity of meeting so many new people, but he is also excited to learn new things, which is something he is passionate about. He hopes his time spent learning in the library and honing his shapeshifting will give him an advantage in his new studies.
Padwin recently survived the journey through the novice path. In doing so, he showed considerable skill and was invited to join the Mind Walkers guild. He’s pleased with his guild because he knows they can help foster his interests in psychology, while also allowing him seclusion and space when he needs it. He is particularly interested in learning how to access alternate planes of existence to escape to when needed where he can ponder the great questions of existence.
The books I read while creating Padwin’s character are listed below:
Background
Urban: Book set in a city or town
Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham
Province
Darkmeadow: Read a dark academia
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Heritage
Iltirian: Book with a crow on cover or title, or a red cover
Obsidian by Sarah Daley
Gear Up Readathon TBR
Now that Padwin has made it to Orilium, he must get his supplies before classes start and choose the gift he would like to begin learning from his guild. He has chosen to wield a staff as his conduit for magic. He also desires access the astral plane so that he can learn how to easily retreat to a safe space when he needs to get away.
The books I plan to read this week to help Padwin gear up are listed below:
Conduit
Staff: Book from a series
The Hollow Hills by Mary Stewart
Legacy Gift
Astral Plane: Read a book set in a different world than ours
Forestborn by Elayne Audrey Becker
Are you participating in Magical Readathon? If so, leave a link to your character in the comments below!
Oops! This post was meant for yesterday, but I didn’t get it finished because I was being super lazy. lol. It was cold, and I spent the day curled up under a blanket with a book. I never opened my computer once, which was actually kind of nice. So, here it is a day late!
After reading If This Gets Out last year, I immediately wanted to read more books by Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich. So, I went out and bought a couple books off their back lists. I finally got around to reading one of them, Perfect on Paper by Sophie Gonzales, as part of Trope-ical Readathon for the love triangle challenge. What did I think of it? Read on to find out! 🙂
I cannot believe it has been one year since my very first blog post. So much has changed in my life since then. It’s honestly a bit hard to fathom. When I started the blog, I was desperately searching for some type of constructive, meaningful activity because I’d recently quit grad school and was only working a few hours a week. I had lots of free time and felt directionless for the first time in a long time. Blogging has helped to fill that hole and helped quite a bit with the isolation of the pandemic, as well. So, I’m really grateful for the role it has played in keeping me sane over the last year!
I’ve accomplished a lot with my blog during the last year. I published 320 blog posts and reviewed over 140 books! I’ve found some great new authors, both indie and traditional, that I now love to read, and I’ve met so many other book bloggers whose posts I always look forward to reading. I’m happy with what I’ve managed to create on my little slice of the internet, and I hope those who visit it enjoy the content that I’ve loved writing.
As for stats, I’ve had almost exactly 9000 views in the last year with over 4000 visitors. There have been over 500 comments and 4000 likes on my posts. Never in my wildest imaginings would I have ever expected so much interaction with my thoughts about books. I’m super grateful for it and appreciate every person who has visited, commented, liked, and subscribed/followed.
In looking toward the future, I’m not sure what, if anything, I plan to change. I’m always looking for ways to improve the blog, but there’s nothing specific right now that I plan to do differently. I’ve changed a lot of things about the blog over the last year (looks, types of posts, etc.), though. So, I’m sure some stuff will change. If there’s anything in particular you’d like to see more or less of in the future, feel free to leave some suggestions down in the comments!
Once again, thanks for a great year! I’m looking forward to many more years of great reading and interacting with you all. Now let’s look at some highlights from the past year!
Hello, everyone! I know we are already a week into March, but I still haven’t wrapped up my February yet. So, here we go… Better late than never! February is always the month of birthdays, mine and both my parents. This meant lots of cake, as well as some new books. Other than all the celebrations, it was a pretty quiet month filled with dreary weather and lots of reading. Not a whole lot has changed in my daily routine. So, despite getting a year older, everything is still rolling on as usual.
Hello, everyone! Today I’m reviewing Founder’s Mercy by Owen Lach, a soon-to-be published queer sci-fi book that sets the stage for an interesting series to follow.
Happy Saturday, everyone! We’ve reached the end of another week. I hope it has gone well for you all. Today I’ll once again be wrapping up my my reading progress, comic book reading, and my blog posts from the past week.
Today I’m reviewing The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan, which is the second book of The Wheel of Time series. I enjoyed this one a bit more than the first book in the series, and I’m looking forward to continuing with the other books in the future.
