Blog Posts / Wrap-Ups

Monthly Wrap-Up: April 2022

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Hello, everyone! How is it already May? April was a pretty good month. The first week or so I was still recovering from oral surgery, but I’m grateful there were no complications. I’m feeling better now and am all healed up. I also went on a short vacation over the Easter holiday, which was nice. I haven’t left the house much since COVID started. So, it was nice to have a change of scenery even if it was only for a few days. Unsurprisingly, the other major thing that happened this month was that I read A LOT. I participated in two readathons and ended up reading even more than usual. Scroll below to see all the details!

Magical Readathon Results

Padwin finished all seven of his required classes this month even though the books for each class changed significantly from the original TBR. Regardless, he’s well on his way to becoming a Dream Walker. He also completed five additional quests over the course of the month, which got him enough points to bring his Guild Tier total to 150 points. Therefore, he has progressed from an Initiate to an Assistant in the Mind Walker guild. This means he can count DNFs toward his goals in future semesters at Orilium. I have loved participating in this readathon so far and am already looking forward to the next round in August.

Mythothon Readathon Results & Other Miscellaneous Reading

I also participated in round 6 of Mythothon this month, which was based on Egyptian mythology. I finished five books for this readathon, as required. However, just like the Magical Readathon, most of the books changed quite a bit from my initial TBR. I guess I was just in the mood to mood read in April. lol.

I also read some other books that didn’t count toward either of the two readathons, including my re-read of all the Heartstopper graphic novels. I love those books so much. I’ve never been able to review them because I don’t really want to think critically about them. They are some of the few books I’ve kept just for myself since starting the blog (if that even makes sense given how much I’ve expressed my love for them…lol). Maybe one day I’ll write a post about all the reasons I love them, but today is not that day.

Progress On My 2022 Reading Goals

Goodreads Challenge

So far, I’m still ahead on my goal of 100 books for the year. I read a whopping 21 books in April, which brings my total so far for the year up to 61! I flew past the midpoint of my goal and will probably reach my goal for the year much earlier than anticipated.

NetGalley Progress

I’d like to end the year with at least 50 reviews completed for NetGalley and a feedback ratio of at least 80%. I’ve made some major progress on this goal in April. I met my goal of 50 reviews! In April, I completed 9 reviews for NetGalley, which is the most NetGalley books I’ve ever reviewed in a single month. My ratio also improved to 70%, which is where I was hoping it would be by the end of April. Now I just need to keep it there while trying to steadily increase it to the coveted 80%.

Read More Nonfiction

I didn’t read any nonfiction this month. So, my total nonfiction books still stands at one so far for this year.

Read More Comics

I’ve set the goal of reading all the comics I buy during the week I buy them. So…this still hasn’t been happening. For the second month in a row, I’ve fallen even further behind. I feel like a broken record, but I’m going to try to get caught up before the end of May. I’m not going to stress too much over it, though, because April was actually a pretty light month of comics purchases for me.

#BeatTheBacklog

I’m trying to focus on having a majority of the books I read this year be books I bought, borrowed, or received prior to January 1, 2022. I failed real hard at this one in April. Only half of the books I read this month were published prior to 2022, and only 24% of them were on my TBR prior to January 1.

Finish Some Series

I plan to finish or catch up on the following 5 series by the end of this year:

·  The Broken Earth by N.K. Jemisin

·  Arthurian Saga by Mary Stewart

·  The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune

·  Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling

·  A shit ton of different Shadowhunters books by Cassandra Clare

I didn’t make any progress on this goal during April. I plan to focus more heavily on this goal in the second half of the year, but I do have an ARC of the last book of The Extraordinaries trilogy burning a hole in my Kindle. So, maybe I’ll squeeze it in during May. We’ll see.

April 2022 Reviews

It has been another very busy month for reviews. In total, I completed 4 full-length book reviews, 8 mini book reviews, and 3 micro reviews. This month had the widest range of ratings I’ve given in a while, with the lowest at two stars and the highest being my first ever All Time Favorite inductee. I reviewed the following books:

Blog Posts

This month I scrapped the weekly wrap-ups because I’ve gotten a bit bored with them. It just started feeling super repetitive, and they weren’t fun to write anymore. I did re-start doing First Lines Fridays and Top 5 Tuesdays, though.

I also wrote a blog tour spotlight post, posted my April book haul, and wrote a post about my most anticipated releases of May 2022.

Final Thoughts

Looking back on my TBR for April, I surpassed all my readathon goals despite changing a lot of the books around. I really did enjoy the mood reading, though. I think I’m going to have to do it more often. I also made major progress on some of my bookish goals for the year while tanking some others. Thank you to everyone who has visited, liked, and/or commented on a post. I hope you are all having a great May!

5 thoughts on “Monthly Wrap-Up: April 2022”

    • I really loved it, but I’ve seen a lot of other people say it’s not Schwab’s best work. So, hopefully you’ll like it. It definitely has me excited to read more of Schwab’s books!

      Reply

  2. Well done on getting your Net Galley rating up to 76% and nine books in a month is amazing. I’m sure you’ll hit the 80% in no time!

    Reply

    • Thanks! I’m pretty sure the rating has tanked since the beginning of May when I first drafted the post. lol. I’ve been approved for five new books and only reviewed one so far. Oh well. Slow progress is still progress…

      Reply

      • That happened to me when I reached 80%. NG immediately approved several requests and I was back to 75%😢

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