Mid Year Book Freak Out Tag: 2024

Books Featured:
House of Flame and Shadow
Gild
Spark of the Everflame
When the Moon Hatched
Ruthless Vows
Throne of Glass
A Darker Shade of Magic

See this on Video: HERE

Videos Mentioned:
Pre-Orders that Flopped: HERE
Ruthless Vows Honest Book Review: HERE
When the Moon Hatched: HERE


BookToker Mentioned: https://www.tiktok.com/@jaidreads

Here is my mid year check in for 2024 books.

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Transcript

Charity (00:00.206)
Welcome back, Readers! It is the 6 month check -in. Or they call it the mid -year check -in or something like that. I've always done this on Bookstagram, but I decided, obviously, to do it on my BookTube channel and I love stats. I like seeing my progress. I like seeing how I'm doing. I love seeing numbers. I'm an Excel, sheet type of girl and I love the numbers. So, I'm going to share those numbers with you.

Alright, before I dive into today's video, I am excited to have you join me. If you're new here, definitely click the like and subscribe button. I would love for you to join my introverted shenanigans. When you just click that simple like subscribe button, all the magical fairies of the algorithm helps me with this channel. And getting in front of readers just like you to share my introverted self of fantasy books. So yeah, thank you for doing that.

When I restarted doing my journey of reading, in 2019, I definitely tracked my reading. I loved reading, especially when I got introduced to Goodreads. I was just fascinated by the numbers. And of course, Goodreads doesn't exactly offer the best stats when it comes to your reading stats. If you look at it, it's not the most...

high tech and pleasing to the eye stats. So I did my journey to find more stats or at least like things that can, at least things that can like give me the numbers that will make it fun for me. So I created my own Excel sheet. I love that I have all kinds of different stats that marks my reading and then I discover Story Graph, which is a beautiful place to find your stats for reading every single day, every month.

and they just introduce some new features on the app if you actually want to go take a look. Storygraph is independently owned, so I like that. I like how it just supports my weirdness for the stats of reading. So, anywho, let me get into it. If you, let me know in the comments below how you like to track your stats because I'm always up for finding new ways to do it. I am a nerd. I love it. I embrace it, so.

Charity (02:20.782)
Yeah, let me know below. My total number of books read so far is 76 books. My total pages read is 30 ,746 pages and on average I read a day is 174 pages a day. And you'll check in the graphs above or beside me from Storygraph. I tend to definitely lean towards the fantasy genre.

Of course, this is a fantasy book channel. And then you can also see that romance is my second option I technically lean on in Young Adult, which is surprising to me to have so many Young Adult books that I've read. I don't know how it technically gets categorized. I tend to lean towards adult fantasy romances or adult fantasy. So me picking up Young Adult makes me wonder if things are getting categorized incorrectly, but...

I can't spend all day on that. On my own personal graph, I have like most of the genre that I read is obviously fantasy and it's about 55 % of the books that I read. Obviously, I love fantasy, fantasy is my heart, so that graph is not gonna change. What I also like to keep track is my formats. Does it prevalent to anything that I do these days?

No, I just like to know what I gravitate towards and it looks like paperback is my main format. Yeah, I know there's technically physical copies, audiobooks, and ebooks, but I personally like to separate paperbacks and hardbacks for some reason. I don't know why, but it's my quirk. I'm gonna live by it. But I've noticed that through this and through my reading preferences over time, I do prefer a paperback book. I love...

That I don't like how hardback cover, especially the thick books, give you hand cramps. And I just like the feel of a paperback book. I have recently developed that opinion and I'm excited about that. So of course, according to my percentages, 43 % is paperback, 26 % is eBooks, 8 % is audiobooks and 22 % is hardcover. So, and just to do some random stats.

Charity (04:46.575)
is that it takes me on average about 10 days to read each book. The average page length that I read is about 405 pages. I listen to audiobooks nine days, four hours and 27 minutes worth of audiobooks. That's a lot. Nine days so far. And on average, I read about 5 ,124 pages a month and I read about 13 books a month.

This is a significantly a lot less than last year. I was definitely reading a lot more but because I've You know, I think I've gotten a lot busier with my real -life job and obviously balancing a book to channel and Previously my podcast that I was kind of I've cut back quite a bit in reading and unfortunately this year, too I really got sucked up in social media like the bookstagram and everything. I got introduced a book talk and

I just, I was spending majority of my time on those apps just being sucked away on like the requirements on, you know, engagement groups and everything. And instead of spending like two hours reading, I would spend two hours on social media. That's how unhealthy I was. So I think in the last month and a half, I actually cut back drastically. Like I spend maybe no more than 30 minutes.

a day on these apps and it made a big difference to me mentally and I noticed that I'm reading a lot more and I'm enjoying these books more and another thing too is that I'm taking my time a little bit more on it even though I'm reading more books I'm taking my time in soaking up the material and what is happening and if I'm confused about something or a detail I would just go back to it. So I'm enjoying the process now that I cut back social media.

I typically read books between 2020 and 2023 just because that's the books that I've been gravitating towards. If it's early 2000s or something, I don't normally gravitate towards it. It's a lot of the new published books that I've noticed that I've been like, all right, let me hone in and read those. And I'm very proud of this. 46 % of what I read is indie authors. I wanted a goal in the beginning of the year to read more than 50 % of the books that I have.

Charity (07:08.046)
indie authors, so 46 % is pretty good for halfway down the year. I'm gonna try to raise it up just a little bit more just to see if I can get that. And a little higher because I love, I've just been finding that I've been enjoying these indie authors books and they've been coming out with so many good ones lately that I just, ugh, I feel so overwhelmed with all the good books that are coming out lately by indie authors and whew, okay, so yeah, hopefully I'll get them all.

So my average rating is 3 .76. Normally in the past I would average well over 4 .0, but I just, I haven't been so like freely giving out five or four stars. And I've been telling myself it's okay to give three stars or two or one star if I didn't like the book or I DNF'd it because I just have to be honest with my opinions and I don't wanna feel like I'm giving out.

these high raking ratings just because I just, I'm like worried about hurting people's feelings and in theory, yes, I do try to make sure I rate it fairly, but I have just been being more honest with my ratings. So that is reflecting in it and I'm trying to not be too picky. It's like a good, a balanced, like a.

like a seesaw effect for me. I can tend to lean too heavily on one way or too heavily this way. So I'm trying to find a good way to meet in the middle on my rating system. So I'm still working on that, how I rate. So I get up so far, I gave about 21 books of five stars, 31 books, four stars, 13 books, three stars, seven books, two stars and four books, one star.

So the longest book that I've ever read is House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J Maas and that was 848 pages and if you know Ironflame kind of competed with that on the longest book I ever felt like I read I know Ironflame beats word count, the House of Flame and Shadow beats page number and they were both like really daunting and was not my favorite books. I

Charity (09:20.494)
I'll put the link above and in the description about my pre -order books that I was kind of disappointed in and both of those books were on my list of just disappointed books that I was really anticipating and it just flopped for me. And then the shortest books, I read a lot of non -fiction books too as well. I like self -help, you know, religion and things like that. And I'm not gonna list those books because purely on this channel I focus on fiction, fantasy.

The shortest book I ever read was Call of the Dragon by Jasmine Walt and that was 243 pages long. So my favorite books I would say is Guild by Raven Kennedy. That one's a recent one for me. I was very surprised at how much I liked it. It was definitely not the gooey, feely, romanticy books that I've been reading lately. So, and it left me kind of in a shocker moment at the very end. And it's not very often, too often.

that I just sit there and cannot stop thinking about, you know, this book. I gave it a four star, but I like, because there was some con - there were some things that was a little questionable that I, I wonder if it should have put in there. If you read it, you know what I mean. I liked it. I liked the, the female main character not being this like your normal like bad -ass character. She's literally like comfortable and taking advantage of in her life. And she's rising to just -

to defend herself and to fight for herself. So I really liked that character development. So I ordered book two right away. So, okay. And Spark of the Everflame by Pen Cole. That's a beautiful phenomenon. I love that book. She is a fantasy indie author and it's such a well done book. And each book, she kind of leaves you on a cliffhanger and book four should be published at the end of July. Hopefully.

but I'm kind of trying to space it out, the third book with the fourth book, because I don't want to read the third book, have a cliffhanger, and then just sit here for a long time wondering what's going to happen next. So that's what I'm doing. And then When the Moon Hatched by Sarah A. Parker, that one was really good. It was a good mixture of like a kind of a...

Charity (11:32.238)
epic fantasy and a romantic all in one book and I really like that and I like how it ended so I love it when there's just that unknown of what's gonna happen next with fantasy books so that one was very good and Dark Shores and Stolen Songbird by Danielle Jensen I am a Danielle Jensen fan these were her two earlier works and I really liked them just because

Stolen stongbird it has to do with trolls and that's just not a normal mythical creature that you deal with on it on a regular basis and Dark Shores has to do with pirates so I like those books just because fae and you know vampires I would say the second is probably the ones that are used the most in Romanticie and fantasy these days so when I read those it was just so refreshing to read something different that

I was like, yes, this is great. So I got the books. I can't wait to continue those series. So the most surprising reads for me is When the Moon Hatched by Sarah A. Parker. I did get an amazing opportunity to interview her. So definitely check that out. But oddly enough, I did see that book a few times. I don't know, I remember seeing the cover and then I went to go check the synopsis and I'm like, eeh, I didn't put it on my TBR list. Usually I at least put things on my TBR list on Goodreads.

But I was just like, no, I'm not interested in it. I don't care for it, whatever. So when Avon Books actually approached me to review her book, if they gave me a copy, I was like, okay, fine then, I'll give it a try. Because I was just like, I don't know why, but I just still was like, man, this is... And then when it came in the mail, it's like this big, chunky book, and I'm just like, what did I get myself into?

And then when I read and of course the glossary can like make or break somebody if you don't know About what to do with it, and I was like this is stupid. Why did I do this? The glossary almost like made me want to quit you know so I was like okay fine, and I'll skip the glossary But I'll read the book and if I need help with something I'll refer to the glossary, and I'm so glad I did that because it's easily became a really good book

Charity (13:50.51)
I like that book because also it's a very easy read even though it's like 700 pages it reads very fast because it's not like tight small lettering it's very wide and it's a big it's kind of larger print than normal so I thought it was a very easy read and I loved it so I highly recommend that book if you get a chance to read it you know with your long TBR that seems to be endless and of course Guild by Raven Kennedy you know I heard it had like

like 3 .6 rating on Goodreads and a lot of people have mixed feelings about that book and then when you start reading it you're just like, crap, what am I getting myself into? I was, like if you read it, like I said, you know, you know, when you first read it, it's just like, holy crap, did that just happen? I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna like this, this is a little too much and so I continue to read it anyways. I just fell in love with the story. I think it was great.

It's not a happy ending kind of thing. It's just, yeah. That was one of my most surprising reads. So my disappointing reads. I did have quite a bit. Like I said, I had a massive pre -order list that I wanted to read and when I read them, they were so vastly disappointing. And the biggest one was for me was Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross. I love the first book, Divine Rivals. I...

It was so romantic, so the tale of time. And then the second one, it just fell flat. I just felt like there could have been three books in the story. Roman and Iris could have spent more time together. And instead, Roman spent a lot of his time not remembering Iris and things like that because of the amnesia or whatever. It just seemed like the solution to the problem to end Dacra was really quick.

and I felt like that was anticlimactic to the whole story because there was this big intense build up in Divine Rivals and it just like deflated like a balloon to me. So I was a little disappointed. I would recommend still people reading it because you don't know if you'll like it or not. I just, that one just kind of fell flat. And then another one was A Curse for True Love by Stephanie Garber. Again, it's like it...

Charity (16:11.118)
The second book, The Ballad of Never After, kind of they were together, Jax and Evangeline was together quite a bit. And they were separated and she had Amnesia and they were hardly with each other. You barely got to see Jax in the book and it just to me was anticlimactic. It was disappointing that there wasn't that much time together. This big epic budding romance kind of just didn't carry through the way I was hoping it would. Yeah, that was a big

That was a big let down for me. So my books that I DNF'd was Call of the Dragons by Jasmine Walt. Yes, that is technically one of my shortest books I read, but I didn't finish it all the way because it was advertised as an adult book and this main character was in her 20s, like mid -20s or something like that, but it came across very young, a young adult book. I just didn't really care for that kind of tone reading that.

I can see the appeal and to some people might be a really good book for people because it was a lot of creativity and with the dragons everything but it just wasn't for me. And Draw Back the Moon by PC Cast, that was an arc that was given to me and that was one of the another disappointment because I love that series that they wrote. So PC Cast and Kristin Cast, they wrote the House of Nights series and really long. I think it has 12 books in it. To me it was like

Overdrawns, okay, but it was still good. But then when you read the drawback the moon I personally felt like it was a little over the place It had a lot of similarities to Harry Potter I love Harry Potter But when I was kind of feeling like I was looking into the mirror of that scenario then I was kind of like turned off by it and Then I just had a hard time connecting to the male main character of the story. It felt like

I was diving into the girl's point of view and then when it got to his, I just felt like I was reading a cardboard box and I just wasn't really connecting. And there was a lot of environment descriptions, building descriptions, and there was a lot of dialogue with that and then hardly interactions, a lot of show, not tell, or I don't know how they say that, but it was a little disappointing for me on that one. So the authors that I discovered so far this year is Pencol.

Charity (18:36.91)
Scarlett St. Clair, I am like not loving the smut level in her books, but I do like her storytelling. I like how she writes. I like just the way she tells a story or I've been liking everything that she's written so far. So yeah. LJ Andrews, I am, I've been like eyeing her books, her...

her Instagram for a while and I know she's kind of starting like a spin -off series so I've been wanting to read those but I've been told that you need to read her other Broken Kingdom series so I've been starting with that in like the first book that much but now that I'm getting into the second book and the third book I've been liking it a lot more so yeah and then of course Danielle Jensen she's one of those authors I heard continuously about and then when I finally read the Bridge Kingdom in January

Loved it. Loved the writing style. Loved the way she tells her romanticy and I like how it's usually a little different than the normal. So, my rereads, I don't do a lot of rereads. I feel like I get too impatient to do a reread. I just like, I won't enjoy it. Even though it's my favorite book, I will not enjoy it as much because all I can think about is these books that haven't been read yet. Every once in a while, I do reread.

So I just finished the Selection series, which is a YA dystopian, and it's so corny. And the third book just ended pretty drastically. Like, okay, we're done. Like, you know, but I thought it was really good. It's an easy read. I listened to it on the audiobook and I just enjoyed it. It was just one of those guilty pleasure reads. You just don't think too hard about it. You just enjoy it, right?

Kingdom Keepers by Ridley Pearson. That is a series I read a long time ago. I never finished it, so I'm determined to finish it, this series. It's based on Disney, and it doesn't make sense, but I like it. It's a good guilty pleasure read. I guess the guilty pleasure read's the only rereads I do. And then of course, I'm doing Throwing a Glass by Sarah J. Maas. I am slowly getting through those, and...

Charity (20:51.246)
I am enjoying that. I'm liking it a lot more than I did The Court of Thorn and Roses, but I haven't read Court of Mist and Fury yet. And that one's been like the the romantic of romanticies to me, so I'm a little afraid to dive into it and not like it as much as I used to. I want to read that book again, but I'm so impatient that I don't want to read it. But I don't want to listen to audiobook because I reread it again as if it was my first time because it's been so long since I read it. So, conundrum.

So my reading challenges, I don't do too many. I think the only reading challenges I do is literally the Goodreads challenge. And that is how many books you read in the year. And I do that on Storygraph as well. And it's 76 books out of 150, which puts me four books ahead on my goal. I do have two.

challenges, TBR challenge that I have on my blog and on Storygraph. I'll put those links in the description as well. Definitely check those out. I'm also going to, after this video, in this video description, I will be releasing one more challenge to finish out this year strong. So it's like you do a TBR pick from each month to the end of the year. So definitely look that up because that one's kind of fun. I'm actually gonna think about doing that too as well.

So book recommendations, definitely Spark of the Everflame, over the top, Spark of the Everflame. I'm gonna put this book talker that I follow on a regular basis. I bought the book because of her and then I put it on my shelf for a few months and then I kept seeing her talk about the Spark of the Everflame series and I was like, okay, I'll finally do it. And then I'm like, why didn't I do this sooner? And I actually thanked her for it because it was amazing and I love how she...

Described the book to me and convinced me through her enthusiasm to read the book and I'm glad I did. Alright, so the book series that I completed, it was the big one was Mortal Instruments. I think it took me over three years to finish the Mortal Instruments and by golly I decided to finish it. And I kinda got burned out by the book seven. I don't know, I got tired of Claire. She was annoying. And I got tired of Jace and Claire's like...

Charity (23:06.766)
be with me, no we can't be together, let's do it, no we can't be together, which is so exhausting. And then they changed the bad guy halfway through and he tried to make him evil but he wasn't that evil, he just seemed like crazy and sadistic and I just lost interest through it. I've been holding off on the other series from when I hear those series like The Clockwork Princess and things like that is a lot better so I'm hoping those series will kind of redeem itself.

But yeah, I'm not a big fan of mortal instruments. I'm sorry. I'm not. And I finished Crave, the Crave series by Tracy Wolf. Yeah, I have some opinions about that. I think that should have been four books with a novella. I'm saying it. I firmly believe that. I don't think it should have been like six books. I really don't think so. Reason being because I felt like...

Charm could have been a novella. I think it was interesting to show what it was to be in the shadow realm for Grace and to see Hudson together. I think it's Hudson. Anyways, so I thought it was interesting to see that time and how they developed that relationship in the shadow, spirit world, whatever you want to call it. But I felt like with it being like 600 pages was a little unnecessary and a little overdone.

I don't think it was just too much. And I think if it was like a nice 200 page novella, I think Tracy Wolf would have like delivered that story with such an impact. And I get to see that side of what happened between them. And then of course, Cherish was like as if she's trying really hard to continue the series and to add some more points to the storyline. When I felt like at book four, she could have just ended it. And it was, I think it was well -rounded and I forgot.

The way that she decided to continue on the story, I forgot about that character. I was like, we're talking about this, this is why we're doing a sixth book right now. If I were to like, like unhaul my books, I would do Charm and Charis and keep the rest. I like the rest. Yeah. And then of course I finished Daughter of No World by Carissa Broadbent. I believe it's like, I don't know the series name. Ever struggle with remembering the actual series name instead of just remembering, you know, like

Charity (25:20.782)
I remember the title of the book, the first book, so I call it that series even though it's a totally different series name. Anyways, so yeah, I felt like those were a little bit long, but I love the storytelling. I like the multiple POVs that eventually evolved too, and I just liked how the conflict of the story really evolved in the third book and really came to its conclusion. Really glad I finished it. It took me two years to finish it, but I loved that series.

I don't know if I'll reread it any time soon, but yeah. So my unfinished series of course is Throne of Glass, which is my reread. Dark Shores and Stolen, Songbird by Daniel Jessen. And then one thing that I, one author I just not discovered, she's been around quite a while, but I just finally got decided to read is A Darker Shade of Magic by V .E. Schwab. I do like her writing and it's a little darker than...

I would normally pick up, but I noticed lately that I've been kind of embracing a little bit more of a darker read because I just like conflict. I like conflict. I think conflict really drives a fantasy story and if it's just about like, he doesn't like me, you know, he wants me, but I can't have him, you know, sometimes I kind of get a little tired of those romanticies and this is not technically a romanticy, but I like it because there's a really dark side that's in, it's evil and it's happening and it's

It's good, okay. So, and then the last one is Blood Mercy by Bella Ruff. I really like her take on vampires, and it's like the vampires are actually the good guys in this story. I like it, but the books are pretty hefty. She writes really big books, like to the point where there is two books that are written in two parts because Amazon couldn't...

publish a thick book like that so she had to write in two books and they're like four to five, six hundred pages each so yeah so and I know she's recently releasing another book I think it's already released but I love the story so I want to finish it it's just a big book and there's I keep coming across huge books lately alright so my reading habits I mentioned earlier that I'm really loving paperback books I love

Charity (27:44.462)
waking up early in the morning with a cup of coffee and reading by my window in the mornings as the sun is coming up in the quietness of the morning and seeing people go to work in the morning and I just read. I just love reading it. It's quiet. Love it. And then I'm noticing that if there's a particular big book that I need to tackle, especially for YouTube or for some kind of arc or...

not art, but just in general I'm trying to get through it and I know that I'm struggling through it. I actually get the book in ebook or I get it from Kindle Eliminate or I borrow it from a library. And I noticed that I was able to get through the big book, like a six, 700 page book, a lot faster and a lot easier because it's just, like I don't know, it's something about a Kindle that you're not monitoring your pages and before you know it you get through 10 chapters and you're like, I couldn't do that while I was in my reading chair.

So I've been finding that has been such a big help. That's a tip if you want, if you're trying to get through books, like your physical books a little bit quicker is to get it in an ebook and try to read it that way as well. And sometimes I do like listen to my physical books on audiobook, but there has been times I noticed this.

that if I listen to an audiobook and I'm not jiving with the narrator, I would immediately, okay, I'm not doing it. Or if I notice that I want to experience the magic in a physical book, I will stop the audiobook, return the book to the library, and then reserve it for the physical book experience. I'm very, pretty serious about that. I just, I'm jiving with my vibes. So let me know.

in the comments below if you have a fantasy or a romantic that you absolutely would recommend that I read based on some of the books I gave you. I would love to hear it. I'm always wanting to find new books, so I love to hear your suggestions. Let me know below. So the upcoming reads that I have was the Plated Prisoner series. I'm very sold on the series, and so I've already got book two and I'm gonna read it. I wanna finish the series. I definitely wanna increase my indie authors.

Charity (29:55.374)
I find that I have been enjoying what they've been writing and I want to support them. So that's what I want to do. And obviously my big big goal is to read a lot more of my physical copies of books. Now that said, I've been kind of embracing like, look, I'm not going to read all of them fast enough. So I'm going to, I'm going to buy books that I'm really interested in so I can keep reading. And yeah, I, I'm excited about my reading journey. I love my stats.

Let me know some of your favorite stats and let me know how much you read so far this year. I'd love to hear it. I'd love to celebrate with you. All right, well, thank you for joining me, readers. Bye.