Well, once again December has proved to be a mammoth month of reading for me. Nothing like the end of the year coming on to spur on my reading as I try for some outrageous goal of number of books read. This month I finished a whopping 24 books! 14 of those were speculative fiction or some combination of romance and spec fic or mystery and spec fic (I think 9 were actually SFF genre). Two books were graphic novels and a lot of the books were on the shorter side (I think at least two were actual novellas) so that really helped me get through so many. I can’t believe I read so many books this past month, especially because it feels like I spent most of the month reading Angel Mage.

Favorite Reads of the Month:

Looking back on the month there were definitely a couple of standouts for me.

• Desdemona and the Deep by C.S.E. Cooney — This was such a weird and lovely novella of the fae. It’s exactly my type of weird and I loved the prose.
• A Beginning at the End by Mike Chen — I am beginning to realize that my new favorite subgenre is hopeful post-apocalyptic. I love stories about people and how we can be good to each other even in the face of the worst of circumstances. This was such a lovely read. It comes out in January so be sure to look out for it.

December’s Book Reviews:

Still slightly below average in my review output this past month–I like to be at two a week but it just didn’t happen this month with all the year end posts going on and also I just haven’t felt in the ‘review’ spirit lately? It takes a lot to think about what you want to say about a book sometimes! Anywho. Seven reviews were published this past month.

• City of Lies by Sam Hawke – 4/5 stars
• The Infinite Noise by Lauren Shippen – 4/5 stars
• Dark Age by Pierce Brown – 5/5 stars
• Desdemona and the Deep by C.S.E. Cooney – 5/5 stars
• Spin the Dawn by Elizabeth Lim – 4/5 stars
• A Beginning at the End by Mike Chen – 5/5 stars
• Angel Mage by Garth Nix – 3//5 stars

Other Posts:

Well, because it was December and it’s always a huge wrap up month not only for the quarter but the end of the year, there were a TON of miscellaneous posts. Here they are in case you missed any.

• Autumn TBR – Final Update
• Favorite Reads of 2019:  Part One
• 2020 Reading Goals and Other Bookish Plans
• 2019 Audiobook Challenge – Final Update
• Favorite Reads of 2019:  Part Two
• Books I Missed Getting to in 2019 – The Start of a 2020 TBR Pile
• Favorite Reads of 2019:  Part Three
• Anticipated Book Releases of 2020
• Favorite Covers of 2019
• Favorite Reads of 2019:  Part Four – Best of the Best
• 2019 Recap – A Year in Blogging

Plans for January:

First let’s see how I did with December’s plans.

• Finish Cataloging project and finalize 2020 reading plans – CHECK
• Continue with The Hanged Man promo event leading up to its December 17th release (so excited!) – I admit I sort of petered out with this halfway through the month, but I do still have a review of The Hanged Man in the works.
• I have 3-4 books for reveiw to read (maybe one more if I get approved for the other ARC I requested) – I finished three review books, one more to go but that will slide into Jan.
• Work on lots of end of year posts, some of which will involve updating spreadsheets to gather reading stats (so I guess I have to do that too) – DONE, except I do still have some things to do with one of my spreadsheets but I can work on that tomorrow. 🙂
• Read, read like the wind, because 2020 will be here before we know it! – Think I pretty much smashed this even though I didn’t get to all the books I had originally planned, I still read a lot!

I haven’t really come up with an official TBR or plan for January. For now I think I plan to keep things pretty chill. If I don’t get to a lot of books that’s probably okay as I have a ton of reviews I’m behind on so I can always catch up on those and post them. There are a few books I want to get to (one eARC I have from Netgalley that is due soon, and there’s at least one other new release I’m super excited for) but other than that I might just start on my 2020 goal of digging into my TBR. The pile in the living room is overflowing and something needs to be done. I also have some library books out that will probably be due in the next month and a half so I should make them a priority too. Oh. Well, I guess I just formed a plan for January, huh? 🙂

Enjoy your NYE everyone! I’ll see you all next year!