Much like last week, I’m feeling some kind of way lately, which is going to resolve itself next week in a summer break, but, until then, we’re doing another tag! Once again, thank you to Zezee with Books for their amazing collection of book tags, which has kept me afloat these past couple of weeks. This was originally created by Rincey Reads on Youtube, and, much like Zezee, I’m not going to go quite ten years back. That would be 2011, which was my second year of college, and I truly cannot remember what I read other than Maggie Stiefvater books? Thus, I’m going just two years in the future to 2013, when I first started tracking on Goodreads. I only read 30 books that year, so it’s very slim pickings, but at least it’s something! Also, this is probably a tag meant to be done at the end of the year, but oh well.
What was your favorite book in 2013?
Like I said, I only read 30 books in 2013, five of those were rereads, and a solid half were school books, so this is going to be interesting. However, I do think I could easily pick a book for this because ya girl binge read the entire The Mortal Instruments series over the course of two months, so obviously my favorite book of 2013 was City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare. (Guys, it’s not, it’s so not, but one of the books I read in 2013 was Beautiful Creatures, several were Ellen Hopkins, and the rest was poetry, so this is not a lot to choose from.) Although, I’m definitely lying because I also read Anam Cara by John O’Donohue, and that book has stuck with me as guiding light since then.
What is your favorite book of 2021?
Oh gosh, this is actually quite hard, and I did answer this recently with three books, so I’m going to try to narrow it down a bit more. Right now, I definitely don’t have a top favorite of the year, and even the three I did in a recent post were absolutely not my top three that’ll end up on my list at the end of the year, but I’ve just read so many meh books this year that I’m going to go with The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I loved it, and I five-starred it, but it didn’t quite blow me away like I was expecting. It did totally consume me, but not in the way past top favorite reads have, so I’m still keeping a weather eye on my TBR.
What was your least favorite book in 2013?
Well, that’s an easy one. I wasn’t great at picking up books that I knew I would like yet, so I ended up just reading anything that caught my eye on the shelves. I also mostly read for school back in 2013, so many of these are poetry books, which is always hard to rate. I did, however, read Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl, and even baby me knew it was terrible and didn’t continue with the series.
What was your least favorite book in 2021?
Hahahaha, all of them? Okay, I’m going to allow myself two because I’ve read so many shit books this year, but I feel like there’s definitely some I disliked more than the others. I also don’t normally like to call out the books I didn’t like because being negative is just exhausting, but it’s been a rough reading year, and I need some kind of outlet. I truly hated PS I Still Love You by Jenny Han so much that I DNF’d it less than 100 pages from the end because I would rather claw out my own eyes than continue reading about people playing tag for 300 pages. I feel like I shouldn’t list The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer because I know some people will love it, but it was 100% not the book for me, and I wanted to throw it at the wall even before the pointless twist came into play.
What is a book published in 2013 that you still want to read?
How does one even discover this??? Am I just meant to Google “books published in 2013” and peruse endless lists? Nah, sorry, not happening. You might say that I could just look for YA books published in 2013, but I promise you, I don’t want to read any of those.
What is a book published in 2021 you want to get to before 2022?
Oh, so many! I just posted my most anticipated releases for the second half of the year, and I’d love to close out 2021 having read all of my preorders, but that may be a bit of a reach for a goal, so no matter what, the three books that I definitely want to read before the year is over are:
- The Ghosts We Keep by Mason Deaver
- Into the Dying Light by Katy Rose Pool
- Girls of Fate and Fury by Natasha Ngan
None of these are surprises, particularly given how vocal I’ve been about the last two, but if, for some reason, I could only read a top three out of the new releases that I’ve got ready for this year, it would definitely be those three.
What is a genre you used to read a lot of
that you don’t read as much of anymore?
Poetry! I read a lot of poetry in college for two reasons. They offered four different writing courses–fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting, and poetry. We were meant to choose two and take both the intro & advanced courses. I decided to do all four, which meant I ended up taking all eight writing-specific courses that my university offered because duh. If I was already there and my major was creative writing, might as well take advantage of the classes offered. I also interned at Alice James Books, a poetry publishing house that was funded by the school at the time. These two things combined meant that I ended up reading and writing a lot of poetry. Enough that I have half a shelf of it tucked away, but I think it’s safe to say that I’ve read one poetry book this year? And that was only because my sister gave it to me.
What is a new genre you’ve discovered since 2013?
This is going to sound wild, but fantasy. I know! Back in college, the only fantasy I read was Harry Potter and A Song of Ice and Fire. (Ugh, wow, why, that’s an awful combo.) I had it in my head that because I was an adult (ha), I wasn’t allowed to read anything but literary fiction? I’ve talked about this somewhere before, but I really thought that fantasy was not a thing that I could read anymore, that I’d outgrown young adult (not a genre), and that I need to only read serious things. That’s such a bunch of baloney, and I’m so glad that I unstuck my head from my ass because my reading went from 30 books a year to over 100, so.
What is a reading or book habit you are hoping
to leave behind in this decade?
Finishing series, oh my gosh! I never finish series! I read the first book, and then it just waffles on my shelf for two or more years before I decide it’s finally time to pick up the rest of the series, but then I’m so confused about what the hell I’m reading because I’ve been out of the world for so long, and it’s exhaustingggggg. I just want to read series all together. When I pick up a first book, if the second and/or third one is out, I want to also read those following it. I am sick to death of not finishing series.
Lol @ me not even subtlety calling myself out over The Golem’s Eye by Jonathan Stroud. I WILL READ IT, DAMN IT!
What is a new reading goal or habit you want
to create in the upcoming decade?
Although I am really happy with where I’m at in my reading and the habits I do have, I’d like to stop trying to read outside of what I enjoy. I know this is literally the opposite of what every single person ever says because people always want to expand their reading horizons, but I’m really all set. It’s like getting Thai food. I know that I love massaman curry, but sometimes I get panang because I feel pressured by the world to try new things, or sometimes I look outside the curry menu entirely, but why. I know I like massaman curry, and it makes me happy every time, and when I do eat panang curry, I’m sad it’s not massaman. And while I have had some success over the years in reading books outside of what I know I love, it’s very rare. Y’all will point at The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society and go SEE! SEE! You like literary fiction! And it’s just not true. I keep trying to pretend I do, and there are a handful of books that make it past me yawning myself half to death, but most of them are just not my thing, and the same goes for Stephen King and non-astronaut nonfiction and about half of YA contemporary. I know what I like, and I’d like to stop pretending I’m going to expand more than that because I’m almost always disappointed.
Mary and the Words 
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