Here we go! May already, and the weather here’s been beautiful — you could almost mistake it for summer. But before I really get started on May, let’s wrap up April…
April in general:
The beginning of the month was fairly quiet, but towards the end I got into a bit of a rush, with some busy moments with work stuff and of course the second part of my graduation. My graduation from the University of London was the fanciest ceremony I’ve had, and I had to bow to the deputy vice chancellor as I crossed the stage, which was a new one for me!
Either way, I am now definitely officially an MSc, woooo. Given my track record (now BA Hons, MA, BSc Hons, MSc) you might be asking when I’m going to study next and what it might be, and the answer is that I really don’t know. I’m sure there’ll be something, but I don’t know yet what it will be.
Alongside lots of work stuff, I have still been gaming a-plenty. I’ve barely lifted the lid on the new patch content in Final Fantasy XIV, but my group did complete the third fight of this raid tier this month, which is nice! We’re not the fastest group, but we’ve been faster this tier than last time, and have been making good progress.
As for my casual gaming, April was the month I got into hidden object games, and oh boy, I did not expect to get so hooked. Special shoutouts to the Find All series, Devcats’ games like Devcats‘ A Castle Full of Cats and An Arcade Full of Cats (the latter has a bunch of levels free!), Lost and Found Co. (which is the game that started me on this track), and the adorable Hidden Capybaras with Orange games, with the Spooky Edition being free. I did also get sucked into the world of PowerWash Simulator…
In other words, I’ve been busy with plenty of things other than books. Still, there has been a fair bit of reading too!
Reading stats:
Total books read: 23
Total pages read: 5,078
Rereads: 1
ARCs: 2
Series finished/up to date: 0
Books owned pre-2026: 2
Books owned from 2026: 11
Borrowed books: 10
Fiction: 10
Non-fiction: 7
Poetry: 6
Comics, manga, manhwa, etc: 2
Somewhat fewer books again than March, unfortunately. I’d love to see the numbers go back up again, as getting plenty of reading time tends to be linked with better moods for me. Still, I’m not going to kick myself for not “achieving”: I read for fun, darn it.
Progress on reading goals:
Overall total books read: 116/400 (17 books behind)
Overall total pages read:Â 27,914/100,000 (5,237 pages behind)
Books read from backlog:Â 25/100
Books owned since 2026 and not yet started: 20/20
As expected with my “low” (relative to my usual) book/page counts this month, I’m slipping on the annual goals. This often happens, and I usually read more intensively in the latter months of the year, for some reason.
Blogging stats:
Views: 21.8k
Visitors: 20.7k
Likes: 289
Comments:Â 351
Reviews: 26
Other posts:Â 22
It looks like a huge step up from last month, but I’d bet a significant amount of it is bots, so I’m not sure how reasonable it is to quote these numbers!
Most viewed posts:
- Review – The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish, vol 1 (78 views)
- Review – Heaven Official’s Blessing, vol 3 (70 views)
- Stacking the Shelves 13th September 2014 (61 views)
- Review – Strange Buildings (53 views)
- Top Ten Tuesday: Book Titles That Describe Me (44 views)
Not sure what’s going on with that StS post, but probably bots, let’s be real.
My own favourite posts:
- Top Ten Tuesday: Recent Five-Star Reads
- Let’s Talk Bookish: Casting in Adaptations
- Review – The Library of Ancient Wisdom
- Review – The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy
- Fantasy with Friends: Favourite Subgenres
Stuff I loved from elsewhere:
- From Books, Bones & Buffy: The Geomagician, by Jennifer Mandula – Review, by Tammy
- From Reactor: The Book News Isn’t All Bad, by Molly Templeton
- From Books, Bones & Buffy: JAPANESE GOTHIC by Kylie Lee Baker – Review, by Tammy
- From Books, Bones & Buffy: THE LANGUAGE OF LIARS by S.L. Huang – Review, by Tammy
- From There’s Always Room For One More…: The Mercy of Gods, by imyril
- From The Bibliosanctum: The Geomagician, by Jennifer Mandula, by Mogsy
- From Keira’s Bookmark: [Review] This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews, by Keira
And that, finally, is a wrap — let’s put April to bed.
And given the time (midnight), let’s put me to bed too. Happy weekend!


































