Tag: monthly wrapup

January Reading Wrap-Up

Posted February 5, 2026 by Nicky in General / 1 Comment

February reading has started, but everyone’s fun monthly wrap-up posts have convinced me to take a moment to reflect on my January reading and blogging!

January in general:

January started out busy, which is what usually happens when you do customer support for a company that helps people stick to their goals. So many people have resolutions! Mid-January I had a big push work-wise to get stuff done before having two weeks off, to ensure I didn’t come back to a pile of catch-up work, which was — in retrospect — a little bit overkill, and definitely quite stressful.

My time off was a staycation, and it was pretty good, though I definitely just spent some of it recovering from having been really busy, and still kinda winding down from 2025 (which featured big life events both good and bad, like moving, losing my grandmother, completing my fourth degree, etc). I didn’t do a lot of reading compared to past holidays, especially since I also used the time for various health and dental appointments (blech). After I saw a physiotherapist about my wrist (injured back in August 2025), doing the physio started sapping all my energy, too…

It wasn’t a bad start to the reading year, all the same, as the stats will show!

Reading stats:

Total books read: 31
Total pages read: 7,306
Rereads: 7
ARCs: 2
Series finished: 1
Books owned pre-2026: 13
Books owned from 2026: 6
Borrowed books: 6

Fiction: 24
Non-fiction: 5
Poetry: 2
Comics, manga, manhwa, etc: 14

 StoryGraph reading stats for January 2026: 31 books, 7,307 pages, average rating of 3.23. My top rated reads were T. Kingfisher's Snake-eater, the first volume of Priest's Guardian, and the first volume of the Heaven Official's Blessing manhua, all at four stars. The number of pages I read per day varied all month, but was always 100+. More reading stats for January 2026: I read 77% fiction, 23% non-fiction, and 87% of my books were under 300 pages long, with 13% between 300 and 500 pages. I read 81% in print and 21% in digital editions, and my top genres were fantasy (17), manga (12), LGBT (8), romance (8) and contemporary (4).

I read an average of one book every day, and read at least 100 pages every day, though the amount I read was very up and down, even during my time off! I mostly read fiction, heavy on the comics this month (largely manga and manhwa), but non-fiction continues to be a staple, as ever.

I admit I’m not quite sure if the print/digital stats are right, because I’m not always great at checking the editions…

The borrowed books include books from the library, Kobo Plus, the library’s Comics Plus offering, etc, now also including books from the National Poetry Library. Between that and my local library’s Comics Plus subscription, I feel really spoiled!

Progress on reading goals:

Overall total books read: 31/400
Overall total pages read: 7,306/100,000
Books read from backlog: 13/100
Books owned since 2026 and not yet started: 18/20

Not bad progress so far!

I had a bit of a book-buying spree in January, received a few gift books, and a few ARCs, with only borrowed books being exempt from the total. As a result, I’m on somewhat thin ice with my limit, for being so early in the year. Still, I don’t have plans to go to any bookshops in February, so I’ve definitely got time to catch up.

Blogging stats:

Partly thanks to my little holiday, even with trying to rest an injured wrist I made a lot of blog visits in 2026 so far, which helped make my own blog busy and fun. I’ve been slowly adding favourite blogs to an RSS reader, a couple at a time, trying to get better at keeping up with them — and better at commenting on blogs I like!

Views: 12.2k
Visitors: 11.3k
Likes: 277
Comments: 389
Reviews: 29
Other posts: 15

Most viewed posts:

You can see the influence of the anime adaptation of The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter here, I’d say! I was a bit sad not to see more interest in A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation, which also released an anime version in January… but maybe the new volume of The Other World’s Books’ manga adaptation helped it. It’s still great to see people discovering a series I found super fun. I actually reread the manga myself this month, to orient myself for volume 6!

My own favourite posts:

Next month I hope to highlight some reviews and posts from other blogs that I liked, but I didn’t save links with that in mind this month!

I’ll confess I’m curious whether anyone had a favourite post of mine this month, whether it was a gushing review or a critical one, or one of my posts for Top Ten Tuesday, or… something else? And if there’s something you’d like to see in my monthly wrap-up posts, I’m definitely curious to hear. This month was a random grab-bag of stats and ideas that jumped out at me, but I’m open to adding more, or removing bits people don’t find interesting.

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