Tag: monthly wrapup

February Reading Wrap-Up

Posted March 1, 2026 by Nicky in General / 8 Comments

Field of daffodils

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus — Happy St David’s Day! I can’t believe it’s 1st March already, and time for month #2 of my reading wrap-up. For now it’s mostly the same stats and format as last month, but still excited to hear if anyone has any fun ideas for additions.

February in general:

February involved quite a bit of gaming, so a quick shoutout for the new-to-me games I was really loving: Loophole (a fun puzzle game with time travel and tricky paradoxes) and The Chef’s Shift (a typing game that’s also a restaurant management sim). I’ve been trying to do better at getting 100% achievements in the games I pick up and not consigning games to oblivion half played, so I really got stuck into those and got 100% on both, plus a few games I’d been neglecting for a while, like Fossil Corner (a game where you sort fossils, and find fossils matching people’s requests).

My wrist was pretty painful and stiff early in the month, but I kinda figured out why and gave myself a bit of a break, and was able to get back to physio without too many problems. I don’t know if it’s helping, but I’m giving it a bit more time before I go back to the GP, since I know I was (accidentally) doing some stuff that hurt my wrist in the last couple weeks.

I also sorted out my attendance at both my graduations: I’ll be graduating with an MSc in Infectious Diseases from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine at the end of March, and then from the University of London at the end of April. I’m in one of the last few cohorts to do so, since University of London shut down the course and LSHTM decided to keep it going by themselves. It’s kinda nice that I still get to graduate from both, as it means I’m graduating from the same university as my mum did (albeit in different subjects/from different schools, as she’s a doctor).

Alright, now let’s talk about the really important stuff: books!

Reading stats:

StoryGraph reading stats for February 2026: 37 books, 8,660 pages, average rating of 3.61. My top rated reads included Catherine Clarke's A History of England in 25 Poems, Julie Leong's The Keeper of Magical Things, and Amy Coombe's Stay for a Spell. The number of pages I read per day varied all month, but was always 100+. There was a massive uptick on the last day! More reading stats for February 2026: I read 72% fiction, 28% non-fiction, and 76% of my books were under 300 pages long, with 24% between 300 and 500 pages. I read 81% in print and 19% in digital editions, and my top genres were fantasy (21), LGBT (14), manga (12), romance (12) and poetry (10).

Total books read: 37
Total pages read: 8,660
Rereads: 1
ARCs: 6
Series finished/up to date: 2
Books owned pre-2026: 8
Books owned from 2026: 18
Borrowed books: 10

Fiction: 24
Non-fiction: 4
Poetry: 9
Comics, manga, manhwa, etc: 12

I’m ending the month ahead on my yearly reading goal, wooo. One major cause of that was mainlining the manhua adaptation of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. I read the light novel recently, but reading an adaptation is always a little different, and I found it helped bits and pieces of the story come together for me that hadn’t really clicked before. Volume 13 should finish off the story, and is out in March, so I’m looking forward to finishing the series.

I read less non-fiction than I expected, but more poetry. I’m still enjoying exploring more poetry!

Progress on reading goals:

Overall total books read: 68/400 (2 books ahead)
Overall total pages read: 15,966/100,000 (472 pages behind)
Books read from backlog: 21/100
Books owned since 2026 and not yet started: 12/20

Good progress here, really! I was a few books behind (and further behind on pages) until I did a marathon of reading yesterday to finish off my BookSpinBingo card. I actually managed it, finishing nine books in a single day, which was a lot of fun but not something I want to do often, ahaha.

I need to work more on getting the number of books I’ve bought this year and not started doooown, since my graduation this month means a trip to London and therefore to a bunch of bookshops.

Blogging stats:

Views: 13.7k
Visitors: 11.9k
Likes: 353
Comments: 389
Reviews: 28
Other posts: 16

A busy month! I’m not entirely sure why, though I’m sure bots are a part of it. Still, all the numbers are up, including likes and comments, so I don’t think it’s just bots. It’s probably also the fact that I took part in Top Ten Tuesday and added a new weekly meme I participate in (Fantasy with Friends), plus trying to be generally active and add fun blogs to my own RSS feed.

Most viewed posts:

I continue to get a fair bit of traffic to reviews of The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter, which I guess is due to the anime. I wonder if I’ll see more for Heaven Official’s Blessing, given the release of the new short film, though I think the audience for the short films are already pretty locked in and don’t need to read book reviews to know that Hualian invented love…

My own favourite posts:

Posts I loved from elsewhere:

Alright, that’s me for February! Time to go and start on that March reading.

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January Reading Wrap-Up

Posted February 5, 2026 by Nicky in General / 9 Comments

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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