I am officially back to work. Summer vacation has ended, which means things will be slowing down compared to how much I’ve been reading and writing over the past few months. This time of year is always a mix of excitement, nerves, and melancholy. This year I’ll get to revisit a high school genre fiction elective, which I’m very excited about. I keep dragging my feet on researching short stories that are going to work for my curriculum.
My reading went on a bit of an excursion due to a concussion early in the month. That led to a lot more audiobooks than even I normally go for, and I enjoyed some nice mindless stories that I could lay down and close my eyes to.
I am exhausted! Never again am I going to try to force myself to read a book every day. I actually ended up with more than 31 books total in July, but I wish I’d given myself a bit of grace. I’m feeling a little bit burned out. That said, I discovered some absolutely fabulous novellas, and a contender for my book of the year, so I think it was worth it in the end.
Air quality has been horrible in Minnesota this month. I’m lucky enough to be far enough south to avoid the worst of it, but this has been a month that I’ve minimized time outside. Thankfully, we managed a single lake weekend that we squeezed in before it got bad. I continue dodging my partner’s insistence that I learn how to water ski.
My brother and his partner came and visited, which was wonderful, and I got to spend far too much money on some carpentry work that is beyond my current capabilities – or my desire to spend so much time on a very tall ladder. I love my century home, and I wish the upkeep were a bit simpler. My mother always told me I’d have been better off in a condo, and its at times like these that I wonder if she was right.
Longform Reviews
With 33 longform reviews this month, I will avoid listing all of them here. However, here are my 9 top picks from this month! And honestly, narrowing it down this much was brutal, there are plenty of 4.5 star books that ended up not making the cut to keep this section somewhat reasonable.
We take a break from our regularly scheduled novella reviews for my very delayed mid-year check in. This was created by Read Like Wildfire, though I pull in some of my own mid-year traditions from before I started blogging. It has been a pretty phenomenal year of books, and July has possibly been the best of the year. Fingers crossed it only gets better!
Best Books I’ve Read This Year
There was so much good stuff I’ve read this year! I felt like I had to leave off some absolute bangers to keep this even somewhat reasonable. The others will be shorter, I promise.
We are at the halfway point through the year, which means I should have all sorts of fun statistics and lists for how things have been going so far. Unfortunately, scraping lead paint, a hail damaged roof, and helping run pride month festivities on r/fantasy has kept me very busy, to say nothing of the chaos of the last few weeks of school (we get out late in Minnesota!). I’m a little surprised at how much reading I got done this month, and a few books had me in a chokehold.
I don’t plan on slowing down at all in July. I actually plan on reading 31 novellas in 31 days! I’ve had a growing stack of novellas, and figured this would be a fun reading challenge to set for myself. Check in to see if I’m still kicking at the end of the month, because it’s going to be all gas no breaks for a while. I’ve got a pile of novellas stacked on my bookshelf, and they’ve been waiting patiently for me to sink my teeth into them.
Oh April, the best month of the year! Spring break, packing up winter coats, and diving into a new bingo challenge. It’s been a bit hectic on the work front (I’m so tired of writing curriculum! Summer break please arrive), and a headcold kept me from getting as much read at the end of the month as I’d like. I’m realizing that I was … perhaps too ambitious in what I thought I could accomplish this month. Lots of books I promised would be April reads got put by the wayside, and I continue to be in a constant war with my unwillingness to put books down if I’m not enjoying them. The hope on the horizon is that the r/fantasy Pride Month planning is well underway! It’s work, but good work.
One of the highlights of my month was spending a delightful hour discovering the work of Weston Wei, whose art has captured my imagination and soul. Do I want to do a monthly artist feature? I probably don’t have the expertise for that, but the vibes here are immaculate.
Anyways, here’s some book stuff. The favorites, the forgettables, and the unfinishables!
This year for my r/fantasy book bingo challenge, I decided to limit myself to reading books exclusively with queer male protagonists. Specifically, I wanted to focus on gay/bi men in non-Romance stories when possible. I love romance books, but I wanted to push into some more ambitious spaces with this project. I ended up reading some books that easily fall into my all-time favorites. I also ended up with two more cards (a graphic novels card that I’m working on a post for and a ‘leftovers’ card when I realized I had enough books that worked for a third), but this was my focus for the year.
My goal was ‘read some gay shit and have a great time,’ and I have achieved that goal magnificently.
I’ve included short, one paragraph reviews of the 24 books (and one video game) that made the card below. For people who are more visual, I also made at-a-glance slides with pros/cons for each of the ~45 Achillean books I read since bingo started. While I could keep reading more to get an even more perfect card, I’d rather bank the reads I’m excited about for April and focus on reading other things for now.
I am a sidequest reader who frequently gets distracted by the shiny new recommendation that magically jumps to the top of my TBR. I don’t dislike this about myself; most of my favorite reads from 2025 were not at all on my radar before the year started. However, I find that picking a few titles I know I want to try helps keep me from putting interesting books on the treadmill of procrastination for too long, and to ensure promising new titles actually get read.
Here are 12 books I’m committing to reading at some point in the year 2026. While there would be some beauty to me reading exactly one every month, I know myself too well to try and commit to that plan. Some of these I’m confident that I’ll love, others are risks I’m excited to take, but all have taken root in the back of my brain and won’t let up until I finally buy myself a copy.
Overall, I think 2025 was a great year for me as a reader. I really focused on reading more queer stories, which brought a lot of joy to me and exposed me to some new favorites I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. I started really exploring what reading graphic novels as an adult might look like. I started this blog, which has also ended up bringing me a fair amount of joy. But what do the numbers say?
Marked for Plot 