Reading challenges aren’t for everyone, but my particular brand of ADHD likes having a realistic goal and a deadline.

2023 Reading Goal

12

Final Count

Published Books: 19

Unpublished Manuscripts: 3

Did Not Finish: 5

Did you read any of these? Let’s chat about them in the comments. 

ARCs and Beta Reads

Two of the books I read this year were Advance Reader Copies (ARCs). ARCs are early previews of books that are distributed for free to readers, professional reviewers, and book critics to begin building hype. These books have gone through a developmental and line edits, but may still need to be proofread. Typos and other minor errors are expected and common. While reviews (good or bad) aren’t required in exchange for an ARC, some kind of review is expected since that’s the intended purpose of a promotional copy. 

I’m not a professional or hobbyist book critic so I don’t plan on submitting my name to every ARC opportunity I see. I’m continuing  to be very intentional about which books I choose to preview and review. 

Personally, I much prefer beta reading. 

The three unpublished manuscripts I read were beta reads. Beta reading is reading a manuscript that an author has finished with the intention of providing feedback. The author can use that feedback to make revisions before moving forward with whatever publishing path they choose. This is the collaborative part of writing that I really loved when I worked in a newsroom. It requires true reflection on the work and forces you to dive deeper into the text to explain why something works or doesn’t. The physical act of writing a book is often a solitary one, but story creation has always been collaborative.

DNF

Life is too short to read books you hate, but I have been known to continue reading books I hated (or in the case of Throne of Glass, an entire series). 

I have five books on my list that I didn’t finish. They aren’t bad, but they weren’t for me. The writing style may not have clicked with my ADHD brain or I never connected with the characters. My first go at a Why Choose novel had far too many characters to keep track of. DNFing a book also doesn’t mean I won’t return to it at some other time. 

Ratings, Reviews, and Recommendations

I have my own subjective and arbitrary metrics for how I rate and review books. My thoughts on how Amazon has made reviews both meaningless and necessary can’t be expressed in less than 500 words. I’m constantly reassessing how I’m going to approach reviews as I move from the reader space to the author space.

I’m on Goodreads and The Story Graph and still figuring out how I want to use those platforms both personally and professionally. 

But if you’re looking for book recommendations, sign up for my mailing list. Mailing list subscribers get periodic book recommendations. To start, when you sign up and confirm your email, I’ll send you my three favorite reads from 2023. 

In no particular order: