2023 Year End Recap

(If you have a short reading attention span, feel free to just skip to the actual ranking, which you'd have to click into the blog post to view >:3)

This particular blog post is to first document what was actually published in 2023.

Note: Notice two font sizes below? The regular size matching this sentence and paragraphs above, are my makeup work for before. The smaller size (like this) are the ones that are posted extremely closed to, if not in fact on the exact published date. Those, should there actually be casual viewers of my blog, are hard to miss, since the Blog Archive function reflects them quite well, and the backdated ones are what easily gone unnoticed, hence the emphasis.

1. [Series Overview] Jackaby series - William Ritter
2. [Series Overview] Stoker & Holmes - Colleen Gleason
3. [Series Overview] The Remnant Chronicles - Mary E. Pearson
4. 2022 Year End Recap
5. [Series Overview] Cursebreaker - Brigid Kemmerer
6. [Series Overview] Bloodleaf trilogy - Crystal Smith
7. [Series Overview] Elements of Cadence - Rebecca Ross
8. [Series Overview] The Prison Healer - Lynette Noni
9. [Series Overview] Once Upon a Broken Heart trilogy - Stephanie Garber
10. [Series Overview] Blood Heir trilogy - Amélie Wen Zhao
11. [Series Overview] Kingdom of Souls trilogy - Rena Barron
12. [Series Overview] The Ivory Key duology - Akshaya Raman
13. [Series Overview] The Storm Runner trilogy - J.C. Cervantes
14. [Series Overview] Shadow Skye - Joseph Elliott
15. [Series Overview] Pandava - Roshani Chokshi
16. [Series Overview] The Gifts - Caroline O'Donoghue
17. [Series Overview] Spellbreaker duology - Charlie N. Holmberg
18. [Series Overview] Founders - Robert Jackson Bennett
19. [Series Overview] Letters of Enchantment - Rebecca Ross
20. [Series Overview] Mapmakers - S.E. Grove
21. 2023 Year End Recap ☜ THIS POST!!!

Finally, a Year End Recap post that's published on time!!!!!!!!!!!! Yay, me! That said, as this is the one post per year you'd get more of my personal life, I'll still share the gist of my year:

• For my traumatic experience at the end of 2022, please do check 2022 Year End Recap for references. The crisis carried over to the start of 2023, but I was lucky enough to secure my second stable full-time job by the first week of the year. To me, it's a pretty intense post, a government job with wayyyyyyyy heavier responsibilities. I do like the job though, there's a real sense of fulfillment, just that there would be periods with super heavy workload, so 2023 was basically used to get the hang of what the busy seasons are and what not; the first half of the year, my personal time is greatly decreased due to increase work time.
• It should be noted that, with absolute lack of communicating effort on Goodreads' part, my Goodreads Librarian status was revoked on late May. Yes, they gave me a very, VERY unspecific reply about which edit was the cause, the thing is, they said "the edit you did to this series", I made TONS of edits on the series they named (all different types of edits, obviously), they couldn't even be bothered to specify the exact type of action they found violating. And I said lack of effort because it's the fact, I wrote back to them for clarification, and that was what they replied, the initial revoke message didn't even say a specific series or book; the second and final reply, aside the vague AF info, they also literally told me that was the end of the discussion. I did write back again hoping to get a real clarification, but they ignored me and I'm just like, well, it's your lost and my gain.
• I said it's GR's lost, not out of narcissistic tendencies, but the fact that GR has no real idea that, beyond the mainstream popular books, so so SOOOOOOOO many books on the site had data need fixing, and even the popular books don't always get 100% correct info, and they won't miraculously correct themselves. One less GR Librarian equals one less person helping out, it's as simple as that. Ironically, by late June, GR's bot literally went batshit crazy and started doing questionable actions en mass. My other account (used for manga and other visual-heavy books) was deeply affected, with over a hundred books switching to editions I did not intend to shelf. It was a nightmare, and it honestly made me loathe the site just a little. While there are some obvious cons for loosing the Librarian status, I suppose the only one that'd affect this blog, is that I no longer can update posts immediately upon my discovery of new things, as GR may not have the pages or the pages have false data and cannot be fixed on spot. It's honestly not a big deal, I just feel a little sorry, having to send in requests for stuff to be fixed, whereas previously I'd just fix it on my own. (FYI, there's a chance I'll have a separate post detailing the matter, but until then, I'm covering the gist here.)
• Oh, so like, end of unhappy business. One of the highlights of 2023, to me is that, woo-hoo, I finally met up with some book-loving people I've known via the Net, the people who were very understanding and supportive during my 2022-year-end-ordeal. Listing in the order of first time meeting in person: Sabrina, Amethyst, Amesily, and the most recent addition, Emily, it was so nice to meet you cool people! We should definitely meet up once in a while, if any thing, HAVE ICE CREAM, if not hanging out at bookstores discussing books lmao.

Okay, I know it wasn't obvious, seeing that the above section is considerably shorter than what the year before had (and may get even shorter should I finish compiling what happened with GR on a separate post), but I had in fact been busier in 2023 due to RL responsibilities; I think I'm more or less prepared for next year though, so my reading and blog posts ideally wouldn't be so unevenly distributed, fingers crossed.

Anyways, as of 2023/12/31, according to the Blog Archive function, I have 15 posts published in 2023 (not counting this one). That one particular post that was more than 90% done back in 2021, still couldn't make it in 2023. I really hope I can get it out by the first quarter of 2024 though! That, along with a couple of other non-Series-Overview posts. Wish me luck! lol

2023 Reading Challenge

Sammm has read 77 books toward her goal of 80 books.

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77 of 80 (96%)

view books

It's because of 2023's unusual circumstances that resulted in the first part being larger than usual. I hope people are patient enough to reach this part, lmao. On Goodreads, there's the My Year in Books function they provided that give some statistics, [check out mine for 2023!] (My GR profile is set for GR Users only, so this one, you'd have to login in order to view.) There's also the Goodreads Year in Review, [read mine!] (no GR account required.)

So what's different here is that I'm going to rank what I've read, but limited to series that concluded or standalones, extras, and compilations published in this year. 2023 does not make a great example but it's better than having nothing lol. And, ladies and gents, drum roll....!

Note: First books of series represent said entire series. I know the cut-off was the final book, but I believe people are usually more familiar with the cover and title of first installments so.

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Right... Not fun since not enough series meet the criteria I set. Because the pool is too small, I'm going to include series or extras ending a year ago that I read this year into the mix; ta-da:

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Right... (lol) In case people didn't feel like counting, the total is 20 works. The reason why some now have been stacked, is because, 1 per slot made the ranking list lengthy, which in itself isn't too big of a deal, however, I feel bad for the ones closer to the bottom. It really wasn't like "it's the second to the last place"; trust me, previous years, certain gaps are super huge, but this year is like, even the ones I liked the least, isn't so, so horrible. Since it's still not reflecting well enough, I figure grouping what I feel the similar amount of like, would make me feel less guilty, haha. There you have it!

Hope despite the crisis in 2023, you'd still have a fruitful year! What series concluded in 2023 do you like the most? Feel free to share!