Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road: Bookstooge Reviews 2023

THE STATS:

Annual Blog Stats

Posts – 377 (↓ 3)

Words written – 206K (↑ 20K)

Views – 35.3K (↑ 7K)

Visitors – 9.9K (↑ 2.4K)

Followers – 488 (↑ 88)

Comments – 10.3K (↑ 1K)

Book Stats

Books read – 243 (↓4)

Novels/Novellas – 176
Short Stories – 4
Manga/Graphic Novels – 26
Comics – 37

Pages read – 49,779 (↓3K)
Words read – 15564K (↓900K)
Average Rating – 3.29 (↑ 0.06)

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

General Life Thoughts

What a year this has been. We started 2023 with Mrs B being incapacitated pretty much until late March and a little in April. That led to her moving to a new doctor and whole new medical system, which has worked out well. Then our fight with the insurance company for her medication continued at year’s end (they hid some of her options from her and we thought we were going to have to shell out over $1500 in one go) and she broke her wrist. Her courage is ok thankfully. Mine, well, that’s iffy.

My biggest physical thing was dealing with my eyes and my diabetes. My left eye continues to be the problem child and I have a bad feeling things are going to be bumpy in 2024.

Emotionally, I was all over the place. I rode the crests of the waves in the good times and man, did I crash and burn in the troughs too. I was discussing “time” with someone and realizing how much quicker things are moving for me now. October of ’22 I took off from reviewing and yet I can remember it like it was THIS October. Then I have those moments where I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast and it’s only 2hours later. Someone needs to write a book on getting older so I can read it and get prepared for what’s coming! There was a lot of other stuff too, but as it is ongoing, I’m still riding the wave of it and don’t know if it’ll end up being a crest or a trough, or even both.

While I don’t have to deal with the turmoil of hormones, my emotions are as volatile as ever they were in my 20’s and I’m coming to realize that’s just how I am, they aren’t going to suddenly change and I just have to accept that. I’m going to continue to say stupid things to people, fly off the handle at the drop of a hat, get my feelings hurt and butt heads with most everyone I meet. I just need to work on mitigating all of those things. Easy peasy, right? 😀

General Bookish Thoughts

Overall, I was happy with my reading this year. My total number only dipped 4, and that was with taking days off from blogging throughout the year. I deliberately tried to read less near the end of the year and it appears to have worked.

I did start subdividing that general number up into the various categories I assign a book, so gives a better view of what I read than just ONE BIG NUMBER. My manga and comic reading steadily dropped at about the midyear mark and I suspect they won’t be picking up any time soon. That comes and goes like a sine wave function and right now I’m in the trough.

My rating was up a tiny bit, which is good because I’m trying to get better at not picking up books that I’ll rate low. Of course, what usually happens is moral content and bam, auto 1star, which just kills my rating. Oh well, I keep on plugging along.

General Blogging Thoughts

What do I say about WordPress without going into a blue streak? Well, I have no plans on leaving in 2024. I’ve put too much work here to start all over somewhere else. So set your minds at ease on that point. At the same time, I am the unhappiest I have ever been with this company since I started really blogging here at the end of ’16. Things being broken on a weekly or monthly basis, constantly fighting to figure what they just did, and why, and most importantly for me, the absolute onslaught of their *&^%$#@! code monkeys against the comment sections. What they have works and it works perfectly. So of course they have to mess with it. And break it and absolutely destroy its basic functionality for the normal user. While they walked back that particular decision, given their history, it just means they will have a go at it again later in ’24 and in smaller increments. I guess I would say I have nothing good to say about WP at the moment. I am angry and upset and it feels like my only option is to go start elsewhere (too much work) or just leave (which isn’t a real choice as I need to interact verbally online with people).

My followers went up but that is because I’m not clearing away spam, business and dead wood accounts any more. It’s too much work and it depresses me. Turn over continues and people come but mainly people seem to go. I have to admit, it is a continual thorn in my side, but that is one of the down sides of blogging (it’s not all fame and fortune after all, no matter what some people may think).

All my other blogging metrics were also up except for number of posts written. Of course, when you’re talking 377 posts a year, 3 less posts isn’t even a 1% drop, so it’s negligible. I did write more in the posts themselves, as they were generally longer by about 100 words. I also got a lot more random views from search engines. That I put down to starting the process of getting my site completely indexed with google. That’s going to take a long time however and with so many of my early “reviews” just being the info block about the book, I doubt those will get indexed at all. As of this post, I have 4895 posts on this blog. So you could read one post a day and you would have enough reading material for the next 13.5 years. Which will give me time to churn out another couple of thousand posts. Get cracking! Those old posts aren’t going to read themselves after all.

Commenting went up too. By a thousand. That’s three extra comments a day! Of course, it’s really only up by 500, because half of that 1000 is me replying, but 1.6 new comments a day for me to reply to is bliss to my soul. Keep it up folks, you’re doing great! 😉

The Author Index is almost finished and that is a bright spot for blogging. I’ve been dragging my feet though, as I don’t want it to really be finished, because then I have to find another blog project and I’m afraid I’ll open a can of worms with some project that will be 100X bigger than anticipated. I like small blog projects, not ginormous blog projects.

The Art for my blog has also been a bright spot. Whether it is seeing the Magic cards that I played with as a teenager or putting up drawings from Miss Ross, I have enjoyed being able to do something different. I know other bloggers do that kind of stuff routinely (hence the creation of sites like Instagram, etc) but with being a book reviewer and mainly dealing with words, the weekly and monthly foray into “picture” refreshes me. Plus, it gives you something different to see than just a small wall of text.

Blogging stayed pretty much the same this year as it did last. That’s why I like doing the stats, because my feelings can skew the reality. The reality is that I wrote just as much as in ’23 as I did in ’22. I can tell how my blogging is going by how much I write. So the numbers staying the same means stability and that’s a good thing. While I’m riding the emotional waves, it’s good to know that I’m still plugging away at my posts.

I guess my blogging experience depends on the mood I’m in. So bear with me as I ride up to those heights and then crash down to those lows.

My blogger account continues to be my backup, that “just in case” place. Bookstooge.blogspot.com exists right now only for my book reviews. I don’t crosspost my non-book stuff, not even my monthly roundups. I check the comments once a week or so for spam and random people just leaving a driveby comment. It’s like that ramshackle shed in the backyard where I store all my crap and always tell myself that “one day I’ll clean that place up”. Hahahaha.

Calibre continues to be the resource I use the most whenever I have questions about the books I’ve read in the past. While I always link to a wordpress review, my initial query is always in calibre. Nothing has changed from last year and I’m just glad it is continually being updated.

THE BOOKS:

Best Book of the Year

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. I had an unprecedented EIGHTEEN 5star books this year, so it was really hard to narrow it down to just this one. But S&S hit me right in the Feelz, really hard, and when a book can accomplish that, it deserves to be recognized.

Worst Book of the Year

Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh. While I had SEVEN 1star books this year, I only had one 1/2star book and Lapvona was it. Made me sick to my stomach.

PLANS FOR 2024:

Personal

Survive. Seriously. A lot of stuff has been swirling around in my head in ’23 and in ’24 I need to deal with it all. Either catch that ball and run with it for a championship touchdown or drop it like a hot potato and just cancel the game. Or figure out a way to secretly kill the ref and then call the game in my own favor.

Expand my hobby list. I’ve been reading a book called “Making Love Last Forever” by Gary Smalley about strengthening relationships and one of the points he makes is that a stable relationship has multiple hobbies to fall back on when things get rough in one area. It seemed odd to me at first to think that having multiple hobbies could help a relationship, but after an incident earlier this year when something happened that was real life book related and I just went off the deep end about it, I realize that if I had had other hobbies, the book thing wouldn’t have meant as much to me and thus I wouldn’t have reacted the way I did. Thankfully, this is an easy one, as Mark has been singing the praises of the card game Marvel Champions for the last 18+ months. In fact, you can expect a post this month on it. I know you’re already anticipating it!

In relation to that, I am hoping to do some multi-player magic over whatsapp with Dave and Mark. I’ve really not pushed for it because I’m afraid of being “That pushy guy” but the reality is that I want to play some commander, so I suspect I will have to be a bit pushy. Going to have to find the right balance. All three of us also have the Marvel Champion game so maybe we’ll explore that too. Who knows, I can dream though, right?

Get my butt in gear about being serious for dealing with the Certified Survey Technician program. I am not a self-starter but nobody else is going to make this happen except me, so I have to start. I’ll start at the bottom and work my way up the ladder. It will be good for my resume, good for my work wellbeing and make me more marketable should I need to make any moves for family reasons. But I said pretty much the same exact thing in last years annual review, so I’m remaining skeptical of myself.

Cut down on caffeine. Sorry rockstar, you’re just not My Hero any more.

Blog

For the time being, I’m going to block out Wednesday’s and Friday’s as “free days”. Wednesday will probably get filled anyway, but this way I won’t feel like I have to. Friday’s are going to be the day I really try to leave open. I need a day I can either ignore or just vent in Maximum Drivel Drive.

I’ll go back to reviewing one movie or series a month. After November and December and trying to review some sort of movie every Sunday, I realized I just can’t do that. I am not a movie person and it doesn’t work for me at all. Writing movie posts makes me feel like Sisyphus. A gimpy Sisyphus at that.

Going to be sticking to mainly novels this year. Groo is the only comic I plan on reading in ’24. No manga, no other comics, no graphic novels. If something catches my eye I’ll read it, but I’m not going to search anything out. I read two non-fiction books in ’23, thus I’ll need to scare one up for ’24 as well. I’m pretty laid back about that though. Me and non-fiction have a gentleman’s agreement; I leave it alone and it leaves me alone and we’re both happier for it.

I have a couple of buddy reads scheduled already. Dave and I will be reading and reviewing Equal Rites at the end of this month. Lashaan and I will be reading Pride & Prejudice in February, as Lashaan hasn’t broken his teeth on Austen yet. If you would like to do a buddy read later in the year, let me know in the comments and we can discuss what book and timing potentials.

Magic cards once a week will continue. So will once a month art posts. I don’t have any new ideas for either (beyond what I proposed in the Experiment Post in December) and thus I will continue doing the same thing.

Nonsense posts as the mood strikes. Which is the usual, so no change there either, hahahahaa.

TOP 5: