*State of the ARC* November 2017

So I'm hooking up with AvalinahsBooks for this newish meme, State of the ARC. According to the lovely Evelina, this is a "fun way to share our ARC (advance reader copy) progress," but near as I can figure, it's just a way to self-shame for being greedy and getting behind on our ARC reading. I'm personally coming to the conclusion that I was born without a shame gene, so this may be an exercise in futility for me, but it's only a once a month post, so why not play along (also when I went on my graphics making spree, I created a header for it, so I've got to use it). 

To start with, I need to bloviate about what qualifies as an ARC for me. Obviously books on Netgalley count (this is scary all on it's own, you'll see for yourself in a minute just how scary). But sometimes I get "suckered" into reviewing non-Netgalley books too (or you know, I'm just so greedy because I want all of the books and the synopses sound good and I have no self-control), so those books should really get a place here too (probably even more than the Netgalley ARCs because they're usually physical copies). I will not be counting the ARCs that I win through Goodreads giveaways however, because I want to pretend that this list is still theoretically manageable. 

In my last post, I shared my initial shame with y'all. Just to recap, that included 125 books on Netgalley, 6 physical children's books, and 5 physical non-children's chapter books. So where am I at now, after a month of working on things?

Netgalley

Like I said before, Netgalley is my major weakness, and I'm proving that with this update. On Netgalley, I now have...

128 books

...to read. The breakdown looks a little something like this. 

8 samples or excerpts.

11 children's or middle grade books.

6 books that I've already started or finished reading.

and 103 books that are waiting for my attention.

In case you're really bad at math, that's three MORE books than I started the month with. The only bright side is that one of the 6 books that I had started or finished, is now finished, but I still need to get the review written. With any luck, December will be a much better month for me because I'm going to have a completely empty house for two weeks, which means way fewer distractions (sadly fewer distractions for the kids too, so I might not get much reading done anyway). Mostly I'm going to try super hard to not get any new books in December, if I can succeed at that, I'll consider it a win, honestly. 

Physical Books

Now I didn't see any change in my physical book ARCs this past month. That means I still have...

6 children's books

and 5 not-children's chapter books

...to read. Like I said last month, I really need to get at least the kids books knocked out before the mover's arrive to pack up my house, and then I have to decide if I'm keeping any of the other 5 to take with me in my luggage/carry-on to read on the plane. I know my husband would strongly suggest against it, telling me I have enough ebooks to read, but it's so hard to not have ANY physical books with me at all. But I've got two weeks to make up my mind. 

So I have 139 ARCs to read/review now, and may find my time to do so limited in December, but I'm still hoping to make some headway before the month is over. But only time will tell if I'll succeed. - Katie 

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