*State of the ARC* April 2018

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. 

Once again I'm getting to this post a little late in the month. The first of the month is just always so hectic for me, apparently. So I will be including ARCs that I have received up to this point so that I don't have to math right now.

So with all that in mind, where am I at right now? Spoiler alert, things are even more dire than they were last month.

Netgalley

April was another zero Netgalley review month for me. Then I had to go and play Netgalley request roulette for Top Ten Tuesday a couple weeks ago, not expecting to get approved for any of the YA selections I requested, mind you, but five of those publishers have already approved my request and I'm still waiting to hear about two of them. And then there were a few read nows or pre-approved widgets that I just couldn't pass up. So now that leaves me with... 

151 Books

...to read for Netgalley, with a breakdown of...

9 samples or excerpts

11 children's or middle grade books

6 books that I've already started or finished reading 

and 125 books that I haven't even cracked the covers of

How could I have let this happen? Easy, I didn't think I was going to get approved for five YA titles with a current feedback percentage of 24. I would not approve me for books under those circumstances, granted I know me better than the publishers possibly could just from looking at my Netgalley profile, but still. I really need to get to work on this, and more importantly stop adding new books to my pile. 

Physical Books

I saw some more change in my physical books this past month too, in the wrong direction. I received another offer for a WWII novel that I could request to review and I just couldn't pass it up. Imagine my surprise when it arrived in my mail box as TWO 500+ page books. I was not prepared for that kind of commitment, y'all. 

So that means I now have...

6 children's books

and 8 non-children's chapter books

...to read. I still don't remember what one of my non-children's chapter books is, and I haven't yet found the one that was missing last month that I do know what it is (the one I can't remember the title of may be packed in the same box as the missing book though, so that's potential good news). 

Last month I said that my goal was to at least start reading at least one of the books that I had to review, and I did. I actually started two of them. I didn't finish either of them, and I'm not particularly far into either of them, but I started! I think my goal for this month will be to just finish a single book that I have started, just one (and also to post May's State of the ARC post on June 1st instead of the middle of the month.) - Katie