State of the ARC | #7 The Dreaded Reading Slump

State of the ARC is a monthly meme at Avalinah’s Books meant to motivate you to finish up all your long overdue ARCs (Advanced or Early Reader Copies).

Whilst January was a great start to the year for me in terms of catching up with my ARCs, my February reading hasn’t even come close either in terms of my ARCs or my reading more generally. As of today, I have only read two books and am less than 20% of the way through my third book (which I’m definitely not going to have finished by the end of the month, which is tomorrow!)

Current State of the ARC

Although I didn’t get much reading done this month, I’m still pretty pleased with my progress so far. I have 4 overdue e-ARCs left over from January’s late-a-thon and 7 overdue ARCs from publishers which I want to tackle ASAP. Other than that, all of my ARCs are upcoming new releases which I have carefully organized my reading around complete with reviews ideally published a week earlier than publication day but if not anywhere up to the day of publication (this doesn’t include blog tours which often come after publication).

I feel like my ARCs are a lot more under control so far which I’m very happy about. The main pressure I feel now is catching up with those lovely overdue physical ARCs that publishers took the time to send me (often from America) These are the main ones I feel the most guilt over given the value of the physical books + postage costs!

Read/Currently Reading

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine – ★★★★☆

As I mentioned in my WWW Wednesday post, I managed to catch up with my new release ARC deadlines just in time for A Memory Called Empire‘s publication day tomorrow and will be sharing my review of it with you all then. It feels so good to actually be on track with finishing ARCs before release day again!

 

You Asked for Perfect by Laura Silverman

I’m currently reading my ARC of You Asked for Perfect which I’m really enjoying. I haven’t made any progress on it since I posted my update yesterday, but I’m also looking forward to getting this one finished in time for its publication date next Tuesday ❤

 

I’ve had to go back and edit my bingo card as I realized that Defy the Worlds was my oldest ARCs and I had instead put it as an ‘overdue ARC’ when I have plenty of other ARCs that I can use for the overdue square!

Acquired

 

Emily Eternal by M.G Wheaton (Netgalley)

I saw Emily Eternal featured on a list about some of the best sci-fi being released this year and couldn’t resist requesting it. A book about artificial consciousness, humanity and the nature of being human told from the perspective of the AI could not be any more up my street if it tried.

 

This Place: 150 Years Retold foreward by Alicia Elliott (Netgalley)

In 2017, I read the brilliant Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection 2 and was over the moon when I saw ‘This Place‘ on Netgalley, a beautiful graphic novel showing “how Indigenous peoples have survived a post-apocalyptic world since Contact.”

 

 

Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator by Leighton Gray and Vernon Shaw (Netgalley)

There was no way that I could resist requesting this when I saw Destiny talking about it recently, especially considering that I wrote an article about Dream Daddy once haha. I can’t wait to dive into the comic series and find out more about the dad’s!

 

Although February hasn’t been a great month for reading in general, I’m hoping that March will maybe be a bit better. I still have a lot of uni-related work to do but I have also booked annual leave from work so I can actually have time to catch up and (hopefully) have a little bit of a break in between.

March is going to be pretty busy on the ARC front as I’ll be reviewing You Asked for Perfect, New Suns, and The Luminous Dead, doing an interview with Laura Silverman, and taking part in blog tours for The Outcast Hours and Wicked Saints.

Let me know how your February went! I know lots of you managed to read loads of ARCs in January but did you keep going in February or, like me, fell into a bit of a reading slump?

---

 

GOODREADS / TWITTER / INSTAGRAM / AMAZON / PATREON