The Year 2021 Divided Into My Bookish Phases

Everybody, say happy birthday to my laptop! *chorus of Happy Birthday, Laptop!* That’s right, this lovely device and my partner in crime came into being (aka was gifted to me by my parents) somewhere a little before Christmas last year. It seems like yesterday (for the record, it does not.) when I first cradled it in my arms, and it’s nearly one already. Look at it grow!

Now onto today’s main deal. I don’t know about you, but I find myself suddenly wanting to read a murder mystery one moment and a fluffy contemporary the next, an underrated book one moment and an overrated one the other. Sometimes these “moments” are actually literal moments, sometimes they can be hours, days or even months. Being the mood reader I am, I often give in to these urges.

In this post I bring you all those bookish phases which together made my reading year a big chaotic jumble of books of all shapes and sizes (not literally though, most of them are e-books). Ready? Here we go!

(also, the formatting is terrible in the Reader so please read it here)

The “ooh I wanna read what everybody else is reading” phase in which I read hyped books (February-March and October-November)

I am literally the co-founder of the “Hype-o-meter” series so yeah, I have a thing for popular books haha and sometimes I just get carried away by the hype. Specifically, it was in February, March, October and November when I read a lot of hyped books. Some of them were totally worth the hype, and others just… weren’t. (if you’re curious – SoC, WHTF, and TVD were the ones worth the hype)

The “yay, childhood” phase in which I read middle grade (May – July)

Yeah so I’ve pretty much given up on middle grade now, but there was a time when I was super into mg books. And then in June, I also took part in this read-a-thon called Whatever-a-thon, and joined the team “Middle Grade Monarchs” so middle grade was pretty much what I read that month. And then I binged the entire heroes of olympus series.

The “i wanna play detective” phase in which I read mystery-thrillers (September – October)

This phase started with me buddy reading The Inheritance Games with April. After that I was suddenly into solving murders in elite prep schools and small towns and the like. I think I’m over this phase now (thank you, Truly Devious, for being so truly terrible)

The “science geek” phase in which I read sci-fi (April and August)

Nowadays I feel like I’ve lost my interest in the science fiction genre, but there certainly was, and probably will be a time when I was fascinated by all books that had to do with technology and space and aliens. In August especially, sci-fi made up most of my reading.

The “I’ll review you! And you! And you!” phase in which I read arcs and review copies (September and November)

Yeah I have those occasional phases where all upcoming releases suddenly sound just my type and I cannot wait for them to be published so I go ahead and request and arc, or sign up for a blog tour. The story ends with me buried under a pile of arcs. And then under a pile of pending reviews.

the “i desperately need more happiness in my life” phase in which I started reading contemporaries (November-December)

This is a fairly recent development in my reading life. I felt like I couldn’t handle any more pain and death that usually comes in a package with fantasy books, so I finally started reading YA contemporaries. And my, I’d no idea what I was missing out on all this time.

So that was my year in bookish phases, tell me about yours! Do you also have these sudden urges to read certain genres? Chat with me in the comments!

~Rachel

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