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Created by the popular but often controversial company Amazon, the humble Kindle eReader and its associated ebooks have revolutionized and permanently shifted the trajectory of the book and publishing industry. Following the success of the rapidly growing ebook market, in 2014 Amazon introduced their digital subscription service Kindle Unlimited. Now if you somehow stumbled on to my book blog, you’re likely quite familiar with ebooks and Kindle Unlimited so I can likely cut this intro blurb and get right into the nitty-gritty details. But for those unfamiliar with Kindle Unlimited (I’ll be shortening it to KU for the rest of this review), KU is a subscription service that promises a huge selection of ebooks, free to access and read with no limitations on how long you can keep them for compared to the similar Libby/Overdrive system offered by Libraries. While you can technically download and read an unlimited number of ebooks from Amazon’s rotating selection, you can only access and read them for as long as you have an active KU membership. Instead of paying a licensing fee per purchase (aka Amazon’s version of “buying an ebook”), the monthly payment gets you blanket access to Amazon’s huge library akin to…

Last month I posted my book list that recapped my top 5 Most Pleasantly Surprising Reads of 2024 in a similar format as my listing for 2023. I also posted my top 5 Most Disappointing Reads of 2023 which leads into the topic of today’s blog and book list which is my 2024 Most Disappointing Reads! Compared to 2023, I read nearly the double the number of books in 2024 and therefore had many more options to choose from. Also unlike 2023’s list that all had very low overall ratings of around 1-star, my list for 2024 is a bit different and has a greater variety of ratings and overall impressions. To recap the intro from last year’s Disappointing Reads list, books listed here are not necessarily the worst or least favorite books I read in 2024 (that would be The Excitements by C.J. Wray), but are those that either failed to meet whatever expectation I had for them going in or had a notable flaw that unexpectedly severely impacted my enjoyment. This year’s pick also omit reads that I knew ahead of time that I probably wasn’t going to enjoy (a notable example by Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re…

I’d been holding out with my current ereader that has slowly developed a minor battery swelling issue for the past year but unfortunately I could not resist the most recent Kindle sale and took the plunge with the new Colorsoft version. Yes, I’m fully aware of the endless bad press and reviews that have been all over the place since its less than smooth launch. However, I’ve always enjoyed trying out fun new toys from my techie background and although I have limited use for the color edition, I really wanted to give it a try (I also tried out a test unit in Bestbuy soon after it launched as I was curious on how distracting the Kaleido 3 “screen door effect” was). Of course as part of every new kindle purchase, you can opt in for 3 months of free Kindle Unlimited which everyone should do. It’s fully free as long you cancel the trial before the 3-months are up (plus there’s an option to send you a reminder 3 days before the trial ends). One of my friends had also been enjoying her free months of Kindle Unlimited from the holiday season and after discussing some of her…

It seems like only yesterday when it was 2024, where does the time go? A new year means it’s time for new recaps so I’m back again compiling my top 5 2024 Most Pleasantly Surprising Reads (along with the Most Disappointing Reads that will be going up soon)! If you have already read them, also check out last years 2023 Most Pleasantly Surprising Reads list and 2023 Most Disappointing Reads list. Similar to last year, books on this list are not necessarily my favorite reads of the year but are instead those that I was most pleasantly surprised by. Whether the book exceeded my expectations (or I went in with no expectations), did a 180 turnaround mid-story, or was a lesser-known hidden gem, these books were those that I thought were noteworthy and impressive! Besides, I think it’s boring when best of lists are made up by too many sequels (looking at you Pierce Brown for writing to many amazing Red Rising entries) or book influencers hyping up the same popular artists they’ve done over and over again. Anyway disclaimer aside, here are my 2024 Most Pleasantly Surprising Reads! #5) A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston Over the last…

Slightly late because of the holiday season rush but 2024 was a great year of reading, easily the highest total number of books read as well as total number of pages. While I use both Goodreads and Storygraph for tracking my reads and libraries, each platform has their own pro’s and con’s and their annual wrap ups are no exception. Check out the my full 2024 wrap up’s below!Goodreads 2024 Wrap UpStorygraph 2024 Wrap Up Scores and Ratings: According to my Storygraph wrap-up that allows for half-point ratings similar to TheBookGrind, my average score for 2024 was 3.57 which is a pretty notable jump from 2023’s 3.24. Not that I’m going soft, but this past year I read quite a few more sequel/series entries vs the previous year, the most notable being Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga and Martha Wells’ Murderot Diaries (I technically also read three entries in Ben Aaronvitch’s Rivers of London series but I had much more mixed feelings about them compared to the other two series). Compared to previous years, 2024 was also a year that I focused heavily on working through my extensive ebook library holds and wish list tag that somehow still keeps growing…