New Year 2024 Announcement

A new year has come, which means it’s time to look back on last year’s reading progress. According to Goodreads, I read 238 books; according to WordPress, I made 300 blog posts. Even keeping in mind that not every book I read gets a review, I think it’s safe to say that the dread backlog is being slowly but steadily defeated. When it is finally vanquished, it will be time to once more reassess my posting frequency.

The new year is a time for changes, and I’ve decided it’s time to shake things up around here. This blog started out solely reviewing novels; but over the years, it has slowly expanded to include various other types of print media like comics (Animorphs Graphix, Spill Zone), manga (Planet Blood, Higurashi: When They Cry), and webcomics (Chimneyspeak, Shadowgirls). I think it’s time to formalize the broadened scope of the blog by adding more different categories of reviews. “List of Reviews” will now become “Books” and be joined by “Comics” ”Manga”, “Short Stories”, and “Webcomics”. The lists will look a little threadbare to start with, but once I get through my novel backlog, I’ll begin adding to them.

As a note, there are some comics which are part of larger novel series, such as Magic the Gathering and Rivers of London (little preview of something still stuck in the backlog there), that I’ve thus far marked with a #C prefix. I’m going to leave those on the page of their main series to avoid splitting them up. It’s my blog, and I can be inconsistent with the organizing system if I want to.

As for short stories, I’m not sure yet how I’m going to schedule posting them — they’re so much faster to read and therefore more numerous than novels that posting just one a day would never keep pace with the rate I consume them. I suppose that’s a problem for another day.

In the meantime, here’s to a new and hopefully better year.

New Year 2023 Announcement

Well, I’ve made it through another year. Looking back on 2022, I made 109 posts to this blog while, per Goodreads, I read 213 books. While I don’t write up a review for every book I read, I do for enough that, yes, my backlog has grown further. Therefore, I’ve decided to burn some of it off by accelerating my posting schedule. This year, I’ll try to post a review every day, at least until I run out of backlog.

Speaking of Goodreads, my “Want to Read” list has bloated to 736 books. I want to try and make some progress on getting through that, so my goal this year is to finish more books on the list than I add new ones to it. This may prove something of a challenge, as changes regarding my employment mean that I expect to have at lot less free time for recreation this coming year, but we’ll see how it goes.

Happy New Year, and here’s to another year of hopefully good books.

— ProfMorbius

New Year 2022 Announcement

Another year, another look back on my reading and reviewing progress. WordPress reports that I made 100 posts, while Goodreads reports that I have read 233 books. That’s a big jump over last year’s 159 books read, and it’s no mystery why: the library was shut down for a while due to COVID-19. When it reopened, I had a whole bunch of requests piled up, and burned through a bunch at once. In getting caught up on my reading backlog, I built up my review backlog.

Well, since I have more reviews stored up in the pipeline than I’m comfortable with, I’ll be increasing my posting rate again for this year. So, that’s something to look forward to. Here’s hoping the pandemic finally ends soon and we’re able to close the chapter on this long national nightmare.

Happy New Year and hope things get better,
ProfMorbius

New Year 2021 Announcement

Well, it’s a new year, and therefore time for a post looking back over last year’s stats. Due to a burgeoning backlog, I inceased my posting to five days per week. As a result, I made a total of 236 post on this blog in the year of 2020. And how many books did I read? According to Goodreads… 159. Which means my backlog finally decreased! More than you might think, in fact, since I don’t write a review for every book I read.

…Admittedly, a large part of my posting outstripping my reading was the fact that the library closed down due to COVID-19, thus restricting my access to books. I was kind of hoping to equalize by bringing my posting up, not my reading down. But such was the dumpster fire of a year that was 2020.

With my backlog having been reduced to a small and sensible buffer, I’ll be cutting back on posting for now. Three a week sounds about right, so look forwards to reviews on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. If this pandemic ever ends and things return to a semblance of normalcy, I can bring my post rate back up again.

Happy New Year, everyone.

— ProfMorbius

New Year 2020 Announcement

Hello, all you faithful readers, and welcome to the year 2020. It’s a brand new year, and that means it’s time to look back over the past year’s posts.

In 2019, noting that I had accumulated somewhat of a backlog of books to review, I acceleratd my posting schedule from 3 reviews per week to 5 reviews per week. As a result, I posted a total of 239 reviews, up from 146 the previous year.

As for the total number of books I read: according to Goodreads, I devoured a total of 253 tomes — still in excess of the number of reviews I posted. That said, I have no plans to further increase my reviewing pace; and may, in fact, eventually scale back to previous levels. For, despite what the raw numbers might seem to show, my backlog did decrease  — bear in mind that I don’t write a review for every single book I read, and that Goodreads counts very short works like individual comic book issues the same as mighty novels.

Happy new year, everyone.

–ProfMorbius

New Year 2019 Announcement

Welcome, everyone, to the year of 2019. It is a time of new beginnings, and also a time of reflection upon the year that has passed. With that in mind, I thought I’d take a look back on my posting stats over last year.

In 2018, mindful that my short buffer of pre-written reviews had ballooned into a massive backlog, I increased my posting schedule from 2 reviews per week to 3 reviews per week. As a result, despite a several-week break caused by the unfortunate breakdown of my laptop, I managed to make 146 posts. Not bad, not bad.

Incidentally, I’ve also been using Goodreads to keep track of the books I’ve completed. And according to Goodreads, I read 206 books last year. Meaning that my backlog… actually grew by 60 books. Oy.

Okay, okay, it’s not actually that bad — I don’t write a review of every single book I read. Even so, the panic caused by the thought of how much of my backlog might have been lost when my computer broke has me considering if it might not be wise to further increase my posting schedule. Though I have now adopted a cloud data storage solution for my data, so have less fear of losing my posts between writing and publishing, there are other advantages I could see from an increased schedule. Better timeliness, for instance — I did a whole set of Halloween-themed reviews for October, but it’s already January and I still haven’t reached them yet. (Look forwards to that, by the way).

So, I think I’m going to give an even further enhanced publishing schedule a try. For a while, I’m going to make five posts a week, adding Monday and Saturday to my already-scheduled updates. Note that, given my existing backlog, this will not actually entail any further work on my part: the reviews are already written, just waiting to be posted. Note also that posting five days a week sums up to something like 260 posts a year, definitely more than I actually read, meaning that my backlog will actually, finally decrease for once. It also means that I won’t be able to maintain this posting schedule forever — I do still want to keep some reviews as a buffer against unforeseen circumstances; I’d just prefer it to be a bit smaller. So, this accelerated posting schedule won’t last forever. Enjoy it while you can.

And have a happy new year.

— ProfMorbius

New Year, More Posts

Welcome to the year 2018. And with the arrival of the new year, I’m announcing a change to my review publishing schedule.

When I started this blog, I wanted to keep it to a steady schedule. I knew that I read on average around 2-3 new books per week, so I decided on a publishing schedule of two per week: Sunday and Wednesday. Further, just in case some unanticipated event prevented me from reading as quickly as planned, I also built up a small buffer of pre-written reviews before I began publishing them.

As it turns out, however, the number of books I read trends closer towards the 3 side than the 2; and thus, over time, my buffer has grown into what could more accurately be described as a backlog. Therefore, in celebration of the new year, I’m increasing my posting schedule to publish reviews on Fridays as well.

I don’t expect this to be a permanent change; it’s just until I’ve caught up with the reviews I’ve already written. For reference, as I write this, I’m currently in the process of reading Wild Cards: Mississippi Roll; so once my published reviews reach that point, I’ll reassess if my buffer has shrunk back down to a more reasonable size and, if so, resume my old publishing schedule.

In the meantime, enjoy 50% more book reviews from me per week. Happy new year.

Introduction

Hello, world.

I have decided to start a book review blog in order to share my opinions on some of the many books I’ve read. I enjoy primarily science-fiction and fantasy, so those will be the types of books most often reviewed, but anything is fair game. Barring any unforeseen delays, the blog will be updated with a new review each Sunday.

Agree with my review? Disagree? Don’t be afraid to leave comments. And if you’d like to help support my writing, feel free to drop by my Patreon, https://www.patreon.com/ProfMorbius, and make a pledge.

Hoping to hear from you,

Prof Morbius