In December, I announced that I was going to sunset my monthly on my nightstand posts, as they were starting to feel more like a chore and I wasn’t sure if anyone was actually referencing them to find books—especially since I share everything I am reading over on my Instagram Stories. When I made this announcement on Instagram, several people reached out and asked if I would consider bringing these back as the text is much easier to read on my blog than on Instagram Stories and the search functionality is much better. I so appreciated that feedback and decided that bringing these posts back on a quarterly basis could be a great compromise—these posts won’t be as frequent as they once were, but still often enough I can recommend books soon after reading them.
Given I decided to change up the frequency of these posts, I also wanted to change up the format. I’m now going to categorize books by what star rating I give them on Goodreads. My ranking system is as follows:
- Five Stars: an amazing book I could not put down and/or stop thinking about once I finished it; would highly recommend reading it!
- Four Stars: a great book that stands out above your average read that I would highly recommend reading.
- Three Stars: an average book that I generally enjoyed, but if you asked me for a book recommendation, I’d probably recommend another title first.
- Two Stars: a terrible book that was hard to finish; I would not recommend reading it.
- One Star: a book that was among the worst I’ve ever read. You probably won’t see too many of these because I usually DNF (do not finish) these books and don’t count them towards my yearly reading goal.
As is custom on these posts, I wanted to call out that I’m part of a program where Random House will send me some of their new titles each month. I’m under no obligation to post about any titles I receive, so I really can tell you my own opinion (good or bad!) about them. I’ve starred the books Random House sent me for free below. I’m so lucky to be sent books and am really grateful for the opportunity to partner with Random House in this way. And, as always, you can follow along with what I am reading in real time over on Goodreads.
Happy reading—and please let me know if there’s been anything good on your nightstand lately.
