The first five months of the year saw 139,334 blog views; this month, not over yet, almost matches that total! I was fully satisfied, pleased even, with those first-half totals so this month is mind-blowing to me. For the first half of 2025, my thirteen-year odyssey writing over 3700 reviews and achieving over 1,000,000 blog-views has been satisfying, exciting, and deeply enriching.
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I'm amazed...June's blog-views were excellent, today they stopped 100,000 (101,165 as of now) for the 29 days of the month so far. That's five times my usual 20,000—30,000 total! Much to my surprise Bluesky and Tumblr more than replace Twitter as drivers of eyeballs, and that's from back before Edolph Twitler had enshittified the place. I still refuse to engage with that traitorous fuck Zuck's properties, so Threadbookgram is not in my social mix.
I wrote forty-eight reviews in total this month. I'm using the remaining two days of the month to get some ideas for what to do with July. The realization has been reinforced that I'm tired of thrillers for now, mysteries need to be queer to break through my genre fatigue, and honestly I just do not know how much more enshittification of Life I can endure without going nuts. Reading is my best escape, writing helps me think through the way the reading hits me and why, but it's asking a lot to watch my country turn into dystopia in front of my eyes.
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About my #PrideMonth (link is to all hashtagged #PrideMonth on the blog) reviews: I'm satisfied with my thirty-six reviews written for 2025. I had one more I wanted to finish, a short-story collection called Amplitudes, but there are twenty-two stories; eight I haven't read. I just can't. So this is it on 2025's Pride Month review-fest.
My internal stretch goal was to get forty-eight reviews written but that was simply too much of one subject matter to get done in thirty days. I think I can get there with a bit better planning in 2026. I need to remember that there must be room for off-hashtag reviews in the schedule too. We shall see how much I can improve on 2025's success.
I read several excellent books. I fell in love with one. Stories from the Edge of the Sea had two perfect moments in its fourteen good-to-fine stories. "October Lament" will break the isolation of those for whom Grief is a guest who won't go home. "A Good Broth Takes Its Time" has more packed into its pho bowl than you expected; it is the apotheosis of immigrant stories I'm growing to understand in a new way as I adjust to having immigrated against my will into a different and worse country.
I've recommended books for a long time now. I hope some of y'all will stay on the trek behind me; if the views you've seen have pleased once in a while, please trust me one more time and try Andrew Lam's collection of meditations on grief and grieving as constants.
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The third quarter of 2025 has several fun hashtaggie projects to direct my readerly attention. August is the next big one, as it is every year, Women In Translation (#WITMonth, link to the blog's full list) so much of my July reading is settled. (I don't read one book at a time, beginning to end, because I bore too easily; my way lets me mood-read, and still finish more books of focused reading than the one-at-a-time way does.) I'll review for July posting an eclectic mix of stuff I completed in the first half of the year, and some I finished years ago but never wrote up (sinful wicked shame on me!). I'll try my best to get most of the July publishing date books I received from the DRC aggregators I frequent posted. I don't have any plans to change the way I post, or to alter the frequency or content of posts on my socials. We'll see if June 2025 was an outlier or a harbinger.
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