Mostly Fictional

Ep. 70: We’re Midway Through the Reading Year and Freaking Out

In this episode: Our take on the mid-year freakout tag!

Books mentioned, in order:
The Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
The Book of Ayn by Lexi Freiman
True Grit by Charles Portis
The Husbands by Holly Gramazio
Tidal Creatures by Seanan McGuire
Piglet by Lottie Hazell
Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino
Sheine Lende: A Prequel to Elatsoe
Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum, translated by Shanna Tan
The City in Glass by Nghi Vo
Playground by Richard Powers
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Guards Guards by Terry Pratchett
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Sister Golden Calf by Colleen Burner
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Created by @IsThatChami‬ (sha-mi) & ‪@EarlGreyBooks‬ (Ellie) with extra questions from @booksandlala (Kayla)

Find Pam and Hallie online!
Follow Hallie’s Substack at wordsmithreads.substack.com
Pam can be found on Youtube and Bookstagram at @pams_inkheart

Duration:: 32m
Broadcast on:: 10 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to Milsey Fictional, a podcast about the books of yesterday, today and tomorrow. I'm Haley and my name is Pam. And we're doing something a little bit different today. We are about halfway through the year, but instead of just doing a super traditional goals check-in, we thought we would do a mid-year freak out tag. So Pam, why don't you tell us a little bit more about this tag? - I'm so excited. So the original tag was created, I think like 10 plus years ago by, is that Shami on YouTube and Earl Gray Books, whose name is Ellie? And for our version of this tag, we added a few extra questions from Kayla, Books and Lala, she does this tag every year and she has her little spin on it. We also came up with our own couple of questions to add or we modified a few questions from the original tag. But this tag is one of my favorite videos to watch on YouTube every year. All of my favorite creators post it and I'm like, "Yes, I get to just eat up a little summary of how your reading year is going." Even if I haven't watched every single one of their videos. It's just such a great way to freak out about, oh my gosh, we're halfway through the year, woo! - I know and it capsulates. I had such a fun time looking through all of my books and trying to match to our questions. So I will start us off. How is your reading going in three words? Mine is full, 58 and fantastic. - Oh my gosh, I love those. I wrote satisfying, fun, incredible. - Oh wow, I just haven't a great time. Okay, well, we chose specifically to specify, we'd answer this question in three words so we wouldn't dawdle too much because we could yap for many hours about how our reading's going, but I love your answers and I hope you liked mine. - Yes, all positive, all positive, press the board, great. So question two is, what is your biggest disappointment? I specifically challenged myself to have a different book to answer each of the questions in this tag but wherever applicable. I could call all of my DNFs disappointing books but specifically for a book I finished, it's gotta be Biography of X by Katherine Lacey. I did have a good time while reading it. I'm happy I read it but it really did not live up to the hype I built up, all on my own in my head, thinking so much about this book before I purchased it. It's entirely my fault. Maybe if I hadn't done that to myself, I would have enjoyed it more but it just disappointed in, I think, part of the execution and part of the ending. So, oh well, I'm still glad I read it but it just, it didn't hit the way I wanted it to. - That's totally fair. My biggest disappointment was a similar situation. I chose The Book of Aime by Lexi Friedman. I really expected this plot to work well. It's about a woman who gets obsessed with Aime Ran after she's herself canceled and I thought it was B-Smart. I love the first half of it. I thought it was so, I hate these words, Mario. I thought it was kind of inventive and asking good questions and then the second half just took such a bizarre turn that by the time I got to the end I was like, oh man, so it starts, again, expectations. - Yeah, I think that really encapsulates disappointing books as the expectations. - Yeah. On the flip side of things, what was your biggest surprise? Mine was True Grit by Charles Portish. I did not expect that to be so heartfelt, to be so wholesome and funny and fantastic on audio with Donna Tartt's narration. I have thought about it a couple times. I'm like, wow, what a fun Western. I think part of it was I had no idea really what it was about. So the whole thing was a surprise. I love that. My biggest surprise was The Husbands by Holly Gromazio. Mainly because it was a surprise gift for my birthday and I was just so entertained. Like, ah, we've chatted about this many times about this woman who named Lauren. She's not married. She comes home one day to find out she is married but she doesn't know who this man is. Turns out he just came out of her attic and if she sends him back up there, a new husband comes down and her reality shifts a little bit. Antics and Zoo, so that was my biggest surprise. Okay, so the next question is, who is your newest favorite character? For me, I had to pick Kelpie from Title Creatures by Shawna McGuire. She is such a sweet, innocent character. She's part human, part deer with like sunrise orange skin and I just adored her. Certain reviews of Title Creatures also agree with me. One simply saying, I would die for Kelpie and honestly, same. Like, that's the whole review. Oh my God. Okay, my favorite character, I think I will go with Piglet, who is the titular character of Piglet by Lottie Hazel. It's, oh my gosh, Piglet is such an amazing woman. Piglet made me want to be a better cook. She may be like, think about food differently. She's a fantastic cook herself and then I also, she's planning for her wedding and things go wrong. Her, all we know is that her fiance has quote unquote, betrayed her. We never know what the betrayal is but you can probably take a guess. I loved her rage. I loved her actions. I loved how she tried to keep everything together. I loved her. I wish I like knew her in real life and could be her friend. So on the kind of shifting into emotions, what is a book that has made you cry? I almost chose this one for my favorite character because I loved the main character so much but I ultimately went with Beauty Land by Marie Helene Bertino. This focuses on Adina who is an alien who has been like sent to earth and she sends word back via fax machine to her home planet and oh my gosh, I loved Adina. I loved her life. She felt so personal. It's set in New York and it covers 9/11 and it's just very emotional. It's very hard. I know I said heartfelt earlier but this is so heartfelt and makes you just like feel glad to be a human. Oh my goodness. My book that made me cry, a couple of books have made me cry this year but I had to pick this one. Shannon Linde by Darcy Little Badger. Oh my goodness. This was a story about Shane's mother who goes missing and doing everything in her power despite being 16 or 17 in the 70s in Texas. She's doing everything in her power on earth and maybe elsewhere too to get her mother back. I cried at the resolution at the oh my God, it's finally a happy ending. Like that just Darcy Little Badger's excellent at creating characters that just grip your heart and don't let go for the whole book. Okay, well now that we've had a little bit of a sad, let's bring back to some positivity. The next question, question six, is a book that made you happy? My answer had to be, or I stopped by Chester, sorry about that. My answer had to be welcome to the Hyung Vong bookshop by Huang Bo Riam translated by, the name has just left my brain, Shannon, something I believe. Ah, this is about a woman who leaves her corporate job, her husband in order to follow her dream and open a bookshop. And we follow some of the important people who visit the shop and really care about the owner. But the book's not necessarily about the process of her leaving her corporate job in her husband. It follows her having this important scary reality of owning a bookstore and just wanting to fight for that dream because it's something that makes her really happy, more happy than that corporate job did. This book is just so cozy. And it's a reminder that it's okay to A, start over any time and B, take the time to relax. And I thought it was wonderful. - My book that made me happy is The Husbands by Holly R'Mato. Since we both read this this year, I won't say again what the plot on this one is, but I thought this was just so fun. I have thought about this multiple times since finishing it. And it was so, first of all, it was just like so fun and a romp to read. But it's also been such a fun book to explain to other people. I actually, on a phone call with one of my girlfriends, explained the entire plot in detail. Like I spoiled the whole, she was like, tell me the whole thing. So I spoiled the whole thing. So that was like such a fun, happy experience to share that with someone else. And it's just, I feel like it's gonna be one of my go-to, like this is a good, you will have a good happy time reading this book. Excellent answer, I'm full agreement and I almost nearly picked The Husbands for this answer. It was a good contender. - Okay, so shifting a little bit, kind of just encompassing our reading, what is a genre that you have been loving the most or reading the most? Mine is unsurprisingly, mostly literary fiction. I'm having lots of five stars, lots of four stars within that. And I know I mentioned on the last episode that I have not even really been reading non-fiction. So I'm not surprised that literary fiction is what I've been reading the most of. - Okay, I wanted to answer this as both quality and quantity. On the quantity side, the answer is fantasy. And I say, I wrote my notes, fantasy, surprisingly, but I also don't know why I'm surprised. I just am. 20% of my reading year has been fantasy, 28% if you count urban fantasy into the mix. This is really what I'm counting is like the main genre of the book. I do end up reading things that are very mixed or like my example in my head is The Husbands. You can count that almost as fantasy, but it is through romance first in my particular statistics tagging and whatnot. So fantasy is quantity, the most I've read this year. And then loving, I took my 10 top highest rated books so far this year in my tracking sheet. Five of them are fantasy, two are urban fantasy and that makes seven out of the top 10. So the answer for both is fantasy. - And that is surprising to me because I feel like you don't talk about that many fantasy books, but okay, I gotta be on the lookout now when you talk about books in the future that they're mostly fantasy. - I read non-traditional fantasy things in the sense that like to me, Darcy Little Badger writes urban fantasy and then you can have other things that are more like harder fantasy but they're not necessarily gonna be considered fantasy but I've tagged it as fantasy because it's just not the reality we have. So I've just had a good time looking for that answer. So next question is, what is your most anticipated release for the second half of the year? And oh my goodness, when I found that this book was coming out way back in March, I screamed to Haley about it and discord and this is Nevo's newest novella. It's called "The City in Glass." I have to have it because it's being compared to, this is how you lose the time war meets good omens. I need it, oh my gosh. I do not have a book purchase set for October so this will most likely be it and I'm itching for it. - It's only most likely, it's not definitely, I'm shocked. - I think it's gonna be definitely, yeah. I can't think of anything else I'm gonna want by the time October rolls around. So this is a very high on listening. So excited to wrap my head around the fact that I'm gonna pre-order it, so. - So in putting together my answer for this one, I actually struggled a little bit because I feel like there haven't been a lot of lists out yet. I feel like usually by this time, it's like, okay, here's the back half of the year. I feel like the millions does that. Lit hub usually has like a, when we at the start of the year, we had all the, here's what's coming out this year and I went back and looked at those and they didn't really have the back half of the year yet. That said, there have been a couple titles that have kind of snagged my eye. One that I think that I'm going to answer this with is, or the one I'm gonna answer this with is Playground by Richard Powers, he wrote The Overstory, which I absolutely loved. And Playground is out in September and all, this is all I know about it so far. Playground follows four lives. A marine biologist, an artist, a school teacher and an AI pioneer. - Oh my God. - That intersect on an island in French Polynesia when it is chosen as a base for sea standing, humanity's next great adventure. Well, I'm, that sounds, that sounds great to me. I mean, Overstory is forest focused. I loved that. So here he's on the other side of nature in the ocean. Great, I'm, I will take a chance. Let's go, let's go, Richard Powers. - Okay. - I love that. - So, what is your best audiobook experience so far this year? I realize that I meant to change this answer, but now we're here. So, oops, my best audiobook experience so far this year is True Grit by Charles Portis. I should've picked something else for biggest surprise, but it can be my best surprise and my best audiobook experience because Don, like I said, Donna Tartt's narration is absolutely phenomenal. I think she really adds a lot to the character, so much so that I listened to it on One X on, which I never do for audio mugs. So, that really speaks to how good it's narrated. Oh my goodness. Well, I think it's totally fine to have the same question, same book to answer two questions. It's just me, I challenged myself. I wanted to have different books to answer each question. So, my best audiobook experiences so far this year is Guards Guards by Terry Pratchett because my husband and I read it together on my honeymoon and it's also really funny. Terry Pratchett, he's known for subverting expectations of every trope in fantasy and he hits many nails on many heads with this goal. And even put simply one of the quotes I pulled for this, the reasons that cliches become cliches is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication. This book has dragons, it has grumpy night watchmen, it has secret societies trying to get a specific person on the throne. Did I mention this book was funny? I have two quotes, I want you to pick one. Do you want to pick a quote about dragons or a book, a quote about libraries? - I want to hear the dragons. - Okay, noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to is the idea, oh my goodness, the nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who's still alive. - Ooh, that is, it's glippy. It's got some, it's got some sass to it. - Exactly, oh, there's so much quip, so much sass as well and just like zingers left and right. Like my husband and I often would have re-round, we re-wound an aspect of the audiobooks, we can listen to it again and laugh again and because we missed part of it. It was so good, such a great experience. Okay, so now one of the big, big questions of this tag, what is the best book you've read so far in 2024? And I tried to make my husband guess what my answer to this question would be and he couldn't figure it out, but that's okay. He doesn't necessarily pay attention to every single book I've read, but that's okay. My answer is Piranesi by Susanna Clark. I cannot stop thinking about this book. And also it was such a sweet experience to read it on my honeymoon trip in a snowy chalet with a warm fireplace. This is the tale of our titular character Piranesi who is in this like magical infinite house with many halls and many rooms. His life's work is to document these halls and rooms and enjoy its beauty. He meets twice a week with the other, the only other human he's seen in this house. They discuss their distinct researches. He's searching for something like super specific, some powerful item or something. And Piranesi is content to just observe the beauty of the house. I wanna reread this so badly right now. And one silly reason I don't pick it up immediately is I don't know how to categorize it in my stat sheet as a reread in the same year I read something for the first time. This is a very silly reason to not reread something, but it's one thing that's holding me back. - Okay, now having listened to something, now I'm like, we're trying to think about the books you've been answering. I do understand why fantasy was your top genre. You loved Piranesi, titled Creatures was on there. I think what else, the husband's like you said is fantasy. - Fantasy ish, it's not tag just fantasy in my sheen. And then Shinniland is urban fantasy, which to me counts as a kind of fantasy. - Yeah, so I'm like, okay, basically every book that she's listed has been fantasy and like guards. And basically every book that I have listed, besides like one has been literary fiction. So at least we're kind of form. We are, even if we don't think we are. - Okay, my best book, I have read a lot of really good books this year and I probably could have made an argument for a handful of the ones that I've already mentioned today in this episode, but I had to ultimately go with Sister Golden Path by Colleen Burner, which was the little teeny tiny itty bitty under the radar book that I got from pals in Oregon and just absolutely totally loved. I also just wanted to talk about it again 'cause I was like, I need other people to read this book because I loved it so, so much. This is very short, it's more like 100 and something pages. It's technically a novella. It's about two sisters, Gloria and Kit. And they are in the trade of re-homing invisible, sorry, invisible ephemera. That's kind of hard to say. That they've captured in jars and now sell on the side of the road. Their mom has just passed. They are taking a road trip and doing this and there's a lot about grief and sisterhood and there's such a eclectic cast of characters and I bookmark something or like I tab something in terms of the pros on. I feel like every page, it's just absolutely beautiful. I would also like to reread this and I probably could figure out a way to mark it in my database as well, but I almost am just like, okay, like give myself some space and then go back to it when I've forgotten a little bit of it so I can enjoy it for the kind of the first time again. I love that. So I almost chose Going to Powell's in Oregon as my favorite bookish memory of the year so far. But I, and I would love to hear yours in a moment, I ultimately settled on being part of an in-person book club. I don't think I've been part of an in-person book club before and that's been something that's like a new bookish thing in my life for this year. I've been part of work book clubs, but there's, that's not the same. I've been part of virtual book clubs. I've done buddy reads in person that I, which I also love and super appreciate, but those also don't feel the same. And so to be part of an in-person book club where we meet regularly and we talk about the book, it feels ridiculous to me that I've, I'm such a reader and I've never done that. This is the first year of my life that I'm doing that, but I'm so glad to have that experience in my life and excited to continue that for the rest of the year. So that's my favorite bookish memory for the year. I'd love to know what's your favorite bookish memory this year? - I struggled to pick something for this question. I think it's just, I don't have the greatest memory. And so I opened my Google photos, scrolled back to January and was like, I'm going to look through my photos until something triggers a memory. I did not get very far because in January, my favorite bookish memory was my Bachelorette bookstore crawl. How good did you pick anything else? - I agree, I agree. I wish I could choose that for my favorite book, memory as well. (laughing) - Oh my goodness. So I got married this year. And before getting married in January, my bridesmaids took me on a trip, well, a trip, trip throughout my city. We visited five independent bookstores and we had lunch at an Italian place, which is my favorite food. And they each picked me a book at each store. There was only one store where I didn't pick up a book and it's because it was a secondhand store that is just a maze to walk through. And so it was very overwhelming, but that's fine. We still had a good time looking around things. I've read two out of the five books I got and loved them, loved both of them. And one of them was Piranesi. So all the sweeter, the Piranesi gets to be on this list as my favorite book of the year so far and that it came from my favorite bookish memory. - I love that, I love that so much. - This is such a great tag, I love it so much. So we're not gonna end with looking to the future. What books do you need to read by the end of the year? And this is where I allowed myself to kind of list more than just one, but also I'm not really listing books in particular and listing things I need to read in general 'cause the question is plural. So things I need to read before the end of the year. My other book purchases from my 12 months of buying one book per month. And that's just a, I don't wanna let them sit on my shelf forever just 'cause I'm only buying 12 this year. I kind of wanna be very good about that. I also wanna continue my buzzword with on prompts. And I also wanna read the other three books from my Bachelor of Red party 'cause like I said, I've read two out of the five. I'd like to read the other three that I get this year. I've thought of a funny idea that maybe I should challenge myself to find the oldest book on my TBR or to only read one library book a month for the rest of the year because I'm noticing a trend. When you say oldest, do you mean that it's been on your TBR the longest or that it was published the longest to go? - I think I always interpret it as the book that's been sitting on my shelf, the longest on red because you could buy many books in this year and they could all be the oldest book on the shelf. - That's true, that's a good point, good point. - Yeah, that's always been my interpretation of oldest book on your TBR is just like, whatever's been sitting there, the longest waiting for me. It's probably a childhood book or something I got in my teens. So we'll see. Yeah, so I wanna read many things. I think there's also the, like I need to continue reading the books I've purchased in the last two years. That list I've been working my way through because there's still quite a lot on that list. They're all steering at me. So what about you? - That, all of that makes sense. I have a similar, I need to be reading more books from my physical bookshelf. I was thinking similar to your like, okay, only one book from the library here, I probably should institute that for myself as well. I've been doing okay because I've been not putting anymore books on hold. So I'm only reading. - See, that's my problem. I need to stop putting things on hold. Yep. - I think maybe I should set for myself like, okay, I need to read one or two books for my shelf, maybe each month for the rest of the year. I don't think I read any from my shelf in June besides the Jane Austen, which I don't know if I really count that because it's in a big collection. So that's not to really, I mean, yes, it's working, but not really. And speaking of the Jane Austens, I will be completing my Jane Austen readathon, which I'm really enjoying doing that this year. And then my other buddy Reed of Gone with the Wind with another friend of mine, which I'm just doing monthly by monthly, which I haven't talked about going with the wind on the pot in a while, but I'm really, I'm really, really enjoying it. It's such a fun-- - That's wonderful. I keep saying that. I feel like we've said fun 15 times in this episode, but it's a great-- - Okay. - No one play a drinking game. - It's a great entertaining story, and I'm really liking Scarlett, our main character, her kind of character arc. But that's basically what I just need. I need to read more from my shelf and then continue on my buddy Reed's. - Love that. Okay, well, those are surprisingly all the questions from the major freakout tag. I feel like that was just such a whirlwind recap of the first six months of the year. We are just at the very tippy tippy tippy tippy. Wow, tip of June, but I think since we have a bit of extra time, do we want, I want to go over those goals that we set. You touched on them a little bit with your buddy Reed's, but I did some counting of my reading goals so far. So would you like to hear the first one of my three goals? - Absolutely. - So you started off the pod with how many books you read this year. I've read 49. - Nice. - One under for that halfway to maybe hit 100. So out of the 49, I've read so far this year. 22 have been from my bookshelf. 12 were from my original list of books I bought in the last two years and haven't read them yet. So not bad, that's 'cause that's pretty good, actually. It is pretty good, it is pretty good. It's just a lot of library books. I don't know if I actually did the proper counting of library books, but it's a lot. So, and so those are 22 books that have been, that came from my shelf in past years. That's not counting the books I received this year or bought this year. And then, okay, do you wanna go over your first goal? Or can I, what about if I go over my other two quickly? 'Cause they're very short, just do them all. Yeah, so my other goal this year of only buying 12 books one per month is going great. I've only bought six books this year with my hard-earned money and I've read five out of the six of them and I'm feeling great about that. I'll get to the sixth one at some point. And I've read six so far of my buzzword-a-thon prompts with the other six to come. I'm very excited about that. - I'm, you're doing awesome. I mean, I would say, I would feel like that's an A-, right? I think so, I think the math brings out to that. Yep. (laughs) - Okay, so my, I'll start with the buddy reads since I already mentioned the buddy reads. I'm just continuing doing those. Those are, I'm on track. - You're on track? - Good, I'm on track. I have done my three of six Jane Austen's and I were just barely into July. So I have not read my July chapter yet for "Gum with the Wind", but I'm not worried about that because I have all of July to do that. So I'm really enjoying those and I feel like that's really been adding to my reading experience. Another one of my goals was to do my book, "Blackout Bingo", which was 25 different kind of categories of books that I chose as a way to motivate myself to read more from my shelf. And let's see, of the, what did I tell you, 58? I'm trying to quickly get by my number here. Of the 58 books that I've read, I have, oh gosh, why does it give me the number? I don't think I have read even like half of them from a gift. - Oh, two, four, six, eight. - 18, looks like 18 have been, okay, that's actually better than I thought. - Yes. - That's almost 20. So almost a third, so yeah, definitely not half. So almost a third have been physical books from my shelf. Some of them have been rereads, which I am counting for the book, "Blackout Bingo", but it's not true truthfully in the spirit of trying to read my shelf. So you might need to do a little bit of course correction there, which is why I said I need to dedicate myself to my physical shelf a little more. And I have completed one Bingo. I don't think I should get a reward though, because I have only completed the one. So maybe when I complete like, I don't know, two more or something, there's a lot of empty squares still, but we still have a whole half the year left. And then my third goal, my third and final goal was to read 45,000 pages this year. And I think I mentioned this on a recent episode that I'm starting to get stressed because it's like 22 pages until you're caught up or you're 22 pages in. And now because I've had kind of a slower reading week, last week or two, I am 188 pages behind. Oh no. Oh no. But I'm also, I'm like, okay, you know, whatever the number is, is what it is, I'm just gonna continue on my reading. - Yes. - Because I have, I think I mentioned a trip coming up. A couple different trips in the month of July. So I'm like, okay, I'll just be reading a lot then. And I don't, I want reading to be fun. I don't want to be like stress, stress, stress. So I think I also haven't listened to any audio books in a while. So maybe I'll try to like give myself some breathing room for that. But you know, also if I miss this, not the absolute end of the world, but I'm along about where I mean, 188 pages out of 45,000, I'm doing, I'm doing pretty good. - You are doing insanely well. - I'm doing, I'm more or less on track. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna give myself a B plus. B plus A minus. - Oh, that's awesome. - Okay. Well, if you give me two seconds, I can tell you how many pages I've read this year because I have been tracking how many pages I've read this year and I'm including how, whoever far I've gotten in my DNFs. - Yes. - So that's fine. - Same for me as well. - So that number, thank you, Excel is also 18,823. - Out of, oh, so, okay, so yeah, you've done 18. - Yeah, mine, I've done 22,000. - Oh, why did I hear 18? - I don't know where I heard 18. - I don't know what I was saying. - I have 188 pages left before I'm caught up. - Okay, that might have been my brain hurt, I don't know. Anyway, 18,000. - It's a lot of numbers. - Too many numbers. - Sorry, everyone. Okay. - I'm excited about the back half of the year. - I'm really excited too. - Even though I don't really know of any books coming out as my, I'm like, okay, I guess so. But I, you know, I feel like that's almost good because then I will maybe get laid in the bookstore. - Yes, exactly, it won't be swayed at the library, won't be swayed at the bookstore. I'll just be like, okay, well, what do I already have on my list? What I already have on my shelves? I feel like we, both of us say that and then we're like, no, we're libraries. And then we get sucked into the library every time. Every time, I mean, we love the library, library's great, but like every, it's like-- - I think it's the hardest to keep resolution. - It is, and I think it, it starts with stop putting things on hold. And I think I just had a radical idea. I've got one library book waiting for me to go pick it up this week. And then I think I might just delete the library app from my phone. I don't know about Libby, because I really like having audiobooks to do stuff with in the background, but I might just delete the library app from my phones that I stopped going in and be like, what's available for me to be kept right now? If I want something, I'll stop it. So I have a few other things on hold. And as they trickle through, I think I counted those like two or three things left and like a couple of them are really long lists. So like, who knows when those will come in? - Yeah. - So we'll see, but I think it might need some drastic measures. - I know, and who knows how my resolve will crumple when whenever LitHub or millions or other places put out there. - Books to look out for in the back half the year. Just watch, I'm gonna, my TBR is gonna be full, full, full, and I'll be like, well, I need to put it on hold. So I can, no, I, no, maybe I'm allowed like three holds for the rest of the, no, that's very drastic. - No, no, that's very drastic. As soon as I was saying, I was like, oh no, I'm boxing myself in, but maybe a, you know, a small number of holds for the rest of the year. - I think that's reasonable. Like even if you don't go with like six, one a month, you could do maybe 10 at most. I think that that could be reasonable and it doesn't. - Ah, yeah, so there's definitely ways that we can constrain our library pickings so that we focus on what's literally sitting in front of us or on our shelves so that we, they can stop saying help, pick us up please, we've been sitting here for so long. - And even though we're giving ourselves a hard time, I would also say we're doing decent. Like both of us on our goals and we're obviously having a great reading year if one of my work was fantastic and what was yours? Incredible. - Yes, that was one of mine. If we're having a fantastic reading year, we're having incredible reading years, like, you know, we don't want to end on a downer. We're doing great. We're doing, we're, reading is fantastic. We love, we love reading, we love books. - Mm hmm. - I love writing. - I love them, we love our reading. - Okay, I think those are all our reading updates for this half of the year. - Exciting. - So we can place the bookmark and pick it up next time. - Okay, thanks for listening, everyone. Bye. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)