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ARC Madness

stacks of books against clock with a bird resting on top of book stack

Alright, it's not really madness, but it is a catchy wordplay off of March Madness. I even remember seeing people work through their ARCs back in March, with a few creative folks creating brackets out of the books they read. I haven't done that with the books I've read yet as I'd have such a difficult time choosing between two really good books, so I'd probably just have a bunch of winners instead.

I've been missing in action a little over the past while, not due to disinterest, but more so because I have taken on additional employment and my days are quite full. It wasn't so long ago that I had a lot of spare time to create and write to my heart's delight; however, I have to be a lot more judicious about how I use my time now. It's a good season to be in, though, and I'm grateful that God has allowed me to both have enough leisure time so that I could launch this blog, and now more work time so that I can be better about not wasting spare moments.

And what have my spare moments mostly consisted of this past month? Well, to be honest, it's been equal parts dread at how I should have used my time better in previous months to whittle down my ARC pile, and excitement in getting to discover new titles and authors. In a list of things that I do badly that I shared to my Instagram account, I alluded to how I have a difficult time saying no to ARC requests. I imagine I always will because I'd hate to miss out on a new favourite book; however, I've discovered that it might not be so bad to have the deadlines of book releases to prod me along to reading as much as I can whenever possible. Given my long list of ARCs to read and their upcoming release dates, it's certainly lit a fire under me to stop procrastinating (maybe that's just human nature, haha!).

I don't think I have a sweet spot for the number of ARCs I can handle yet, but I have seen that no matter how many titles I take off my list and add, it seems that I'm consistently at around a baker's dozen. Some of these ARCs are quite old, but those are the ones I've noticed that I don't feel as inclined to read compared to those that will be coming out soon. The pressure of keeping up review scores is also an added incentive. Thankfully, when my list is in double digits, I try to refrain from requesting more, but whenever I dip down into single digits, I somehow take this to be a green light, leaving me in a pickle again when some of the requests are approved 😄

I've also noticed that as I share more reviews, I'm blessed in that authors have been reaching out to me about their books, and that for the most part, a lot of these books do resonate with me. It's been such a great adventure in finding these amazing titles, so I definitely don't want to discourage these types of requests. If anything, I just need to be more disciplined these days in getting the reviews out on time. I do write them quite quickly after finishing a title, but I usually have to devote a chunk of time to get them ready to share. I haven't yet found ways to more automate this process, so I am very appreciative of people's patience with them. One day I'll figure out a solution to avoid being on the computer as much as possible!

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