Mid-Year Roundup of Reading #TBRChallenge

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Early this year I think I discovered The Storygraph – a website, quite a competitor of GoodReads, for logging books read, shelfing them, and jotting down private thoughts and reviews. It has this amazing feature of stats, that calculates not just books read, but rather pages finished, from books we somehow ‘Did Not Finish’. The data scientist in me loves these stats. Sharing a few here.


I love fiction. So, most of my reads this year have been fiction. And I love print, but boresome household tasks demand audiobooks. So Storytel and Audible are my go-to apps for listening to audiobooks while morning walks, cooking in the kitchen, arranging things around the house or just lazing around on the couch.

I am loving this chart for Genres. Quite an eclectic mix. Makes me so happy. The one thing that I wanted to do this year for my reading goals, was to read several new authors. I wish that feature was also there in The StoryGraph. I read for the first time this year Balli Kaur Jaswal, Arefa Tehsin, Sandeep Madadi, Neil Gaiman, Janice Hadlow, Bonnie Garmus, Lily Chu, Yasser Usman, Marjane Satrapi, Sangu Mandana, Jesse Q. Sutanto, Anita Krishan, Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, and Maartje Williams.

I have two most favorite books – Lessonsin Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus and The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow. Couldn’t put them down. I wrote a review in my journal for The Other Bennet Sister, check it out in the link above.


There’s this Mood Board. I agree I am a mood reader. Somedays up for mysteries and thrillers, and some gloomy days I just want the words to cheer me up. I avoid self-help mostly except a few that draw me in and inspire me.

The time I took to finish a book from start date and end date. I am a rather slow/medium reader. Don’t read fast. I savor the pages and paragraphs when I read. And I love short books, easy to digest, but there are days I prefer big bulky ones too. In short, these charts give me a feeling of achievement!! Dopamine hit!

 All in all, it has been a good six-month progress. Though my BlogChatter Reading Goals are yet to be halfway met – 19/45 books completed till now.

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Queeristan by Parmesh Sahani

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  Queeristan (Amazon Link) Thanks to Audible Free Trial I listened to this amazing non-fiction on LGBTQ inclusion in Indian workplaces. Author Parmesh Sahani identifies as gay Indian, working closely with Godrej higher management and employees for years to create an inclusive workplace, both legally and in spirit. This book is a result of those years of experience, research, collaboration with individuals from difference spectrum of the society and organizations who has successfully transitioned into a queer friendly one.   Indian history is inclusive. From the Khajuraho temple architectures, to Konark to the Rig Veda, there is existing proofs even 2000 years ago of Indian inclusiveness of queer. It’s the draconian British law that criminalised it, which was scraped in 2009, came into effect once again following a sad judgement in 2013 and eventually was scraped off for good in 2018. I am in awe of the lawyers who fought this legal battle- colleagues and partners – Arundhati Katju
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