What a month it has been! I always forget just how involved daily posting is, but I am successfully on the other side and ready to have a nice long nap, or read a cosy book to gently guide me back into casual reading. Spooktober daily posting has been and gone for 2024 and here are my thoughts after the whole process.

I think I handled 2024 a lot better than 2023 with my prior planning and books in reserve. There was only one waiting time uncertainty I dealt with which meant I had almost all the books I would be reading by the 20th. Even then, the sole book of worry came in and I read it in a short afternoon, so overall I definitely commend myself for a project well handled. I DNFed a few books less than 2023 as well, and that comes down to the reading in August and September that gave me the time to sit and enjoy the books.

I covered a range of genres this year: dark academia, historical fiction, adult fantasy, historical fiction murder mystery, horror, classic literature, YA fantasy, poetry, thriller, YA dystopian, and NZ Fiction. While I didn’t get through the number of sci-fi books I initially planned, I am happy with the breadth of my reading during Spooktober. It isn’t easy reading outside of the seasonal experience sometimes, so being able to pull some favourites into the mix made things fun and made it more incentivised for me.

I won’t lie: the burnout still hit, but I am fairly certain it was mitigated to the best of my ability. If you plan to do a monthly reading challenge like Spooktober, it pays to read a little more for several months than pile it all on the month of. You never know what personal obligations and external forces will alter your reading mood or your time to read. Several books I ended up reading to the point I could recall a bunch of information, then took to writing my review. I will finish reading those books in the next month or two, don’t worry.

Would I do Spooktober again?

Yes, I absolutely would. Now that I know the best way to tackle a month of posting and the weeks of reading leading up to it, I would definitely take on a challenge like this again. It gives me the chance to read a wider range of books than I usually would and it gets me thinking more about reviews. How do I really want to describe this book? What words have I already used lately? Can I find another way to express this feeling or thought? It’s a great exercise in writing and a reminder to proof read before posting.

What would I do differently in 2025?

I would start by finding a quartet or series and line them up for my Sunday posts. Sherlock Sundays was a fun and easy set of reviews to get through because they had their shared foundations of being Sherlock Holmes novels from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I knew what to post, when to post, and I could read them weeks in advance. When you can find threads like this, take it and run with it because it makes the whole project a lot easier. Four posts done before the month begins is no small feat, and pairing that with my normal Saturday discussions meant I had eight posts planned well in advance. If I really wanted to, I could have written all my discussion posts up before the month as well. The reasons I didn’t this year were that one had to do with postgrad studies ending and another was an author recommendations post – waiting until the day before to write this one up gave me the opportunity to read so many more books and authors than I otherwise would have included in the post.

Another thing I would do, if possible, is link books together based on themes or genre and post them on the same days. Trying to balance out the list avoid doubling up on historical fiction murder mysteries in a week is difficult when you’re only a few days out (as I found out during that uncertain arrival period). By planning ahead of time to have, for example, Horror Tuesdays, I can read the minimum number of books in advance and pick an extra in case I DNF one before the crunch time really kicks in. We are eleven months out so i won’t be thinking about this too hard just now, but knowing numbers in advance is instrumental in finding balance in my casual monthly reading.

My parting advice for anyone thinking of partaking in such a reading challenge as daily posting is this: know your limits. While it can be fun and expand your reading horizons, it is a lot of work. I am able to do this largely because of my lack of other commitments. I read in my free time because I enjoy reading. I can get a solid number of books read in a month because of my relatively fast reading speed. If you know you have commitments that take up your free time, or you take longer to read than the average reader, give yourself more time by starting earlier. Start your reading two months in advance, or even three, and increase your monthly reads to a number that is still achievable. You don’t want to be hit with burnout before the month has even started.

If you have done a similar reading challenge this year, let me know how it went. Did you enjoy the process? What advice do you have for those thinking of taking on such a commitment?