 Hi there today on Typical Books. It is a wrap up for the year, an entire year. I haven't made as many videos because I haven't been reading as many books lately. So I want to talk about that aspect of going into 2024. I have been doing the 100 book reading challenge but the 25 book version of that because I'm a newbie and a bit of a wimp and I've been doing okay. I think I've read about 10 books. I realized today I needed to count them but we'll talk about a little bit of what I'm reading right now anyway and the next review to come up but 2024. I've been watching other Veebles wrap up videos and the one that stuck out to me most recently was Crystals from Fiber Artsy because I have a lot of the same sentiments. I want to chill and have fun but language learning is also part of the lifestyle goals I suppose for 2024. I'm not a big goal setter, hence my not doing very well with 25 books. I really thought I would have 25 books read by December but I have been embracing slow reading which I talked about in a previous video and really enjoying reading less books. So that's going to be a theme going into 2024. So the three overarching things I want to talk about today are reading and making more videos, podcasting because you know if you know I am a co-host of a podcast and this is technically a podcast as well if you think of it in terms of YouTube podcasting and I have them written on my iPad here, lifestyle. So that's a very small thing I want to talk about. I don't really talk about like lifestyle stuff because at the risk of turning into a lifestyle channel my husband has recently purchased me the most wonderful Margo Elena perfume and I'm not going to turn into a lifestyle channel but that sort of stuff makes the show right? Like we all have a life outside of reading books and it's our personalities that shine through and also dictate what we read and our opinions on it right? So a little more chill lifestyle and in Crystal's case on her video I highly recommend going and checking out everyone's 2024 plans and 2023 wrap-up videos but it really resonated with me to like chill and relax and embrace stress-free environments and maybe read a little less to live more life. So I have been reading a little less and I've been really enjoying what I've been reading so Alex E. Harrow's book Starling House. This was a book of the month club selection and I have another on the way that is remaining in its box because I haven't read 25 books yet. I did say I could receive them. I didn't say I was gonna unbox them and read them so I'm gonna like try and not read any other books till I've read 25 of them off my shelves but yeah Starling House was great fun. I really really enjoyed this and this will be the next review coming up on the show. Old habits do die hard. I am reading four books at once right now and one of them is an e-book. I'm reading Carney by R. St. Clair who you may know as Regina from Regina's Haunted Library. I'm also a patron of hers on her patreon and we all received the chance to read it. So far I've only read two books on my Kindle and one of them is Hog by Simula R. Delaney which I am not entirely finished but I've shelved for the time being because there were so many other interesting books that I wanted to get to like Skin Flex by Duncan Ralston having fun with that. Moth Woman by Nicole Cushing which I had mentioned in the previous video as well as the other one but this I didn't mention. It was in the pile but I didn't mention it because I have no novellas to really read. I had done a video about the novellas that I read in the last year and highly recommend them all. Death Follows. This is fun so far. I picked it up during work the other day at a slow moment and got a few pages in. So I might double check my shelves again for any other graphic novels that I haven't read yet because that is kiss and kin to a short read of a novella I think. But going into 2024 I do want to read less books. Maybe I will do some fun things like challenges of reading things that are already in this house because that's another part of this goal is to read more that is already here on my shelves and the shelves upstairs. I have at my disposal a very robust if not complete Junji Ito collection so my husband collects that. I can definitely pick up Junji Ito at any time which is of interest to me so maybe that will be something that I do this year. I wouldn't call it a goal because I talked about trying that maybe last year here in the house but I didn't really publicize that I was going to do that as a goal because goals goals are weird. Goals in me don't really get along. I do have a really good VC Andrews collection that I can always pick up off of as well as continuing to read all my layman so I have a lot of fun things to do that way that already exist within this house. As far as a real goal though like a goal goal I want to read more nonfiction and true crime because I really enjoy that last year for whatever reason I read a lot less nonfiction and when I finally got around to reading Naomi Klein's doppelganger I realized how how enjoyable it is that's so very me to get into something meaty and brainy and cerebral and learn new things even you know so I really enjoyed that. Oh I didn't learn much from doppelganger it was purely an enjoyment read an entertainment read think piece long form journalism kind of thing but I wouldn't mind learning new things too but true crime as well where you don't really learn much from true crime unless you're reading something by dr. murder lee meller of murder was a cased fame a podcast that no longer exists and citizen detective fame and lee meller himself of fame dr. lee meller is one of my heroes as far as true crime goes and of course kathryn ramsland two of my favorite true crime writers and doctors which leads me into the podcasting portion of the show as I mentioned I do co-host a podcast with my wonderful co-host west dead air knife at dead air splatter pictures net podcast and the reason why I always refer to it as dead air splatter pictures net is because there's so many podcasts called dead air but we've been around for over 10 years so it's not like we're going to change our name anytime soon dead air podcast or dead air splatter pictures splatter pictures dead air podcast however you want to refer to it I mean I think that Alexa and google do listen to all of those so you can call it whatever you want and we'll find us but yeah I take a lot of breaks and hiatus from the show that's one thing that I'm very bad for west is a lot more reliable as far as finding time to do the show but as he's pointed out on numerous episodes I do the editing so if I don't have time to edit there's there's no time to record right I do want to prioritize the show a little better in the next year or two and uh see how that goes because it's been doing really well and I want it just to do better so the other part of that for our podcast is to research a little better and this is sort of stuff that will trickle down into this show as well because I treat it as a podcast to a certain extent and even more so now that I'm doing sit down right standing up is a different feeling I don't know if anyone is a professional at this but sitting down is a whole different vibe as far as creating this particular show so if you can explain to me the psychology of doing a stand-up presentation of any sort of like news or entertainment or lifestyle content as opposed to sitting down what that that psychological shift is but anyway I digress I want to research better for the movies that we talk about on dead air podcast we don't research we don't script you know and I don't want to turn into scripting but I do want to have a few more salient talking points because we are pulling a lot of stuff out of a hat while we're recording it's not bad but it's nice to come a little more prepared and I'd like to come a little more prepared here hence me writing notes down today for recording this video I suppose now as far as podcasting I listen to a lot of podcasts and I've found out by looking at the pod antenna apps statistics page which I did not know existed I have a huge huge time vampire in my hands and its name is podcastia I listen to so many podcasts and I listen to some low quality podcasts and I subscribe to a lot of podcasts I don't even listen to anymore just because I don't know I just I don't know I like being subscribed to 50 podcasts I guess I don't know but there are a lot of very long podcasts that I listen to but I'm only like half listening to it there's some podcasts that have fallen out of favor because the personalities have changed on the show or the structure of the show has changed I do want to listen to more high quality podcasts leading toward ad-free content too so that'll probably increase my reading if I'm listening to less podcasts right I don't listen to audiobooks I just can't I'm one of those people that my brain meanders when I'm listening to fiction and I've been listening to a lot of really cool true crime podcasts that are largely ad-free so I want to continue that trend but just cherry pick some better ones of course listening to podcasts is a lot of my lifestyle I do a lot of coding as part of my work and it's nice to listen to something while I'm doing things that I could do on autopilot I don't want to fall asleep during my work or during housework and things like that or even athletic or leisure activities where I can listen to a podcast so I probably will still listen to lots of them but lifestyle and lifestyle changes this will be the smallest portion because I don't want to bore you with this sort of stuff but my biggest goal that is bookish is to read a book in french I've been taking french classes for quite some time I'm going to be enrolling in another level of french very soon and I've got a yonezbo book in french we have a clave barker book in french I have a kids book or two in french as well but novels I have two to choose from two very cool ones both I've read in english before which would help I think that will be my goal is to read one of those sit down and read one and comprehend it sometime this year so it may be a year from today that I actually achieve this but I'd like to read a novel in french aside from that I do want to wear a little bit better clothes now you may say Lydia you wear fine clothes it's you look normal and fine and I'm comfortable in my clothes and maybe you can tell I wear a lot of black and that's not bad I do want to insert some color into my wardrobe and that color is gray gray that I want to I want to buy more clothes that are gray and that's really that's a big thing for me I don't know if you really understand how big that is because I don't wear other colors really I have a little bit of brown and I do have some like heather gray and stuff but I don't really like it and it's not the right color temperature for me so I tend to not wear it and I think this almost counts as a color because part of the black is kind of sheer so that creates another color doesn't it that counts sheer black fishnet that's another color right maybe for 2024 I'll come up with some new merch we have shirts and hats and of course the very famous pillow cozy cozy pillow lace lace black lace that's it that's not black that's a different color there's different there's something else it's a pattern right okay it is not just black right but gray gray gray can be pretty close to black I think I'll be okay with that and it can be pretty far from white so yeah I'll be introducing maybe some colors for my wardrobe so we'll just see I don't know how that goes I think it's a fun it doesn't be a fun hobby and to round it all out less social media I've had a few of my closer friends mention how I don't go on social media much I'm not that person that is constantly posting or that if they post something they're pretty sure I won't see it on social media and that's very true and I am pretty responsive though so if someone messages me on social media I am pretty responsive up to this last month I've removed most apps off of my phone about two months ago that began and the first one was facebook and then of course discord left and discord has gradually left most of my things and I still use it for a few little things but I don't use it very much at all but yeah Twitter will probably be leaving soon because it's just annoying even though I kind of like some of the things that these apps bring to the table and Twitter for the most part I like more than a lot of the other ones I love Instagram and I have no problem with it it will probably remain on my phone forever I really like it I want to grow to like threads but I just don't like social media in general so there's no point for me having any of these things Reddit may be hard to let go but Reddit is toxic af and you know Goodreads I don't have the toxicity problem on Goodreads I just don't use it very often Letterbox I wanted to use for the podcast I rarely ever use it so I might take all of that off my phone I already have all notifications off and have for a very long time a lot of all of these things come down to stress relief for a lot of people for me it's distraction relief and I don't want things whizzing and winging and bleepin and bloopin and flashing on my phone in my face or in my house or in my desk none of that I really dislike it and always have I had maybe some very stress worthy things happen when I was around turning 30 years old and ever since then I really put my foot down on comfort time management and happiness stress relief I don't do things that will stress me out I simply don't it was my decade of no and then I entered a decade of yes unfortunately so I mean the stress started to ramp up a little bit but I've always been very wary of it and I maybe someone that isn't very susceptible to burnout because I see it coming a mile off and I start doing things to slow down if you've noticed I made less videos it's so that I don't crash and burn ever same with the podcast we may take a lot of hiatus it's so that we never crash and burn because I am terrified of burnout I do not like stress after you hit a certain wall your coping mechanisms shore up that wall to make sure that it's never breached again right so I think that's part of it so I'm gonna be reading quite a bit less I'm going to be making more videos so maybe more of these conversational sit down videos so I hope you enjoyed that over on patreon at bookworm central I had mentioned that I'm going to be doing more polls and that's something that I fell out of 2023 unfortunately I had a lot of fun doing them but I was reading too many books I think now that I'm reading less books it makes a lot more sense to have help with dictating what I'm going to read so I'll be turning to patrons at bookworm central again as usual and back here onto youtube for tiebreakers and maybe to help decide book of the month club because sometimes the book of the month clubs aren't always the best choices or it's books that I don't know I haven't read or haven't read reviews on and maybe you have so I'm going to be using the polls feature here and the community posts feature to do that again so that'll be coming back that's something that's going to be coming back that changed last year and otherwise last year there weren't a lot of changes so if you think there's anything that you think I ought to be reading or something that you found at this channel that changed your reading life that you just love this year definitely let me know in the comments and as well as what you're doing for 2024 if you're shaking things up or if you like myself and like crystal and like a lot of other booktubers are just taking a step back reading less reading long reading deeply and chilling out let me know down there in the comments thank you so much for watching have a safe and happy holiday however you celebrate and whenever if you've already celebrated solstice happy solstice and of course have an oaky spooky day