The Year on the Blog
A Big THANK YOU! to Our Readers & Followers
Together Laura and I have posted 101 book reviews (!!!!) since May when we switched our platform to WordPress. I love how easy it has been to connect with readers and other book bloggers on this platform, something that we were not able to do before. Thank you for all the likes, follows, and comments – it is always a thrill to get the notifications on my phone that someone is actually reading what I’ve written!
The Reading Challenge
Today I powered through 3 graphic novel volumes to make my (newly reduced) 2017 Reading Challenge! While the year started off with an adventurous and lofty goal of 75 books, I dropped it to my usual 52 mid-summer and trimmed it back further today to 50. While some may call it cheating, I call it realism. I might still his 52 this weekend, but my husband and I will be in Philly for the New Year, so I’m not holding my breath on that!
Why only 50 books? Life, that’s why. 2017 was my second full year working at my local independent bookstore as the manager and, I have to admit, it wasn’t a great year. We lost our anchor store in our part of the shopping center, had a lot of staff turnover, and lost out on our usual summer reading sales due to changes in our local districts’ curriculum. Not swell, but not catastrophic.
But customers still ask me what I’ve read, what I’m enjoying, and they seem to think that all I do at home is read, and I truly wish reading was all I did. I also find myself saying to them, I’ve read 35, 40, 45 books so far this year, but I only remember 3 of them. It’s true, my retention is terrible, and the original reason why I started this blog. I’ve loved many books and I didn’t want my crappy memory to keep me from recalling so many wonderful stories.
Each year I try to follow the POPSUGAR Reading Challenge – it encourages me to diversify my reading and with a lofty 50+ checkboxes, I feel like I’ve accomplished something when I’ve reached 30! It was 33 out of 52 this year and I’m feeling pretty good about it!
I’ll be taking the 2018 challenge as well and you can find it here.
This Year’s Books in Review
I’m a number cruncher. It’s my happy place. I run reports and create tables based on our staff picks at the store, so of course I have to do so for myself as well! I surprised myself, genre wise, this year, and also in the fact that I read a very even mix of fiction and nonfiction!
The Statistics
(all titles link to their reviews!)
Books Read: 50
Total Pages: 12,346
Average Length: 247 pages per book
Shortest Book: She Persisted by Chelsea Clinton at 32 pages
Longest Book: A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas at 705 pages
Most Popular Book Read (via Goodreads): The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Most Obscure Book Read (via Goodreads): Fictionally Fabulous by Anne Keenan Higgins
Fiction Titles (w/o graphic novels): 18
Nonfiction Titles (w/ graphic novel memoirs): 17
Consistently Favorite Genres
Graphic Novels: 18 titles
Fantasy: 11 titles
Young Adult: 9 titles
Historical Fiction: 5 titles
New Favorite Genres
Memoir/Autobiography: 4 titles
Sociology: 4 titles
Brand New Genres That I’d Never Read Before
Science Fiction: 3 titles
Poetry: 2 titles
Reading Predictions for Next Year?
What do I plan to read next year, you ask? Well, I don’t know. I’m not really a reading planner, I tend to just grab whatever I’m in the mood for when I want to start a new book and, as I’m sure you’ve gathered from these reviews, that tends to vary greatly.
But my primary goal is to read more books by non-straight-white-males. To read more books by women, more books by people whose life experiences are different than mine. The year will probably start with a decent amount of non fiction and I hope to eventually finish All the Light We Cannot See and Nevernight!
Celebration of Books 