The Year on the Blog
A Big THANK YOU! to Our Readers & Followers
This year has been a bit of an up and down reading year (September and October were nearly entirely lost), we posted all of our “backlogged” reviews from previous years and have completely transitioned to WordPress from our old platform – everything that we reviewed before is now here! The connections gained with fellow book lovers has been amazing – the kindness of strangers is incredible in the book world. But I guess, when you’re talking about a mutual love of books, you’re never really strangers! So a big thank you to all of our wonderful (fellow) readers!
The Reading Challenge
This year I set a modest 52 book challenge for myself. In August I was way ahead, like ten books or something, which never happens, so I thought about changing it, but with all the family changes in September (see In Memory of My Favorite Reader for details), I didn’t really finish any books in September and most of October. So finishing with more than 52 books was the goal, but I decided not to stress about it too much. My total for the year: 58 – not too shabby! As for the PopSugar Reading Challenge, I didn’t do too badly – results here.
I’ll be taking the 2019 challenge this coming year and you can join in 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! Results of this year’s reading are as follows:
The Statistics
(all titles link to their reviews!)
Books Read: 58
Total Pages: 14,840
Average Length: 255 pages
Shortest Book: We Should All Be Feminists
Longest Book: In the Garden of Beasts
Most Popular Book Read (via Goodreads): The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Most Obscure Book Read (via Goodreads): I Know a Woman
Books by Female Authors: 34
Books by Female Minority Authors: 4
Books by Male Authors: 13
Books by Male Minority Authors: 3
Fiction Titles (w/o graphic novels): 14
Nonfiction Titles (w/ graphic novel memoirs): 41
Graphic Novels: 5 (4 of which were Giant Days)
Audiobooks: 32
Average Rating: 8 out of 10
Top Genres of 2018
Memoir/Autobiography: 18 books
Essays: 13 books
Sociology: 10 books
New Favorite Authors
Jenny Lawson – Let’s Pretend This Never Happened & Furiously Happy
Alyssa Mastromonaco – Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?
V. E. Schwab – A Darker Shade of Magic
Still Favorite Authors
Anthony Bourdain – Kitchen Confidential
Sarah J. Maas – A Court of Frost and Starlight
Agatha Christie – The Body in the Library
Reading Predictions for Next Year?
Towards the end of the year I started to crave fiction once again. Who knows? Maybe next year will be closer to a 50/50 split for nonfiction and fiction, maybe I’ll continue on this new nonfiction path – I find my reading interests woefully difficult to predict!
Celebration of Books 
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