My love of nonfiction continues! This year saw many changes in my bookish life, below are some of the highlights!
Nonfiction Book Club
This year I started a new book club! The bookstore I work at saw many new book clubs join the store – we went from 3 in January to 9 by December – we’ve tripled! And there’s room on the schedule for more next year! Of the 9 books we read for nonfiction book club, The Soul of an Octopus was definitely my favorite and I also featured it as a holiday gift recommendation at the store in December.
Goodreads Annual Challenge
I finished my 52 books of the year! It seems weird to only have “officially” read 52 books this year, since I “blurb read” hundreds every year. So I use my Goodreads account and challenge for the books I actually sink my teeth into. It’s fun to look at the books that I cherished the experience of reading, and all of the notes that I kept for them in my ever evolving and improving book journal!
The Book Journal
This is the cover for the newest iteration of my book journal that should be arriving any day now – it includes pages for ARC reviews and Edelweiss, blog planning pages, individual pages for every book I read, 50 fiction and 50 nonfiction, as well as all of the lists that I love to include as Bookish Tuesday features and can be found on the book journal page on here. It’s even been such a hit, each of my coworkers at the bookstore requested copies of their own and I’m thinking seriously about making and marketing it as the “Ultimate Book Journal” – or something like that. Stay tuned!
Books Read This Year
I made graphs this year! Surprisingly, fiction and nonfiction book numbers were the closest to 50/50 they’ve been in many years! I’m surprised I didn’t finish a single book in September… despite spending 5 days reading on the beach. I think I was reading too many different books, hence the higher October numbers.
Favorites & Goals of the Year
Reading all three books of the Nevernight Chronicle this year was a huge goal for me and while I still have about 20 pages left of Darkdawn, I’m considering it finished this year, whether I manage to stay up late and finish it or not! Range was another favorite nonfiction, but truth be told, after reading most books, I tend to forget them, so my book journal has been a constant companion in assembling this post! While I wanted to say I read and finished every book club book, Death in the Air is still sitting on my nightstand, 8 months after we discussed it, still waiting to be finished – but I think 8 out of the 9 isn’t bad.
I hope everyone had a happy reading year in 2019 and I look forward to continuing to talk about books and share recommendations in the new year – tomorrow will see my recommendations for books coming out in January!
Celebration of Books 