Tag: year in review

2023 Reading Year in Review

Posted on by Dana

Favorite books of 2023 covers; titles are in the post below.

I read 61 books this year, but I cannot claim it was a standout year in terms of reading. Many of the books I read were not all that memorable, and some were not very good.

I usually like to compile some statistics about my reading. According to my Goodreads Year in Books, I read 19,146. I don’t know how it figures in audiobooks, so that may be pretty inaccurate. The average length of the books I read was 313 pages. My average rating was 4.4 stars, which surprised me since I didn’t feel like it was all that memorable a reading year. Here is a breakdown of genres:

  • 38 works of fiction (novels)
  • 3 poetry collections
  • 19 works of nonfiction, including 5 memoirs
  • 1 graphic nonfiction
  • 3 re-reads
  • 9 books that had been on my TBR for more than a year

Probably my favorite book this year was Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility. However, the following books also made my favorites list:

  • To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey
  • Country by Michael Hughes
  • Weyward by Emilia Hart
  • The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré
  • How to Be Perfect by Michael Schur
  • The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
  • Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho
  • Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
  • Above Ground by Clint Smith

Related posts:

Review: The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel
May Reading Update
Review: How to Hang a Witch Series, Adriana Mather

2020: Reading Year in Review

Posted on by Dana
Photo by Daniel Schludi on Unsplash

Happy New Year! I didn’t do my usual year-end recap yesterday, so I am sharing my 2020 reading year today instead. I read more books than I anticipated being able to, and though I was impacted by the pandemic, I was still able to read some. Here is a link to my Goodreads Year in Review. Some interesting statistics from the review:

  • I read 54 books.
  • I read 12,401 pages.
  • That’s an average of 233 pages per book.
  • My monthly page average was 1,033, or about 34 pages a day.
  • My shortest book was the children’s picture book The Many Colors of Harpreet Singh by Supriya Kelkar, which I read as part of a project for graduate school. It’s 28 pages long.
  • The longest book I read was a re-read of Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which I actually listened to via audiobook. The print version is 604 pages.
  • The most popular book I read this year was Never Let Me Go, which 974,851 other Goodreads users read. I re-read that book in anticipation of teaching it for the first time this year. My least popular book was Passable in Pink (another audiobook), which only 114 Goodreads users read.

Once again, my progress with reading challenges themselves was actually mixed. Yet again, I didn’t finish the Monthly Motif Challenge, but I did manage to surpass my goal for the Historical Fiction Challenge. One big struggle for me was blogging about what I read. After the pandemic hit, my reflections about my reading on this blog dropped off quite a bit. I am going to try to do better about blogging about my reading this year. 

The 54 books I read in 2020 break down as follows:

  • 29 books of fiction
  • 18 books of nonfiction
  • 4 books of poetry or verse
  • No dramas
  • 15 audiobooks
  • 12 re-reads
  • 1 graphic novel/comic book
  • 14  children’s books
  • 3 YA/middle-grade books

My favorites from selected categories with linked reviews if available or Amazon links if not—as I mentioned I wasn’t as good about reviewing my books this year (note: I’m not counting re-reads, only new-to-me books).

Fiction

Review of Daisy Jones & The Six.

Nonfiction

 

Review of Say Nothing.

Poetry

 

My least favorite book was John Harwood’s The Asylum. I didn’t review it here, but my review on Goodreads was

This one didn’t do it for me. I liked The Ghost Writer. If it was meant to be a parody of melodramatic Victorian fiction, then it was successful, but I’m afraid that it is meant to be sincere. It had a straight-up Scooby-Doo ending.

And that’s a wrap on my 2020 reading year. 

Related posts:

Books I Should Have Read in School Challenge
Blog Depression
Reading Update: Libraries and Lost Books

2018: Reading Year in Review

Posted on by Dana

Happy New Year! As I usually do on the last day of the year, I’m posting a review of my year in reading. I took the trouble to make an image of my Goodreads Year in Books and then decided not to post it here. I guess I’m fickle.

First, some data:

  • I exceeded my reading goal of 50 books by one and read 51 books total.
  • I read 15,291 words, which was 2,956 fewer than last year. But I probably made that up quite easily and then some with grad school reading, which isn’t counted.
  • That’s an average of 300 pages per book; last year’s average was 366 pages, so it looks like in general, more of the books I read were shorter. That makes sense to me, as I actively sought shorter books I could finish since I started graduate school. Longer books just seemed too daunting.
  • That works out to about 42 pages per day.
  • My shortest book was P is for Pterodactyl, which I didn’t review. It’s a children’s book with 32 pages. My longest book, which I actually just finished in 2018 and started in 2017, was The Complete Sherlock Holmes, which I read for a 2017-2018 reading challenge.
  • The most popular book I read this year was The Great Gatsby, which 3,391,871 read. It’s still so widely assigned in schools. I wonder how many students are posting on Goodreads? My least popular book was The Big Golden Book of Dinosaurs, which only 30 people read.

My progress with reading challenges was mixed. I only read 1 book for the Author Love Challenge. I just never did get around to reading the other James Baldwin books I wanted to read, but I am reading If Beale Street Could Talk right now. I came close to reading the 6 books I committed to reading for the Back to the Classics Challenge; I read a total of 5. Only one was not a re-read. I surpassed my commitment of 5 books for the British Books Challenge by reading 11. The Foodies Read Challenge was another close one: I read 5 out of the 6 books I committed to reading; 3 out of the 5 were cookbooks I read cover to cover. I also surpassed my commitment level of 5 books for the Historical Fiction Challenge at 7 books. I knew when I took on the Literary Voyage Around the World Challenge that I’d never complete it because the number of books minimum was too high, but I am proud of the fact that the books I read for the challenge represent 11 different countries. I almost completed the Monthly Motif Challenge. It shouldn’t have done so, but the one motif that tripped me up was Vacation Reads. I just couldn’t think of anything to count for that one. So I counted 11 out of 12 books I committed to reading. I only read 1 book for the R. I. P. Challenge this year. I committed to 4, so I didn’t do well, but that was right when I was starting grad school and looking for balance with school, work, and life, so I can’t feel bad about it. I finished the Chronological Sherlock Homes Challenge. I started it in January of 2017, so it was a matter of finishing the remaining stories. I committed to reading 10 books for the Share-a-Tea Challenge, but I ultimately gave up on that one because I just drink a ton of tea, but I don’t drink a lot of different kinds, so it felt funny to say the same thing every time. I only counted 2 books for that one.

Of the 51 books I read, the stats further break down like so:

  • 28 books of fiction
  • 16 books of nonfiction
  • 7 books of poetry or verse
  • No dramas
  • 9 audio books
  • 8 re-reads
  • No graphic novels/memoirs
  • 2 children’s picture books
  • 2 YA/middle grade books

My favorites from selected categories are below with linked reviews if available or Amazon links if not—I didn’t have as much time to blog when I started grad school.

Fiction

There There 

Nonfiction

Poetry

Audio

 

YA/Middle Grades

My least favorite books of the year were We Have Always Lived in the Castle, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, and The Big Golden Book of Dinosaurs.

And finally, here is my map, which includes the settings or home base of the authors for each of the books I read:

Here’s to a happy reading year in 2019!

Related posts:

Booking Through Thursday: Life-Changing

How to Read Novels Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster

So... What Do You Think?

2017: Reading Year in Review

Posted on by Dana

new year photo

Happy New Year!

Each year on the last day of December, I reflect on my year in reading. Here is a link to my Goodreads 2017 Year in Books. I do wish Goodreads would figure out how to make that infographic embeddable, but I suppose from their point of view, it’s as shareable as it needs to be, considering they’d like people to linger on their site.

Some data from this year:

  • I exceeded my reading goal of 46 books and read a total of 51 books.
  • I read 18,305 pages, according to Goodreads. I think that’s an all-time high, but I’m not sure.
  • I read 51 books, though I didn’t put one of the books I read on Goodreads. Since that book is not counted in this total, so my actual page count is about 200 pages more than the figure above.
  • If I count just the Goodreads total, that’s an average of 366 pages per book, which is higher than last year’s average.
  • It works out to about 50 pages per day. What that means is that I was reading a lot on some days because it’s not possible I read 50 pages per day.
  • My shortest book was The Slanted Life of Emily Dickinson at 96 pages, and the longest was an audiobook re-read of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at 870 pages.
  • The most popular book I read this year was 1984. Gee, I wonder why so many folks are reading that one. Yes, I understand the popularity index means that 2,331,238 people total read it, not that 2,331,238 read it this year. Conversely, my least popular book was The Transformative Power of Teacher Teams, which only nine people have rated. Not surprising, as it’s a nonfiction professional book (education). It’s a good book. More teachers should be reading it.

I didn’t do well with reading challenges this year. You can see on my 2017 Reading Challenge Progress page that I only completed two challenges.The challenges I completed are the R.I.P Challenge and the British Books Challenge. Most of the books I read for the latter were re-reads. I wasn’t supposed to finish the Chronological Sherlock Holmes Challenge in only one year—it’s due in April 2018—but I did fall behind. It’s unusual for me not to complete the Historical Fiction Challenge. I hope I will finish it this coming year. I am also a bit surprised I couldn’t figure out a way to read at least five books set in different European countries for the European Reading Challenge. I probably shouldn’t have signed up for two different backlist challenges, but I was hoping I would read a bunch of books on my TBR pile if I did. It worked a little bit, but if I had just selected one of the two challenges, I might have finished. Reading a total of 40 backlist books was too daunting a challenge for me, and I found it limiting when so many new books caught my eye as well. I also didn’t complete the Wild Goose Chase Reading Challenge. I thought the premise was fun, but I guess I wasn’t able to find books I wanted to read that fit the criteria.

Of the 51 books I read, the stats further break down like so:

  • 30 works of fiction
  • 17 works of nonfiction/memoir
  • no dramas
  • 1 book in verse (poetry)
  • 11 audiobooks
  • 14 re-reads
  • 3 graphic novel/memoir
  • 8 YA/children’s books

My favorites from selected categories with some linked reviews (not counting re-reads):

Fiction

Nonfiction

Graphic Novels/Memoirs

My favorites in the other categories are either already linked above (The Hate U Give, Long Way Down) or are re-reads.

My least favorite reads:

Here is my map, which includes locations for each book I read or author’s hometown (current or applicable to the book):

My reading was much more diverse this year than in previous years, and I can’t help but notice that people of color wrote all of my favorites this year, except for a biography of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

Related posts:

Reading Update: March 13, 2011

OK, I Lied

Wish #2: My Favorite Book

2016: Reading Year in Review

Posted on by Dana

new year times square photo
Photo by Anthony Quintano

As I do each year, I like to reflect on my reading year in a blog post on December 31. For the second year in a row, Goodreads has compiled a handy infographic with reading statistics, but they haven’t yet created a way to embed the infographic on a blog. It’s not exactly a true image file, so it’s not as simple as saving a picture. It’s a whole webpage. While it is possible to embed HTML on a blog, in order to make it look good, it’s a bit of work. Here is a rundown of some of the interesting facts (if you don’t feel like clicking over to Goodreads):

  • I read 11,997 pages, according to Goodreads.
  • I read 38 books. One book is not counted in this total, so I suppose my actual page count is about 200 pages more than the figure above.
  • If I count just the Goodreads total, that’s an average of 324 pages per book.
  • It works out to about 33 pages per day. Not too bad.
  • My shortest book was The Importance of Being Earnest at 54 pages, and the longest was an audio book re-read of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at 734 pages.

Of the 38 books I read, the stats further break down like so:

  • 28 works of fiction
  • 10 works of nonfiction
  • 3 dramas
  • 1 collection of poetry
  • 5 audio books
  • 6 re-reads
  • 1 graphic novel/memoir
  • 11 YA/children’s books

My favorites from some of these categories with linked reviews (re-reads not counted):

YA/Children’s

Fiction

Nonfiction

I’m not going to pick audio book favorites this year because all but one of them were re-reads, and the one that wasn’t was not one of my favorite books. I had a better nonfiction year this year than I typically do, and my fiction year was not as good as usual, though I did read some outstanding fiction.

My least favorite reads of the year:

Reading Challenges

I did not meet my Goodreads goal of reading 55 books. I had every reason to think I could do it, having read 62 books last year, but this year was much more trying. My grandmother passed away, and it made it very hard for me to read. I was already behind at that point. I stopped worrying about trying to make the goal really early on, so I’m not upset about it or anything. It is what it is. I didn’t have the worst reading year, but it wasn’t the best either. I stuck with some books I wasn’t liking for too long.

I didn’t complete any of my other reading challenges either, sadly. I enjoy reading challenges tremendously, but I don’t have the best track record in the world when it comes to completing them, let alone participating any more than simply reading certain books.

Here is my reading map for the year. I did manage to read some more far-flung locales than I typically do. I am hoping to do even better next year.

Related posts:

The Ballad of Tom Dooley, Sharyn McCrumb

The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail

The Rule of Four

2015: Reading Year in Review

Posted on by Dana

New Year Magic
New Year Magic, Zlatko Vickovic

On the last day of the year, I always like to reflect on my reading year. This year, Goodreads has created a really handy infographic with some interesting statistics from the reading year. I wish they allowed for downloading and embedding. I was fascinated to learn that I had read 20,722 pages this year. That particular statistic is not one I’d ever thought about before. I read 62 books, which is more than I’ve ever read in a single year before. That works out to an average book length of 332 pages. It’s also an average of almost 57 pages each day. I suppose Goodreads calculates the number of pages in each book I marked “read” to determine the total for the year, but I should mention that some of the books are audio books. Still, those should count as pages read, I suppose, because it works out to be the same thing. Sometimes when you are listening, it’s not so obvious how long books are. I mean, yes, it took me forever to listen to The Fiery Cross, but I didn’t realize it was over 1,400 pages long. No wonder! It took me so long to finish listening to that book that I have been somewhat reluctant to commit to the next book in the series! The Fiery Cross book is over 55 hours long to listen to, but the next one is 57 hours long!

Some reading statistics:

  • Total books: 62
  • Total fiction books: 44
  • Total nonfiction books: 10
  • Total drama books: 4
  • Total poetry books: 4
  • Total audio books: 16
  • Total re-reads: 15
  • Graphic novels/memoirs: 5

My favorite books of the year broken down into some random categories (re-reads not considered—I already knew I loved them or I wouldn’t have read them again):

Children’s

 

Reviews:

Young Adult (YA)

   

Reviews:

Adult Fiction

         

Nonfiction

   

Reviews:

Audio Books (re-reads considered if I have never listened to them before)

 

Reviews:

My least favorite reads of the year:

I know it’s bad form to lump a couple of classics in with that group, but aside from a few nuggets of wisdom, I didn’t enjoy reading either Candide or Walden. I usually like Neil Gaiman quite a lot, but Trigger Warning didn’t do it for me. I should mention that I didn’t rate any of the books I finished this year less than three stars, which for me means it was okay—not bad, just okay. I am no longer patient with books that I don’t like. I am much more likely to stop reading books that are sitting on two stars at about 50 pages in. My point is even my least favorite reads of the year weren’t bad.

Reading Challenges

2015 Reading Challenge

2015 Reading Challenge
Dana has
completed her goal of reading 52 books in 2015!
hide

I was able to meet the challenge of reading a book a week for the first time ever this year. I’m really excited about that because it’s been an unreachable goal of mine for some time. In fact, as you can see, I surpassed this goal by reading 62 books! Last year, I read about half that number.

I completed the R. I. P. Challenge by reading four R. I. P. books from September 1 to October 31. The books I counted toward this challenge included:

I completed the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge by reading 20 books from January 1 to December 31. I determined a book was historical fiction if it was set in a time that was reasonably outside the time in which it was written, either partially or totally. Thus, books like Song of Solomon and Revolution count because a substantial portion of both books is set in a time before the book was written. The books I counted toward this challenge included:

I did not complete the Reading England Challenge, having read 10 out of 12 books from January 1 to December 31. The books I counted toward this challenge included:

I did not complete the Literary Movement Reading Challenge, having read 5 out of 12 books from January 1 to December 31. The books I counted toward this challenge included:

Medieval—The Lais of Marie de France
Renaissance—As You Like It, William Shakespeare
Enlightenment—Candide, Voltaire
Romanticism—The Annotated Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
Transcendentalism—Walden, Henry David Thoreau

I stalled out after Walden took me too long to finish, and I couldn’t keep up after that.

I completed the Outdo Yourself Reading Challenge, having read 62 books from January 1 to December 31, thus outdoing my previous number of books read in a year.

I did not complete the Back to the Classics Reading Challenge, having read 7 out of 9 books from January 1 to December 31. The books I counted toward this challenge included:

In the coming year, I plan to have a Reading Challenges page so I can more easily keep track of what I’ve read. This post was very hard to write because I had to look all of this up. 😥

Finally, here is my map for the Where Are You Reading Challenge:

I wouldn’t have guessed this from the first six months, which was slow-going until I stopped worrying about a couple of challenges, but 2015 turned out to be my best reading year yet. I read some truly great books and returned to some favorites, too.

Related posts:

The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë

My Life in Books: To Kill a Mockingbird

Review: The Good Lord Bird, James McBride

2014: Reading Year in Review

Posted on by Dana

reading photo

2014 Reading Challenge

2014 Reading Challenge
Dana has
completed her goal of reading 30 books in 2014!
hide

I was able to complete my reading challenge of reading 30 books this year, but I did lower the number, as the last two years in a row, I had tried and failed to read 52 books. I am giving it another go this coming year. Is 2015 going to be the year I can finally read 52 books? We shall see…

Stats breakdown:

  • Total number of books read: 33
  • Fiction books: 31
  • Nonfiction books: 2
  • YA books: 5
  • Audio books: 10
  • E-books: 3
  • Re-reads: 14

I am most surprised about the large number of re-reads. Many of those were from the Chronicles of Narnia. The first time I read these books, I stalled out somewhere in the middle of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. This time I finished them all, and they were also all audio books, which accounts for the unusually high number of audio books as well. I didn’t realize, however, that I was re-reading so many books that I had read before. Only two re-reads happened because I was teaching the books (The God of Small Things and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).

Favorite reads of the year (reviews linked):

Least favorite reads of the year:

Reading Challenge Stats:

  • R. I. P. Challenge: I read one of the four books I challenged myself to read. I am chalking that up to having a new position and becoming accustomed to the resulting increased workload in September and October, which coincide with the challenge months.
  • 2014 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge: Completed with two books extra. I read seven books and challenged myself to read five. I still haven’t seen any word about the 2015 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. Hmm.
  • Foodies Reading Challenge: I didn’t even start this one. I had good intentions of reading some of the foodie nonfiction I have been meaning to get to for some time, but I didn’t do it.
  • Witches and Witchcraft Reading Challenge: I read four of the five books I challenged myself to read.
  • Postal Reading Challenge: A very cool challenge that I never even started.
  • Book Bingo Reading Challenge: I scored BINGO twice, so I am calling that one met. I challenged myself to score BINGO once, which was five books, and I was able to count ten books for this challenge.
  • Where Are You Reading? Challenge: No set number of books, but I mapped each book I read.

Related posts:

WWW Wednesdays—August 3, 2011

Review: Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, Stephen Greenblatt

Midyear Catchup Reviews

Renoir

Year in Review 2013

Posted on by Dana

RenoirAs I said in my previous post, I didn’t have such a good year this year in terms of meeting goals and challenges. I had planned to read 52 books, and I wound up reading 26, or about half of what I wanted to read.

2013 Reading Challenge

2013 Reading Challenge
Dana has
read 26 books toward her goal of 52 books.
hide

Boo!

Here is the stats breakdown:

  • Total number of books read: 26.
  • Fiction books: 23.
  • Nonfiction books: 3.
  • YA books: 7.
  • Audio books: 6.
  • Digital books: 10.
  • DailyLit books: 0.
  • Books reread: 9.

Favorite reads of the year (in no particular order):

Least favorite books:

  • [amazon_link id=”1419704281″ target=”_blank” ]Splintered[/amazon_link] by A. G. Howard (review)
  • [amazon_link id=”0545477115″ target=”_blank” ]The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle[/amazon_link] by Avi (review)

Favorite book meme of the year: Not that I participated all that much, but Top Ten Tuesdays. Again.

Favorite Reading Challenge: The R.I.P. Challenge, though I made very little progress this year. I was really in the mood for creepy books come fall, though.

Favorite Blog Posts (again, in no particular order, and not that I posted much):

I had a lot of fun with Harry Potter this year, but I stalled out in [amazon_link id=”0439358078″ target=”_blank” ]Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix[/amazon_link]. Here’s hoping I can pick that back up again, but perhaps dial it back a bit. The posts I wrote were loooooong.

Here is my Where Are Your Reading 2013 Challenge map:


View 2013 Where Are You Reading Challenge in a larger map

Related posts:

My Life in Books: Part One

State of Wonder, Ann Patchett

The Last Runaway, Tracy Chevalier

2010: A Reading Year in Review

Posted on by Dana

More old books...

This year has been a good reading year for me. Some reading stats for completed books:

  • Total number of books read: 40.
  • Fiction books: 33.
  • Nonfiction: 7.
  • Audio books: 4.
  • Kindle books: 16.
  • DailyLit books: 2.
  • Books re-read: 5.

My favorite books of the year in no particular order were

The books I liked least:

I completed several reading challenges. For the Everything Austen Challenge, I read/viewed the following:

Of these books, I enjoyed Persuasion the most, but truthfully, this challenge was one of the most enjoyable for me because I liked all of the books I read and the movie I watched.

I completed Carl’s R.I.P. Challenge for the first time. I read the following books:

I always enjoy this challenge, and I enjoyed all the books I completed for this challenge, especially Dracula, My Love.

I also participated in Carl’s earlier Once Upon a Time Challenge with a read of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

I read a lot of fiction about the Brontës this year and completed the All About the Brontës Challenge:

The Bibliophilic Books Challenge was a fun way to read books about authors or reading. I read the following:

The Typically British Challenge was a snap for me; as an anglophile, most of the books I read were British, but I counted the following for the challenge:

Last year I read 29 books and didn’t finish any challenges. Look for my reading goals for 2011 in a post tomorrow.

photo credit: guldfisken

Related posts:

The Heretic's Daughter

One More Reading Challenge

WWW Wednesdays—August 3, 2011