As 2014 retreats and 2015 stands before us, I thought it was time for a review of 2014 and a look at 2015.
I'm quite happy with this year. I'm glad I decided to cut right back on challenges. I no longer felt the pressure that comes with having to read something rather than wanting to. Let's face it, I'm not in school any more, I don't need a prescribed reading list!
This year I read a total of 103 books - 3 more than my goal! Yay me! You can see the whole list here. June and December were my best months with a total of 12 books in both months. January, April and November were my slackest with only 5 books. The stats for my 103 books are as follows:
Kindle - 35
Book - 50Audio book -17
Graphic novel - 1
Fiction - 89
Non-fiction - 14
Library - 46
Own - 53
Borrowed (non library) - 4
Female Author - 53
Male Author - 53
Australian Author - 41
New to Me Authors - 51
A friend of mine posted this blog post from Erratic Project Junkie . I kind of like the idea of using the tournament of books idea to work out your book of the year. I'm not going to show you a pic of my tournament, as it was done in a hurry and is kind of confusing. Any way, when I did do it, I came down to a choice between Breath and The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It was hard to choose between the two - we all know of my love for Tim Winton, but Neil Gaiman was a new wonder for me in 2014. In the end I had to give it to Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane. I highly recommend it.
I only participated in two challenges this year, one of my own and one from Little White Dove.
Little White Dove challenged us to read 5 books that had been on our TBR list forever. My five were:
1. Brave New World - Aldos Huxley - completed 12/1/2014
2. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - completed 10/6/20143. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot - completed 18/2/2014
4. The Help - Kathryn Stockett - completed 24/2/2014
5. Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris - completed 17/7/2014
As you can see I read all of my 5 and enjoyed 4 of them. I completed the challenge on July 17.
My second challenge this year was my own 100 Best Book List Challenge. The idea was to take a Best Book List and read 10 books from it. I managed 8, completing the 9th book (Middlesex - review to come) on New Year's Day - so I'm counting it! I bombed out in the war category, completely unable to read The Iliad. I'm rolling this challenge over for 2015 with the idea of reading another 10 - one from each category. The books I read for this challenge were:
Sci-Fi - Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Australian - My Brilliant Career - Miles FranklinYoung Adult - The Arrival – Shaun Tan
Humorous - Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedoris
Fantasy - American Gods – Neil Gaiman
Classic - Dracula - Bram Stoker
Crime - And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie
Love - Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami
General Fiction - Middlesex – Jeffery Eugenides
So what does 2015 hold? Again I'm aiming for at least 100 books read. As I've already said, I'm going to roll the Best Book List Challenge over. If Miss Dove comes up with another challenge I'll most probably jump on board. Finally I'm going to see how many I can tick off this list.
I'm not going to aim to tick every box, but I will be interested to see which boxes I can tick.
What about you, what challenges or goals are you setting for yourself this year?
