In 2017 I read 127 books, broken down into 34,396 pages. My Goodreads goal was 104, or 2 a week. I exceeded that by reading one book every Saturday in the late fall, as a way to decompress after a stressful work week! I can't give a reason for my months with especially low numbers, except I feel like I fell into a lot of reading funks this year, where nothing sounded good, or I couldn't get into something I had to read, or I was just wasting time playing on my phone instead (yeah, it happens).
My monthly breakdowns:
January - 11
February - 14
March - 11
April - 8
May - 15
June - 6
July - 9
August - 7
September - 9
October - 6
November - 13
December - 18
My broad genre breakdowns:
Young Adult - 54
Middle Grade/Elementary - 28
Nonfiction (adult and children) - 19
Adult Fiction - 26
Picture books not included, since I keep track of those on my son's Goodreads page.
I read 20 books for review. This includes books I was sent to review for the blog, as well as books I review for the Memphis Public Library's Teen Bookletters. I started reviewing for this newsletter in May. You can sign up for these reviews (and others) here.
I only re-read 4 books this year. I feel like that is really great for me, even though I haven't kept stats like this in previous books. I used to want to re-read my favorites so often, I limited myself to reading them only once every year. I guess I have been cutting down on that, to the point that I only re-read a few, and at least 2 of those were because I was reading the next book in a series and needed to re-read the first to get back in the series groove.
I didn't do so well with my Reading Challenge. I hardly even attempted any of the classics, but read 6 of the diverse reads. I actually read a lot of diverse books this year though, like The Hate U Give and Dear Martin, among others. So the challenge to read more diverse books was a success, and I plan to keep this up in 2018. As far as actually accepting any other challenge, though - I'm going to pass. Even as a bookworm, I have balked against required reading and either trudged through, or gone to Cliffs Notes (I admit it!). So as an adult, giving myself required reading beyond books I am required to review is just... not something I'm going to do this year. I can challenge my reading in other ways. I'm going to stick with one broad goal of 115 books as a Goodreads challenge.
How was your 2017 in books? Do you have goals for 2018's reading life?
