Like every year, I would like to show you what I’ve read during the last twelve months.

pile of books

Last year was the first one I participated in the 2013 Reading Challenge on Goodreads: I pledged to read 85 books, but in the end I didn’t get the challenge because I read a lot of them in English, as you’ll see in a moment, and I’m a very slow reader in this language (very-very slow).

I’ve finally read 76 books in 2013 and I’m planning to read a lot of them in English in 2014 too, so this year the challenge will be for 75 books. Fingers crossed!

Of those 76 books:

  • 36 were written by women and 40 by men.
  • 25 were written by authors whose mother language is Spanish.
  • 27 were in English; 3 of them were actually audiobooks, my first audiobooks in English!
  • 18 were on my To-Be-Read Pile since 2012.
  • I read 6 non-fiction books.
  • 3 of them were compilations of short stories.
  • I’ve re-read 6 books; the three audiobooks I mentioned above are among them.
  • I read 23 books on my kindle.

Now a book for each category:

  • The author I read most books by was Arturo Pérez-Reverte: 3 books.
  • A book I read twice in the same year: Lord of the flies; I read it in Spanish and English for the exam, and I didn’t like it that much!
  • The shortest book: Territorio Comanche, by Pérez-Reverte (110 pages).
  • The longest book: Under the dome, by Stephen King (1,130 pages).
  • A book that made me cry: The snow girl, by Eowyn Ivey.
  • The tenderest book: The incredible story of Henry N. Brown, by Anne Helene Bubenzer (it will be published in English in 2014).
  • The scariest book: The passage, by Justin Cronin.
  • The funniest book: Miss Pettigrew lives for a day, by Winifred Watson.

The worst books of 2013

worst 2013

One hundred years of solitude (Gabriel García Márquez): the world is divided into two kinds of people; the ones who think that García Márquez should have written a novel after the draft, instead of publishing directly the draft itself, and the ones who, for an unknown reason, like this novel.

The end of the summer (Alex Smith): I read it because it was for free on Amazon. I obviously made a mistake.

The best books of 2013

best 2013This is the list of the books I liked most, but not all of them have been published this year:

All creatures great and small (James Herriot): what a lovely book! These are the real anecdotes of the author’s first years as a rural vet, and it has been the second time I read it.

English Creek (Ivan Doig): this author is one of my favourites, and his stories are always special. Don’t miss how life in Montana was like at the beginning of the last century.

The life list (Lori Nelson Spielman): my first Netgalley read was awesome and I enjoyed every page.

The snow child (Eowyn Ivey): the atmosphere of this book is what made it unforgettable; the author describes very well the tough life of the first settles in Alaska, mixed with a magical story.

The passage (Justin Cronin): another re-read which has been one of the best of the year. This is not my genre, but it got me gripped from the beginning to the end.

 *******************

I hope you discover lots of wonderful books in 2014; I will try to do the same 😉

happy new year