2019: A year in books

Ready for some bookish statistics? Come on in!

Statistics

Challenges: as many previous years, I set my Goodreads challenge to 65 books, an amount I easily used to read in a year… Not this one, unfortunately. With so many courses and exams, my reading has slowed down considerably and I fell short of my original plans: I have read only 45 books, of which:

Authors: I have read 18 books written by women (40%) and 27 written by men (60%). In previous years I have been closer to 50% each.

Formats: I have read 7 digital books, 14 audiobooks, and 24 physical books.

Languages: I have read 22 books in English and 23 books in Spanish. All the audiobooks were in English, as always.

Origin of the books: of those 24 physical books, 18 were borrowed from two public libraries, one was a classic epic English poem that the teachers of my literature course provided to print, and the rest came from my own shelves.

Genres: without getting into details, I have read 21 non-fiction books, 6 comics, 4 poetry books, and 14 novels.

Pages: According to Goodreads, I have read 11,840 pages. The shortest book was a short story by Stephan Zweig (75 pages), and the longest was the third book of Justin Cronin’s trilogy The passage (768 pages).

Other numbers: I have re-read one book; I have read 2 books together with a reading group; I have read two classic English poems; and I have read 2 books on writing in English.

Best books of the year

Among the non-fiction books I have read, I particularly enjoyed Becoming, Michelle Obama’s autobiography; Atomic habits, by James Clear; and Learning how to learn, by Barbara Oakley.

I re-read again The princess bride at the beginning of the year and that makes it, of course, one of the best books of the year. It’s amazing how this book ends up in the top list every year, ha! The great alone, by Kristin Hannah, also standed up among my fiction reads.

I have read a couple of classics that surprised me positively, taking into account my reluctance to pick up these kind of books. Evelina, by Frances Burney, was one of them.

Finally, I have discovered another favourite author: Julian Barnes. I borrowed one of his novels from the library and immediately read a second one. Now I want to read them all.

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I hope you have had a wonderful 2019, and I wish you an even better 2020.

Happy New Year!

2018: A year in books

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Cal Newport, Kristin Hannah, Mary Ann Shaffer, Natalie Goldberg, Nicholas Evans, Rosamunde Pilcher

It is that time of the year again.

2018 has been a wonderful year – many of the goals achieved, some wonderful surprises that have come right until the last day of December; I have moved into a flat where I can watch the moonrise, and I have spent time with my loved ones, who are all fine…

But let’s talk about books, because this post was meant to be a summary of my bookish statistics of the year. Ready?

I have read a total amount of 61 books, of which:

• 31 were written by women and 30 by men.
• 30 were in English and 31 in Spanish.
• There were 20 audiobooks (all of them in English), 7 ebooks and 34 regular books.
• 19 were books from the public libraries of my hometown and other places I have visited this year.
• Regarding genre, 31 has been non-fiction books (all of the audiobooks were non-fiction, by the way).
• 10 were comics.
• I’ve read 2 poetry books.
• 4 were re-reads.

I didn’t reach my Goodreads goal of reading 65 books, but it has been a busy year. I should start counting text books for the challenge!

*****

Best books of the year

I rated 15 books with five stars, and I am recommending you the following:

Deep work (Cal Newport): for those who are worried about the time wasted on social media and willing to improve their productivity.

Writing down the bones (Natalie Goldberg): you don’t need to be an aspiring writer to read Goldberg’s inspirational book. I actually read it twice this summer.

Firefly lane (Kristin Hannah): a wonderful story about a friendship, with relatable characters.

The Guernsey literary and potato peel pie society (Mary Ann Sheffer): I know I should have read this one long time ago, and now I know you were right: it’s wonderful.

The smoke jumper (Nicholas Evans): I picked this one in the library by chance, and I enjoyed every line.

Under Gemini (Rosamunde Pilcher): it’s not the book, but the author who makes me feel at home in her stories.

*****

I hope you have a very happy New Year with all the reasons to smile.

2016: a year in books

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Anna Hope, Fabio Volo, Jodi Picoult, Joe Hill, Kate Atkinson, Kazuo Ishiguro

So another year has passed and it’s time to review my bookish statistics – I love to do this every year!

In 2016 I read 65 books, just enough to finish my GoodReads challenge! Of those 65 books:

• 31 were written by women and 34 were written by men.
• 12 were “my own damn books”, meaning books I owned before 2016 started.
• 12 books were written by Spanish authors.
• I read 14 books in English.
• I listened to 16 audiobooks (all of them in English too).
• 5 were ebooks.
• I read 24 books borrowed from the library, thanks to the book club, but also because I’ve been browsing the library in search for short books to complete the challenge – I’ve discovered a handful of authors I want to read more of!

I will include more categories this year, such as author’s nationality, year of publication and fiction/non-fiction books, to make it more complete.

I’m really pleased with the amount of books I’ve read, and with the quality too: I think that we, as readers, know ourselves better every year so we chose reads we know we’ll enjoy. I have only read three books that I didn’t like or did not finished: one was a gift, another was a book club pick, and the other was my own choice.

Among the best of the year, I want to share with you the following:

I have read the two novels of Anna Hope this year, and I enjoyed both, but I fell deeply for the characters in The ballroom.

Never let me go was an unexpected favorite in my list: a sad story of love and friendship with a premise so hard to assume.

Jodi Picoult is an author that always brings up ethical and moral issues, and in The storyteller she asks if a sweet old man should be forgiven from the crimes he comitted in the past.

Daybreak is a book written as a diary in which a woman has an affair with a man, and it’s so well narrated that one just can’t believe it hasn’t been written by the protagonist, but by a man!

Life after life made me think that what we call “right” or “the best for us” sometimes brings unhappiness.

And finally, The fireman was a thriller that made me realize that I should read more books of this genre, because I have such a good time with them!

*****

Hope this new year 2017 brings you wonderful reads.

Happy New Year!

2015: A year in books

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What a pleasure, to look back at everything you have read during the last year! Here is my summary, regarding literature, of this year.

Numbers:

In 2015 I have read a total of 65 books. Alright, I’m reading the 65th right now, but I’m confident I’ll finish it by Thursday.

I read 16 books in English and 33 in Spanish.

29 books were written by women and 36 by men.

I read 24 non-fiction books.

I read 11 ebooks on my kindle.

I listened to 16 audiobooks, all of them in English.

 

Best books of the year:

It’s easy to know them if you read my blog, because I don’t review all the books I read; only the ones I like the most. So, in no particular order, the best are:

◊ As you wish, by Cary Elwes: well, this one is in order

◊ The unicorn road, by Martin Davies.

◊ September, by Rosamunde Pilcher.

◊ A short history of nearly everything, by Bill Bryson.

◊ Sparrow: the story of a songbird, by Giovanni Verga.

◊ The martian, by Andy Weir.

◊ The bookseller, by Cynthia Swanson.

Worst books of the year:

Fortunately for you, most of them are only in Spanish, but there were a couple of them in English you should know about:

◊ With every letter, by Sarah Sundin: I didn’t even review it here. The characters were dull and they were praying almost all of the time, so this was not my book.

◊ Go set a watchman, by Harper Lee: yes, I do think To kill a mockingbird and Go set a watchman can’t coexist. They are two different stories with the same characters, and that’s why it was not published in the 60s: because it’s not a second part.

Challenges:

Oh my! This is embarrassing, but I didn’t finished any challenge. Only the Non-fiction reading challenge can be considered accomplished, but I didn’t review ten books, so I can’t say I did it.

I didn’t even finished my own challenge about reading 20 books in English, you know 😥

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Well, it’s not that bad for this busy girl.

I don’t think I can read a larger amount of books in 2016, but I hope every one of them deserves to be reviewed, because that would mean I had a good time reading them.

May your reads for this new year be enjoyable!