I’m a bit late to the game but Traveling with T and Estella’s Revenge are two of the fab book bloggers who came up with the A Month of Favorites event. They’ve been working it hard but it was T’s post about her year-in-review that piqued my interest and made me curious to see I’ve done this year. So, without further ado here are the bits and bobs of my reading life!
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Books Read So Far- 164
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Pages Read So Far- 56,166
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5 star books: 6
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4 star books: 85
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3 star books: 49
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2 star books: 15
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1 star books: 8
It’s pretty clear I don’t do a lot of 5 star books but that is largely due to the fact that I use Goodreads to track my stats and they call a 5 star book Amazing, which is just not a word I use a lot- unless we’re talking about Salt & Straw’s sea salt with caramel ribbons ice cream. That is AMAZING.
If Goodreads changed Amazing to Loved than my numbers would go up dramatically because there are a fair amount of books I love. And, yes, for some people this is splitting hairs but for me amazing would be beyond love. Weird, right? But there you have it.
Favorite 5 Star Book Not Released in 2014:
At the opposite extreme would be a book that many raved about but that I could not even finish. In blogland we call this DNF (did not finish) and for some wise folks life is too short to read things they’re not enjoying. I’ve struggled with that in the past, feeling as if I have some kind of honor code that means every book must be finished but this year I joined the LITS club and have been dropping more books (and movies) when I did not like them. Sadly, it was Joshua Ferris’ To Rise Again at a Decent Hour that did not grab me in any way. I tried but gave up less than halfway through- and I know a lot of you loved it. Mea culpa.
Month I Read the Most: September- 17 books
Month I Read the Least: January- 11 books
Longest Book I Read : No contest on this one and I loved all 1,098 pages!
Favorite Bookish Moments:
Going to some outstanding events and meeting Hillary Clinton, Cary Elwes, Richard Ford, and Lorrie Moore.
The Ferris was my least favorite book this year! And I totally agree with you on the Goodreads star ratings…I don’t do many fives, but I end up with a ton of fours. I think I’m going to stop rating books there in the New Year and just rate in my own spreadsheet because I really, really hate their star system.
I’m not even surprised- we seem to have pretty similar taste but it is reassuring to know you didn’t like it either because so many people did that I thought there must be something wrong with me.
I do have my own star ratings but just figure people use Godoreads- and I’m not even sure how much I want to tie my reviews to ratings anyway.
Best book I read this year – All The Light We Cannot See
Book I could not finish – The Good Lord Bird
Longest book I read – The Edge of Eternity ( loved every page of the entire trilogy)
I have All the Light We Cannot See but just could not get into it when i started it. I think it was the 3rd ‘war’ book I’d read in a row so gave up too quickly. I still have the copy and it’s on my 2015 list!
And yes, the Follett trilogy was awesome all the way through. The only problem? I wanted all 3 to ome out at once so I could remember every character’s family!
I really need to read the new Ken Follett series!
Yes! Lots of world politics!
You read so fast, Catherine. 164 books in a year is stunning! I dislike the star ratings on Goodreads and Amazon, too, and wish there were some other way.
I am able to read quickly, Cynthia, but I am thinking i need to cut back a bit in 2015. Too much pressure, not enough joy is not good for reading!