2017 Review - Looking Back on My Reading Year

This year has been pretty steady for me, but only when it comes to reading.  My actual blogging has taken a backseat, which is very much due to the year that I've had and my changing feelings on reviewing/blogging about books.  But that's for another time and another post; let's look at all the books I managed to read in 2017!

Lucky for me, (as I am lazy and bad at making graphics), Goodreads made a handy "My Year in Books":

So I read a total of 69 books this year with a total of 20,666 pages.  The average length of my books was 300.  This makes sense as I read mostly YA, which is around 300-350 pages per book, typically.

I know for some people out there, 69 (which is a horrible number to end on) is not a large amount.  But for me, and my recent spats of slumps, this was a landmark amount.  Also, it's 14 books more than I read in 2016, so I'm glad my numbers are going back up!

Here are all the actual books:

So out of the 69 books I read this is how it breaks down format wise:

 ARCs - 4

Graphic Novels - 12

Novels -15

Audiobooks - 38

Then, the age-range was:

Adult - 7

Young Adult - 62

Finally, the genre breakdowns:

Non-Fiction - 2

        Memoir - 1

        Poetry - 1

Fiction - 67

        Contemporary - 25

        Fantasy - 22

        Sci-Fi - 10

        Horror/Supernatural - 10

Some of this surprised me and some of it didn't.  I've always been a huge reader of Young Adult, but this year I didn't read any Middle Grade, which is unusual.  Fantasy has always been one of my favorite genres, but Contemporary beat it out this year.  I also read more Horror/Supernatural than I have in the past, which was due to my participation in the Spookathon (hosted by BooksandLaLa, Bookerly, and Paige's Pages).  

Overall, the biggest change in my reading this year was all the audiobooks I read.  With my move back home, I have a an hour drive back and forth to work, so I have a good chunk of time to listen to books.  I also finally got my Overdrive account to work on my phone, so I take advantage of that all the time!  It's just so much easier listening to audio, than reading a physical book because I'm so exhausted when I get home.

But I have found that the narrator and style of book makes or breaks the audio.  Not all books translate great in audio format, in my opinion (like any of the The Witchlands series by Susan Dennard; great books, too hard to listen to with the weird accent the narrator puts on).

And while I may not have given each of the books a full review, I did enjoy some more than others.  Looking at the whole list, I've managed to narrow done my top 10 favorites read in 2017.

In no particular order:

1. The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
2. There's Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins
3. Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older
4. Simon Vs the Homo-Sapiens Agenda by  Becky Albertalli
5. Still-Life with Tornado by A.S. King
6. When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon
7. One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus
8. Power Up by Kate Leth & Matt Cummings
9. Heartless by Marissa Meyer
10. The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

So that's it for my little look back on 2017.  I've set a new goal for 2018 of 70 books.  I'm going to try to add 10 more each year, until I'm back up to the 100 a year I use to read.  So far, I am two in, so I am officially one book ahead of schedule!

I hope your 2017 reading year was awesome, and that 2018 will be even more so! 

HAPPY READING!

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