Sunday, January 1, 2012

2011 Book Roll

It's probably wrong that I'm taking the time to write this post when I have yet to write Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Hunger Games posts... But I've been waiting to do this all year.

I joined the Goodreads.com 2011 Reading Challenge with a goal of 50 books. I was then inspired by the lovely Nina Badzin to read a book a week. I had no life at the beginning of 2011 and was burning through books at a rate much faster than one a week so I decided to really challenge myself and upped the goal to 100 books. I was right on target until about October. Life got busy, book club books slowed me down, Game of Thrones really slowed me down and I burnt out. I think during the entire month of October I finished all of one book.

To offset that between December 26th and 30th I read 5 books, bringing my total for 2011 to 88 books. In addition to that I discovered books on tape... or more appropriately books on MP3. I listened to a total of 20 books. So you might say I exceeded my goal... Although I'm not convinced that listening to a book counts as "reading" a book.

So here you go the 88 books I read in 2011:







I keep getting asked which was my favorite and what I'd recommend and those are such hard questions to answer because there are so many good qualities to almost all of the books I've read. But I've tried to pick some category winners:

Least Favorite Adult: Follow the River or Tinkers.
Least Favorite Young Adult: the entire House of Night series
Best Adult Paranormal Series: Fever
Best Young Adult Paranormal Series: Mortal Instruments or Vampire Academy

If I had to choose an overall favorite: Hunger Games
Honorable Mentions: Divergent, The Graveyard Book, and The Giver

Honestly as I look over the book covers I loved so many of them and depending on your genre preferences I could recommend 95% of them to one person or another. It makes me sad that I can't include ALL of them on my favorites list.

I'm going to aim for a goal of 52 books in 2012. I don't think I'll have a problem reaching that goal but I do plan on reading at least 8 classics and 2 non-fiction. I'd love to hear about your 2011 reads and plans for 2012!

Happy New Year... or as Lanna says Have a New Year! 

3 comments:

  1. I'm so impressed with your reading pace. But also with that gorgeous graphic of all the books! I don't know how to make that.

    I think Game of Thrones counts for SEVERAL books. I mean, come on!

    I thought you'd appreciate that someone found my blog today with this search term: "How to end obsession with Hunger Games." Lord knows I don't have the answer!

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  2. Thanks Nina! The graphics are from Goodreads! The reading challenge page created it and I just photoshopped it into submission!

    And that has to be the BEST search term EVER! Although why would you want to end your obsession?

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  3. I'm laughing over the "end your obsession with hunger games." Yeah right! :D

    I am always amazed by your reading lists. I don't have goals that I really am pressing to accomplish, but I do have a few books lent to me that I want to read: The Help and The Feminine Mystique. I also plan to re-read the Hunger Games before the movie. And I'd like to read that Mortal Instruments series.

    My main goal is read some of the Bible everyday. :)

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