2015 Chapter

Happy New Year! I hope you were able to ring in 2016 with someone you love last night, be it family, friends, or a significant other. We actually celebrated with other people for the first time in a few years and it was a nice change. Far less sleep...far more fun.

As with every new year, this one brings with it a celebration of my "blog-iversary." I've been writing here for four years now. In that time, I have read and reviewed over 300 books. My favorite part of blogging has definitely proven to be the relationships I have built around books throughout the years. Thank you for being a part of this journey!

On Monday, I plan to talk about some goals I have for blogging in the new year. Today, however, I am taking a comprehensive look back at 2015.

To start, here are a few highlights from this year:

• I read 109 books! 
• I had right about the same number of page views as last year (~26,000). I would have loved to see this number grow some, but I also have done a better job this year not being concerned about numbers and focusing instead on quality connections and (hopefully) content.
• As of now, I have completed 47% of the 100 Best Novels challenge. I only read 12 this year, which is about half the amount I would have liked to. I need to seriously work on this if I want to finish before I turn 30 in 2017.
• I continued to grow the Read.Write.Repeat. Facebook presence (we just surpassed 200 likes!) and have had a lot of fun on Twitter. Like or follow if you haven't already! 
• I continued the monthly "chapter" posts and some off and on Movie Mondays.  
• I continued working with TLC Book Tours and even hosted a "TLC Week" at the start of November with a new book reviewed each day.. These are so fun and expose me to books I would likely never read otherwise. Thanks to Trish and Lisa for continually sending books my way!

For those of you who are more number driven, here are some stats for you. If you are interested in comparing these to previous years, 2014, 2013, or 2012.

Books Read: 109

Total Pages Read: 41,581

Average Page Count (per book): 381

Most Read Author: Kiera Cass & Suzanne Collins (3 books each)

Average Pages Read Per Day: 113.9 pages

Busiest Month: April (12 books)

Slowest Month: November (6 books)

And, finally, here is the full list of books I read in 2015, with links to each review. If you missed it, earlier this week, I named my Best Books of 2015. That's a list worth looking over if you want the very condensed version of this one!

The Definitive 2015 Book List

1. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
2. Toujours Provence - Peter Mayle 
3. Life After Life - Kate Atkinson
4. Holes - Louis Sachar
5. Everlasting Lane - Andrew Lovett
6. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
7. Shadows of a Princess - Patrick. D. Jephson 
8. The Twelve - Justin Cronin
9. Wave - Sonali Deraniyagala
10. The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
11. Seeker - Arwen Elys Dayton 
12. Half the Sky - Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn
13. Go Tell It on the Mountain - James Baldwin
14. Esperanza Rising - Pam Munoz Ryan
15. Bon Appétempt - Amelia Morris
16. Daughter - Jane Shemilt
17. The Sound of Music Story - Tom Santopietro
18. Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
19. A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh
20. These Broken Stars - Amie Kaufman & Megan Spooner
21. The Golem and the Jinni - Helene Wecker
22. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
23. Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
24. The Help - Kathryn Stockett
25. Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel
26. Parade's End - Ford Madox Ford
27. Mademoiselle Chanel - C. W. Gortner
28. American Wife - Curtis Sittenfeld
29. Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout
30. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress - Rhoda Janzen
31. The Running Man - Stephen King
32. The Bookseller - Cynthia Swanson
33. Madam President - Nicholle Wallace
34. The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
35. The Residence - Kate Andersen Brower
36. Delancey - Molly Wizenberg
37. Enchanted - Althea Kontis
38. The Sweet In -Between - Sherri Reynolds
39. The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern
40. The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger
41. The Apprentice - Jacques Pépin
42. Boy, Snow, Bird - Helen Oyeyemi
43. The Royal We - Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan
44. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? - Mindy Kaling
45. The Romanov Sisters - Helen Rappaport
46. Texts From Jane Eyre - Mallory Ortberg
47. The Jesus Cow - Michael Perry
48. The Wings of the Dove - Henry James
49. Searching for Sunday - Rachel Held Evans
50. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling
51. The Secret Rooms - Catherine Bailey
52. The Great Zoo of China - Matthew Reilly
53. Eeny Meeny - M. J. Arlidge
54. Searching for Dragons - Patricia C. Wrede
55. The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman
56. Balm - Dolen Perkins-Valdez
57. Alive - Scott Sigler
58. The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
59. Blindness - José Saramago
60. All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
61. Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
62. The Selection - Kiera Cass
63. For the Right Reasons - Sean Lowe
64. Paris - Edward Rutherfurd
65. Without You, There Is No Us - Suki Kim
66. The Elite - Kiera Cass
67. The One - Kiera Cass
68. The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins
69. The 5th Wave - Rick Yancey
70. Kate - Claudia Joseph
71. An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser 
72. The Little Paris Bookshop - Nina George
73. Fortune Smiles - Adam Johnson
74. Blue Plate Special  - Kate Christensen
75. Keep Moving - Dick Van Dyke
76. Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad
77. The Organized Kitchen - Brette Sember
78. Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
79. The Sisters of Versailles - Sally Christie
80. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J. K. Rowling
81. Provence, 1970 - Luke Barr
82. Coda - Emma Trevayne
83. The Underground Girls of Kabul - Jenny Nordberg
84. Tiger Heart - Katrell Christie
85. French Women Don't Get Fat - Mireille Guiliano
86. Sous Chef - Michael Gibney
87. Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell
88. The Indifferent Stars Above - Daniel James Brown
89. Mendocino Fire - Elizabeth Tallent
90. Unbecoming - Rebecca Scherm
91. The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
92. After Alice - Gregory Maguire
93. Between Shades of Gray - Ruta Sepetys
94. All the Stars in the Heavens - Adriana Trigiani
95. Food Whore - Jessica Tom
96. Hard Choices - Hillary Rodham Clinton
97. Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin
98. The Magicians - Lev Grossman
99. Russka - Edward Rutherfurd
100. The Dead Lands - Benjamin Percy
101. Jesus Feminist - Sarah Bessey
102. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan
103. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
104. Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton
105. Landline - Rainbow Rowell
106. Liar, Temptress, Solider, Spy - Karen Abbott
107. Tobacco Road - Erskine Caldwell
108. Light in August - William Faulkner
109. The Reason I Jump - Naoki Higashida