Friday, January 1, 2016

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, 20142013, 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

1 comment:

  1. Wow, that's a lot of books! We read a few of the same, and you read several that I hope to get to next year! "Life After Life" was actually in my TBTB Secret Santa box, and I see it's one of the first books you read last year. Here's to a 2016 full of amazing books! :)

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