Saturday, January 2, 2016

so before i had cricket, i had resigned myself to the fact that i would spend the next few years of my life without getting lost in books. i had heard, "i used to read, but then i had kids, and you know, you really can't anymore," so many times that i had accepted it as absolute truth. but then i had him and learned something about myself. i learned that a lot of the time, i will choose books over tv. i will choose books over movies. i will choose books over sleep. i will choose books over music (i went from music in the car to audiobooks. it's awesome.) it may take me longer to get through books, i may have to put it down way more often than i like, but i still pick then back up again (most of the time). i had kids, and i did not give up my stories.

so, without further ado, here's a post about my 2015 books. when i realized i was still reading, my goal was to read 15 books. i surpassed that, obviously.

my list of books that i read this year (mostly in the order that i read them in):
bold: favorites of the year
italics: this was a bad book and i read it so that you don't have to
*: disappointing (this doesn't necessarily mean that it was bad)
anything linked goes to my review of the book on goodreads

  1. Pwned by Matt Vancil
  2. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline *
  3. Dragon Run by Patrick Matthews
  4. Hey Natalie Jean by Natalie Holbrook *
  5. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
  6. Six Moon Summer by SM Reine
  7. All Hallows' Moon by SM Reine
  8. Long Night Moon by SM Reine
  9. Gray Moon Rising by SM Reine
  10. Falling for Hamlet by Michelle Ray
  11. Emma and Elsie Meet Fitzwilliam Darcy by Maddy Raven and Monica Leonelle *
  12. The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima
  13. The Exiled Queen by Cinda Williams Chima
  14. The Gray Wolf Throne by Cinda Williams Chima
  15. The Crimson Crown by Cinda Williams Chima
  16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by JK Rowling (reread)
  17. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling (reread)
  18. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling (reread) 
  19. Home by Clementine von Radics
  20. Mouthful of Forevers by Clementine von Radics
  21. Healing Old Wounds with New Stitches by Meggie Royer
  22. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (audiobook) (reread)
  23. Wings of Fire: The Brightest Night by Tui T. Sutherland
  24. The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart (audiobook)
  25. Love, Rosie by Celia Ahern
  26. The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet by Katie Rorick
  27. A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray (audiobook) (reread)
  28. Rebel Angels by Libba Bray (audiobook) (reread)
  29. The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray (audiobook) (reread)
  30. The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
  31. Deception Point by Dan Brown (audiobook)
  32. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
  33. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (reread)
  34. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (reread)
  35. Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephenie Perkins *
  36. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephenie Perkins (reread)
  37. Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephenie Perkins (reread)
  38. Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephenie Perkins (reread)
  39. Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl *
  40. Dramarama by E. Lockhart (audiobook) *
  41. Stargirl by Jerry Spineli (audiobook)
and i started but have yet to finish:
  1. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
  2. Beauty Queens by Libba Bray *
  3. Emotional Vampires: Dealing with People Who Drain You Dry by Albert J Bernstein
stats (only counting the completed books):

75.6% of the books read were YA or middle-grade books (this year i'm thinking of reading for my age group more)
7% were poetry 
29% were rereads
80% of my favorite books of the year were rereads
43.9% were standalone books

notes:

i feel like i have to talk about the seven realms series (the chima books). i had so many issues with the writing and the consistency and the wasted potential of the characters and the predictability and just so many things, but it took me almost all summer to get through them because i was traveling and mothering and stuff, and by the time i was ending the series, i was legit sad. after spending so much time with these characters, i had fallen in love with them. i read the books on the kindle app on my phone, but i feel like they now deserve a place on my shelves. i just can't bring myself to buy the series again when there wasn't much difference in price between the ebooks and hard copies. anyway, i wasn't sure if i should bold it or not because i did love them, but i also really didn't. 

isla was another one that i was on the fence about. i remember being over a third of the way into the book and thinking "there is no tension!" (which was actually very helpful because that's always been a problem for me (starting the book too soon) and i never really knew how to fix it but seeing it in someone else's work was a very a-ha moment) and then when the "tension" hit i couldn't get over how contrived and stupid the problem was. but i still liked it? i dunno. i reread the rest of the series to see if that changed anything, but it actually did more damage than good because it made me see how problematic things in the other books were, and those were my go-to fluff in times of stress and now they're ruined. sigh. 

overall, though the titles are every bit as embarrassing as usual (and by that i mean you should all wish to have my taste in books), i'm actually pretty proud of the number of books i managed to get through. honestly, it would have been more if i didn't drag out the bad books because i refused to just put them down but couldn't seem to pick them up either. next year i'm hoping to branch out a bit. i'm also planning on getting through the books that i keep buying but not reading. my to-be-read list is getting a bit ridiculous. i think those two hopes may be contradictory.