Year End Reading Wrap-Up

345 books read - GOAL MET (goal was 300, so met and surpassed)!  Now, if you go over to the reading blog, you'll see far fewer books listed and I've only done one quarterly list, so click here to see the 2016 reads.  Here's the thing: among the unlisted are the picture books I "read" for MPOW's Mock Caldecott, while many more fell into the "you can't talk about this" category for the Book Award Committee.  Which is also, in its way, one of the reasons why I haven't blogged as much this year as in previous years.

So... here's the 2016 reading analysis (2015 numbers in parens):

• number of books read in 2016:  345 (309) 
• best month: December/52 (last year was also December with 49)
• worst month: tie between June and August/22 (April/13)
• average read per month: 28.75 (25.75) 
• adult fiction as percentage of total: 21 (17) 
• children's/YA fiction as percentage of total: 35 (55)
• Advance Readers Copies: 90 (191) 
• e-books: 0 (5)
• books read that were published this year: 300 (249)
• books that will be published in the coming year: 6 (22) 
• five star reviews (aka "Must Read"): 5 (30) 
• one star reviews (aka "DNF"): 11 (15) 

Thanks to Book Committee Books unread, Mt. Bookpile is at 287! And with another year of committee work ahead, it doesn't look like that will go down terribly far, but I'm going to try to keep it below 300.  As with 2016, my public reading goal will be 125 and 300 as my personal goal.  We'll see how that goes.

Notable quotes

Ruth believed in precycling. An evolution on recycling. She make use of things before people threw them out.

A Great Reckoning, Louise Penny 

PDQ Bach didn't plagiarize, he recycled.

Peter Schickele

Notes from Mt. Bookpile

A few days late, but there's been a lot (and I mean A LOT) going on at home. And you're just going to have to trust me on this, but I've read about 40 more books than are listed! Thing is, I'm on a book award committee and we're not allowed to publicly talk about our reading, even if it's just to say "hey, I read this" with no real comments or ratings. In other words, this year you're going to see a whole lot of older books or children's/young adult books mentioned and take it on faith that my adult book reading is keeping me very busy.   As always, reviews on the other blog.

Children's/Young Adult

• Girl Last Seen; Heather Anastasiu
• A Drop of Night; Stefan Bachmann
• Little White Lies; Brianna Baker
• Some of the Parts; Hannah Barnaby
• Once Upon a Dream; Liz Braswell
• Tell the Wind and Fire; Sarah Rees Brennan
• Don't Get Caught; Kurt Dinan
• Unbecoming; Jenny Downham
• Hour of the Bees; Lindsay Eagar
• The Secret of Dreadwillow Carse; Brian Farrey
• The Last Monster; Ginger Garrett
• Gorilla Tactics; Sheila Grau
• The Lie Tree; Frances Hardinge
• One Wish; Michelle Harrison
• Unidentified Suburban Object; Mike Jung
• Audacity Jones to the Rescue; Kirby Larson
• The Museum of Heartbreak; Meg Leder
• Burning Midnight; Will McIntosh
• Defender; Graham McNamee
• The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded; Jim Ottaviani
• Silence is Goldfish; Annabel Pitcher
• Every Exquisite Thing; Matthew Quick
• Kissing in America; Margo Rabb
• My Kind of Crazy; Robin Reul
• The Secret Language of Sisters; Luanne Rice
• Warren the 13th and The All-Seeing Eye; Tania del Rio
• The Way I Used to Be; Amber Smith
• The New Guy (and Other Senior Year Distractions); Amy Spalding
• Everland; Wendy Spinale
• Cici Reno #MiddleSchoolMatchMaker; Kristina Springer
• The Memory of Light; Francisco X. Stork
• Shallow Graves; Kali Wallace
• Highly Illogical Behavior; John Corey Whaley
• The Art of Being Normal; Lisa Williamson
• The Steep & Thorny Way; Cat Winters

Mystery

• Final Account and Children of the Revolution; Peter Robinson

Non-Fiction

• God Among the Shakers;  Suzanne Skees

Lazy Thoughts

Reading... nothing that really excites me just now.  It's a good mix of YA and adult books, but with the exception of known quantities (aka murder mystery series I've been catching up on) everything has felt a bit "meh"

Listening... to more classical music than usual.  I can play my iPod in my office, and classical just feels right.

Watching... the last of Downton Abbey and The Good Wife, two series that have definitely reached their last.

Following... nothing and no one in particular.  I'm looking for new and exciting, so anyone with suggestions should chime in now.

Uncorking... or, as is more pertinent this month, Steeping... a mint green tea.

Looking... at the melting snow outside and wondering what's going on with winter.

Lazy Thoughts

Reading... a whole lot of adult books that I can't talk about except with a few select others.

Listening... to Je rêve by Noir Silence.  It's been my constant earworm for about a month now.  No idea why.


Watching... anything that isn't the GOP or Democratic debates.

Following... all the tributes to David Bowie and Alan Rickman.  There's a third 69-year-old British man I crush heavily on, and I've got my fingers crossed I don't see his name any time soon.

Uncorking... a glorious Malbec Rose.

Looking... at The Herd and wishing I had their totally pampered life.