The End of Year Wrap Up

It's the New Year's Eve and I am finally ready to look over the year of reading and see what happened.

In January, I set myself 4 reading goals. The first one was to read 45 books this year and I almost met it with a grand total of 44 books read. The second goal was to read at least 2 non-fiction books and I accomplished that with Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and Food Rules by Michael Pollan being two such books. The third goal was to read more science fiction. I ended up reading about the same amount as last year ending with 6 science fiction novels this year. And the last goal that I met wholeheartedly -- having fun reading is not too difficult :)

Out of the 44 books I read, the following 6 are the ones I enjoyed the most:

1. The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson
I've read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest this year. The last book in the series actually ended up being my favorite out of the three and probably out of all the books that I read this year. I would certainly recommend this series to anyone who hasn't read it yet. The movies are very well done too, I watched the first two and will be looking out for the third one in January on Netflix.

2. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi - review
Unsurprisingly, this dark futuristic science fiction novel got both Hugo and Nebula awards. A very well written apocalyptic fiction that mesmerized me and had everyone else raving about it too.

3. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery - review
It may be a little strange to put a book I have read before into my top reads, but re-reading the Anne of Green Gables novels was such a pleasure that I want the books to be on the list. These books are so simple and charming that reading them is just like drinking a big cup of hot chocolate in a warm snuggie on a snowy day. Mmm.

4. Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey - review
An outstanding coming of age story by Jacqueline Carey who just doesn't disappoint with a new world and a new interesting heroine. At this point, I just buy any book with Carey's name on it.

5. The Magicians by Lev Grossman - review
A powerful fantasy debut novel -- at the start it is very reminiscent of Harry Potter with a rather adult continuation. It may have been my favorite book this year if I had enjoyed the second half of the story as much as the first half. Nevertheless, definitely a very well written and impressive fantasy novel.

6. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins - review
My favorites list would have only been 5 entries long if I hadn't stayed up till 6:30 in the morning reading The Hunger Games. A fun fast read for YA, but I have seen many other book reviewers read it and enjoy it.

Most disappointing book this year was actually Black Magic Sanction by Kim Harrison. It was one of the books I was looking forward to reading at the beginning of the year. However the repetitive nature of Rachel's misadventures and her deteriorating morals have sent me in somewhat of a funk over the series. I am not sure I will be picking up any further books unless there's a shift to this series.

Some more random statistics on this year's reading:

I've read books by 17 female authors and 16 male authors. A pretty even ratio this year! Last year, the ratio was heavily skewed towards the women.

I ended up reading 13 2010-releases, 9 2009-releases, and 8 2008-releases. The oldest release I've read was Anne of Green Gables which was first published in 1908.

I've distributed my reading across genres quite a bit with the following counts:
- 10 fantasy novels
- 6 mystery novels
- 6 science fiction books
- 5 young adult books
- 4 children books
- 3 steampunk novels
- 3 nonfiction books
- 3 urban fantasy novels
- 2 historical fiction books
- 1 romance
- 1 horror novel

I wrote a total of 61 blog posts including this one. And according to analytics had 1,946 unique visitors on the site.

Thanks to everyone who's stopped by this year and happy new year to you all!