Review of 2017 Reading Resolutions

It's that time again! My 2018 reading goals will be going up soon, but first I need to take a look back at my 2017 goals. Here's what I wanted to do, and how I did.

1. Read fewer than 50 books from my to-read list.
Success! I only read 43 from my to-read list. I actually started to wonder how many of my books really came off my to-read list in previous years, as it might not be as many as I thought. I decided to keep tracking the books I read off my main to-read list again this year, as my list can sometimes feel like a bottomless pit and it's good to see the progress I've made.

2. Read some books over a thousand pages.
I read Don Quixote, Bleak House, and Infinite Jest, and I'm partway through The Stand. I also read some books on the longer end that weren't over the 1000-page mark, including Vanity Fair, The Three Musketeers, and The Brothers Karamazov.

3. Catch up on some classics.
I got through a ton of these, including The Picture of Dorian Gray, Crime and Punishment, Sophie's Choice, The Sun Also Rises, and Stranger in a Strange Land, plus the extra-long ones listed above.

4. Read something my sister recommends.
This year my sister picked You by Caroline Kepnes, which was a weird book that I can't say I really liked, but I appreciate that she got me out of my comfort zone a bit. I'd take another recommendation from her this year!

5. Make use of my personal reading area.
I did a pretty good job of this in the first half of the year, but I've gotten away from it. Mainly that's because I've been trying to get to sleep earlier, which means as soon as my son's asleep I get ready for bed, so that's cut out most of my evening reading time. My reading area is also right next to the bedroom door, so even if it's my husband's turn to do bedtime I can't read because I can hear them talking. Weekend naptime is my other downtime to read and I was taking a class on Saturday afternoons the last few months. We'll see if I can get back to reading in my special reading chair more regularly this year.

6. Read books on my new Kindle Voyage.
I've definitely used my Kindle a lot more this year since getting the Voyage for Christmas in 2016. We took a week-long trip to Mexico in May and it was glorious to have all the books I could want in one slim case. I still read on my phone more than on my Kindle since I don't bring my Kindle with me everywhere, but I like reading on the Kindle when I can.

7. Read book club picks more than a week in advance.
I did really well with this in 2017! I didn't always get them read a full week in advance, but having that goal meant that I didn't have any more situations where I was scrambling to finish the book the morning of. The downside is that sometimes my memory's fuzzy if it's been a few weeks since I finished it, but I've usually written enough key points in my Goodreads review that it doesn't matter.

8. Host a book club meeting in the first half of the year.
Success! I hosted in March. There's enough of us in the club that I shouldn't have to host again until late summer or fall of this year.

9. Comment on other book blogs more often.
I did really well with this in the first half of the year, and then in June Delicious Bookmarks stopped working, which is where I saved all the links for the pages I commented on so I could go back to look for replies later. I'd already switched all my other bookmarks to Diigo but kept my comment tracking in Delicious, and I don't want to have two separate Diigo accounts so I need to find a different site. I just haven't put in the work to find a replacement yet. Any suggestions?

10. Promote the Best of the Bunch linkup more.
This is the one thing I didn't do a great job with this year. One thing I did do was start enforcing that people who submit a post have to have a link on that post to the Best of the Bunch linkup, so no one gets free publicity for their blog without also publicizing the linkup to their own readers, but so far this has just resulted in people not linking up rather than adding a link on their own post. If you have any ideas of how to get more people to join in, let me know!

How did you do with your book-related resolutions in 2017?

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Top Ten Books Published in 2017 I Wish I'd Read by Now

I'm linking up with The Broke and the Bookish for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week's topic is "Ten Books I Meant To Read In 2017 But Didn't Get To." I've been pretty disciplined with my reading lately — I started off 2017 pursuing my goal of reading whatever I wanted, and then halfway through the year I kind of freaked out and started marching my way through the classics and bestsellers I felt like I should have read by now. Of my Spring TBR, Summer TBR, and Fall TBR, I got through all but four books, one of which I'm reading now and one that I chose to abandon. While I was clearing out my backlog, though, certain new releases kept popping up that I wish I'd taken the time to read when they came out. Here are the ones I most wish I'd read in 2017.

1. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
I keep seeing this on everyone's lists of books they loved in 2017, and it has a 4.33 rating on Goodreads after more than 54,000 ratings, so it's clearly resonated with a lot of people.

2. The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
I'm always interested in books that challenge me, and the blurb on this one — that the author was staunchly anti-death penalty until she started working on a specific murder case — fascinated me. I like that's a combination of a true crime mystery and a memoir.

3. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
This seems to be the most polarizing book of the year, and I want to know which side I'm on! I recommended it to a friend who was looking for his next Audible read because I'd read about the audio version using over 100 different voices, and he still isn't sure if he loves it or hates it but is already listening to it for a second time.

4. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
I honestly know very little about this book except it keeps getting high ratings from people I trust, so I'm interested to check it out.

5. Reading People by Anne Bogel
I read Bogel's blog, Modern Mrs. Darcy, religiously and listen to her podcast, What Should I Read Next?, so I've heard about her new book constantly, but I didn't make it a priority to read last year.

6. Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor
YA fantasy isn't one of my favorite genres, but it seemed like everyone was losing their mind over this book when it came out last year, and it still has a 4.39 rating on Goodreads almost a year and 21,000+ ratings later.

7. This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
This is one that Anne Bogel has recommended many times, and although she has declined to spoil what the "family secret" in the book was, I read about it elsewhere and now am even more interested in reading this.

8. Warcross by Marie Lu
This has been described as a more diverse Ready Player One, which I am all about.

9. When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon
This is another one that everyone seems to be raving about. I really need to make it a priority to get my hands on this one.

10. Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? by Alyssa Mastromonaco
I already have a hold on the audiobook for this one, which I've heard is well narrated by the author and a fairly quick "read."

Which books did you wish you'd read in 2017?

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Top Ten New-To-Me Authors I Read In 2017

I'm linking up with The Broke and the Bookish for another Top Ten Tuesday.

As I said in my wrap-up of favorite books, I did a lot of rereading this year (more than usual), and I also made a lot of progress through the complete set of Hercule Poirot mysteries. But there were plenty of great books by authors I hadn't read before, and I'd be happy to read more by any of these authors!

1. Angie Thomas
I loved The Hate U Give, and I definitely want to read her next one, On the Come Up!

2. Cynthia Hand
YA can be very hit or miss for me, but The Last Time We Say Goodbye was written with care and complexity. It looks like her other works are fantasy, which isn't usually my jam, but I might give one a try.

3. Diana Wynne Jones
Even though Howl's Moving Castle didn't rise to the top of my books for the year, I found it charming and enjoyable. I'd like to reread it with my kids, and maybe read the other books in the series as well.

4. Helene Wecker
The Golem and the Jinni was another one that wasn't an absolute favorite of the year for me, but it was well-written and just generally well-designed. I'll be interested to see if she writes another book as popular as that one.

5. Kristin Hannah
Even though I didn't love The Nightingale the way that everyone and their mother seems to have, I could still appreciate how well done it was and would try another one of her books.

6. Michelle Alexander
I wonder if she will try to tackle another work as ambitious as The New Jim Crow, but if she does I will read it. It's hard to find a nonfiction work this comprehensive that's also organized so clearly.

7. Mira Jacob
The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing was her debut novel, and hopefully it won't be her last!

8. Nina LaCour
It took me way too long to get around to reading Everything Leads to You. She has several other highly rated books, though my Goodreads friends didn't necessarily love them, so we'll see when I get around to trying them.

9. Octavia Butler
It took me a little bit to get into Kindred, but then I was sucked in and astounded by its brilliance. I very much want to read Parable of the Sower.

10. Tana French
I finally started on the Dublin Murder Squad series this year, reading In the Woods, The Likeness, and Faithful Place. I have a love/hate relationships with each of these books, but I already have a hold on Broken Harbor.

Which authors did you first read this year?

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Top Ten Favorite Books of 2017

I'm linking up with The Broke and the Bookish for another Top Ten Tuesday.

In years past I've broken up my favorite books into two different top ten lists, one for fiction and one for nonfiction. This year, though, was just not one of my best years for reading. For five months out of twelve I had no 5-star reads. My 2017 goals also meant I read fewer books than in past years. And I ended up rereading quite a few books, which (though excellent) I'm not going to repeat from previous years' lists. So I'm going to throw all my choices together into a single list of the top ten books I read this year!

1. American Hookup by Lisa Wade
This overview of "hookup culture" on college campuses could have taken an alarmist approach, but the author instead focused on making room for the voices of actual college students about the good, bad, and ugly of hookup culture. She provided historical and sociological context for the stories and synthesized them into topic areas, but overall did a great job of keeping the students' personal experiences front and center — which also made for a better and more interesting read.

2. Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour
I absolutely loved this unconventional YA romance. It takes places the summer after high school graduation, so while it has the voice of a YA novel, it doesn't fall into any of the well-known tropes of a "high school" story. There's a mystery, and a huge undertaking, and messages about family and loss and independence. I had tears rolling down my face at the end.

3. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
This book manages to be a fantastic dive into the issues driving the Black Lives Matter movement while also just being a great book, with relatable characters, funny lines, suspense, drama, and a surprisingly satisfying ending. I also love that Thomas didn't try to pander to white audiences with the book; ultimately, she didn't need to.

4. How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen by Joanna Faber and Julie King
This recent publication co-authored by Adele Faber's daughter takes the techniques from Faber and Mazlish's classic books and focuses them on kids ages 2-7. Through example scenarios and concrete suggestions, they provide a toolbox of ways to deal with the challenges of parenting. I'm already looking forward to rereading it now that my son is just old enough to start using their techniques.

5. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
I found this more compelling and readable than some other true accounts of former slaves, though her experience was different enough from many others that you wouldn't want to read this in isolation. In Jacobs' case, she wasn't subjected to the worst parts of chattel slavery, so you're left to deal with the fact that her experience in slavery was wrong because it's slavery.

6. The Last Time We Say Goodbye by Cynthia Hand
This book handles the topic of suicide much more skillfully than some other recent YA novels and does not romanticize it. It speaks honestly to the process of grief and to the emotional mess that's left in the wake of someone's suicide. It's not free from YA clichés, but overall it's well done and worth a read. (Bring tissues!)

7. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
With masterful organization and clear prose, Alexander lays out the case that the War on Drugs has created a "racial undercaste" that aligns with the cultural stereotype of the "criminalblackman," disenfrancishing an entire swath of the American people in much the same way that the Jim Crow era did. This is a painful but highly necessary read.

8. The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob
Jacob manages to weave together fantastic writing, a number of important themes, and a cast of complex, believable characters in this novel that took her a decade to complete. I laughed out loud more than once, and I cried near the end. It wasn't perfect, but I genuinely enjoyed the read and missed the characters when I was done.

9. The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli
I didn't really understand people saying about an author "I'd read her grocery list" until I encountered Becky Albertalli. This book made me look back on my high school self with fondness, in the same way Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda did. (It contains minor spoilers from that book, so start with Simon!) Very sweet, very relatable, and a nice example of a realistically diverse cast of characters. I'm ready to read the third book in this universe as soon as it comes out.

10. Where Am I Now? by Mara Wilson
Wilson is a talented storyteller, and I was surprised at how relatable I found most of her childhood stories. I'm glad I took the chance of picking up this book based on nothing more than my love for Matilda.

Look at that — all female authors! That was unintentional, but I guess it says something about what kinds of voices spoke to me this year.

What were your best reads of the year?

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Ten Best Books I've Read In 2017 So Far

I'm linking up with The Broke and the Bookish for another Top Ten Tuesday.

We're almost halfway through 2017 already! This week, it's time to pause and reflect on what have been the best ten books we've read so far this year. If you've been keeping up with my Best of the Bunch posts, you've already seen many of these. (And if you aren't linking up every month with Best of the Bunch, what are you waiting for?)

Looking back over what I've read, many of my 5-star reads were rereads, so I'm listing here only new-to-me books I've read this year. I'm not going to write descriptions for them because I've written about all of them previously on my Quick Lit or Best of the Bunch posts!

Fiction

Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Last Time We Say Goodbye by Cynthia Hand

The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob

The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli


Nonfiction

American Hookup by Lisa Wade

The Happy Sleeper by Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen by Joanna Faber and Julie King

Where Am I Now? by Mara Wilson


What are the best books you've read so far this year?

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Top Ten 2017 Bookish Goals

I'm linking up with The Broke and the Bookish for another Top Ten Tuesday.

For the past two years, Top Ten Tuesday has started out the year asking for our book-related goals for the year, but they didn't do that this year! I decided to do my own thing and still use this week to plan out my goals for 2017. Here are my 2016 goals and how I did with achieving them. Now, here are my goals for the new year.

1. Read fewer than 50 books from my to-read list.
Normally I'm trying to tackle more and more of my to-read list, but combining that with an ambitious goal of number-of-books for the year means I tend to skip over the books that will take me longer than usual to finish. I also pass up series and sequels in trying to knock out more of my existing list. This year I decided to cap the number of books I can read off my existing to-read list to give myself freedom to reread books (including more Agatha Christie), pick up new publications, and read series if I want to.

2. Read some books over a thousand pages.
I don't think I've tackled a thousand-pager since I read A Suitable Boy and War and Peace in 2014. Some of the ones on my to-read list I've been passing over (see #1) are The Stand, Shōgun, The Way of Kings, Bleak House, and Infinite Jest.

3. Catch up on some classics.
There are some books that keep coming up on "books everyone should read" lists that I still haven't gotten to, including The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Brothers Karamazov, The Sun Also Rises, and Stranger in a Strange Land. This will be the year to finally read them!

4. Read something my sister recommends.
I love that my little sister is now a bookworm like me. We don't have a lot of crossover in the books we read, but I like what she's recommended before and I keep throwing recommendations her way, so I want to read another favorite of hers this year.

5. Make use of my personal reading area.
After we moved into our new apartment this past year, I started thinking about how I would ideally like to use the extra space we have with our new apartment's layout. Now I have a comfy chair with an ottoman, and I got an armchair organizer this Christmas where I can keep my Kindle and set my tea on top. I have a little shelf with the Harry Potter books, and I have an Ideal Bookshelf print and this Dillard quote poster to hang above my chair. So many of my reading nowadays is in snatches on my phone and listening to audiobooks before bed; I want to try to sit down in my special chair and read at least once a week.

6. Read books on my new Kindle Voyage.
I got out of the habit of using my Kindle except for traveling because it was so buggy and unresponsive when it came to turning pages, so I would just keep reading on my phone. For my birthday I got a new Kindle Voyage, which has the same touch screen as my old Kindle but has page-turn buttons that take care of that source of frustration. I want to keep my Kindle synced up on the wi-fi so I can easily switch from my phone Kindle app to my actual Kindle once I'm home (especially since my phone battery has been terrible lately).

7. Read book club picks more than a week in advance.
I have this bad habit of not checking out book club books (or putting holds on them) right when the next meeting's choice is announced; I hate when the meeting arrives and it's been several weeks since I read the book (and I've read five others in the meantime), so my memory is fuzzy. I have to remind myself that I hate even more when my hold doesn't come through in time and I'm sweating about whether or not to buy the book and whether I'll have time to finish it before the meeting. This year I want to trust myself to write detailed reviews, and read the books well in advance.

8. Host a book club meeting in the first half of the year.
One of my book clubs meets online, and one meets at the same location every month, but my newest one rotates as a different woman hosts each month. I've been waiting until our apartment was completed to volunteer to host, but now there are only minor things left that may or may not get done anytime soon. I need to just bite the bullet and host before I'm the last one left who hasn't!

9. Comment on other book blogs more often.
I've managed to keep up with linking up (with The Broke and the Bookish and Quick Lit), but I don't always take time to visit the other blogs in the linkup, or if I do, I don't make the effort to leave comments. This year I want to make more of an effort to leave comments on other book blogs — I know how much I love getting comments here!

10. Promote the Best of the Bunch linkup more.
Since I took over hosting the Best of the Bunch, I haven't done a great job of putting it out there so more people know about it and can participate. This year I want to find more ways to get the word out about this monthly linkup. If you have any suggestions, let me know!

What are your bookish goals for 2017?

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