Goodreads Reading Challenge 2017.

Last year I once again I signed myself up for the Goodreads Reading Challenge. 

I find that it is a great inspiration and encourages me to pick up a book to read which I find feels more rewarding than simply messing around on line (enjoyable as that is...) It also provides an easy way of keeping track of what I have read and I always enjoy looking back at the books that I have (mostly!) enjoyed over the course of the year.

Each year I set myself the goal of reading fifty two books. I spend a fair amount of my time commuting so a book a week is attainable for me and I find that this is about the right amount - I want to be challenged but I don't want to feel pressured to allocate more time than I reasonably have to reading so that it becomes unenjoyable and feels like a chore.

I was happy to look back and find that I had read sixty books in 2017 (I read fifty seven in 2015 and sixty three in 2016). I'm going to aim to read fifty two books again in 2018 when I set up my current challenge.

I love the statistics that Goodreads provide you with when you complete your year's reading. This year I read 19,038 pages! The most popular book I read was Into The Water by Paula Hawkins which 229,901 other people read and the average rating out of five that I awarded to my books was 3.6.

I read a whole variety of types of books. This year the most popular genres that I read were General Fiction (twenty one), Thrillers (fifteen) and Biography/Autobiography (twelve).

I also read six non fiction books, four of which were to do with society/sociology, three volumes of short stories, three volumes of essays and two coffee table type books.

It was very hard for me to pick a 'Book of the Year' as I read so many outstanding books this year but I think it would have to be Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life. My favourite biography of the year was Lonely Boy by Steve Jones and my Favourite thriller was Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough. I also loved Caitlin Moran's Moranifesto.

There were a few duds in my book pile, ones that I kept on reading in the hopes that they would get better but didn't. The books that I least enjoyed this year were Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, Eggshells by Caitriona Lally and Marc Levy's P.S. From Paris.

If you would like to take part in the challenge simply visit goodreads.com and sign up where it says 'Reading Challenge'. It's a great motivator as well as a nice way to keep a record of what you've read.

If you are an avid reader or someone who wishes to read more go for it. 

Good Luck!