2019 Wrap-Up (long)

For 2019, my GR's goal was 80, then I bumped it up to 90 when I hit that in November, but I figured I would maybe get one or two more books before the end of the year since December is typically my slowest reading month, but I read 100 books! The review for my 100th book of 2019 'Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?' will probably drop January 11th, after I go to the bookclub for it.

I just wanted to go over some stats before going into my top books of the year.

So, according to Goodreads, my total pages from the year equaled over 23,000 pages, which is kinda wild when think about it like that (how many words would that be?!) My longest book, with 720 pages, was Imaginary Friends by Stephen Chbosky (I gave it a 4 out of 5 stars) and my shortest book, with 22 pages, was Blue Morphos in the Garden (which I actually read on Tor.com and gave 4 out of 5 stars). 32 of the authors were male and 41 were female, a couple of other such and for the most part I'd say like 90% of the authors were new to me. I tried to consciously read more non-cis white male authors and I'd say I branched out a lot more.

I don't have any specifics stats for genre, as I didn't keep track so well... but I know I've read more nonfiction this year then ever before with I think... seven? I read more sci-fi and horror than what's usual too, but it looks like I read way less YA books than usual. I think I'm just finding it harder and harder to relate to the teenagers? There hasn't been many I've enjoyed this last year. I've downloaded BookRiot's spreadsheet for 2020, so we'll see if there's better stats for next year!

Top Reads of 2019

• Best audios are definitely The Tales of Pell by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne. I listened to the first 2 and they were so entertaining! I've got the 3rd one on hold and hopefully will get it here soon! I listened to A LOT of audios in 2019.
• Best graphic novel by far was the Saga series (I read most of it this year) by Brian K. Vaughan (who also did Paper Girls, which was another good one this year) and illustrated by Fiona Staples. I'm caught up and volume 9 hurt my heart D: I read some really great graphic novels though and a close runner up was Harrow County by Cullen Bunn and illustrated by Tyler Crook.
• Best nonfiction, that made me incredibly sad and rage-y was Dopesick by Beth Macy. I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara was SO scary and the ending was bittersweet.
• Overall, I think I enjoyed the sci-fi books the most. The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells were thoroughly entertaining and I'm kind of in love with how lovely Becky Chambers makes the future sound!

In 2019:
I had 5 5-star ratings: Saga Vol. 9 (Brian K. Vaughn), The Shadowglass (Rin Chupeco), The Kingdom of Copper (S.A. Chakraborty), Exit Strategy (Martha Wells), and Passing Strange (Ellen Klages).

58 4-star ratings, 29 3-star ratings, 5 2-star ratings, and 1 1-star ratings (if you wanted to know, it was a romance that made me rant in my Litsy and GR review).
I did not finish 8 books. I won't go into these, but this is such a relief to me that I've finally learned to let books I just DON'T want to read go. There's too many books to waste time on shit books.

Other Bookish Things:

This was the year of following Booktubers. Want some good ones? Some of my faves: Thoughts on Tomes, Merphy Napier, Daniel Greene. If you know of any booktubers that do more horror, scifi, or fantasy videos let me know!

2019 was 3 years for me on Litsy! It's had it's drama, but it primarily has been about books and I've met some cool people on there. If you wanna talk books and not have to deal with all the stupid review drama on GR, definitely check on Litsy!

I've been trying to branch out locally with other readers and towards the end of the year went to a few bookclubs at a local bookstore. It's fun and I hope eventually I won't be awkward as shit. I'm planning on going to at least 3 this month. And hopefully many more throughout 2020.

So to end this info dump, here are the battered copies of my one-year-old's favorite books: