Year in Review: 2013

2013
has been a great year. I’ve been blogging for almost four years now and
am always humbled when I read your comments and see that I have new
followers. Thank you to all who visit my blog.

This year has been a year of many new things for me and my blog. I’ve joined a few online book clubs (She Reads and Book Lovers Unite) and made many new bloggy book friends as a result. I also joined the world of twitter!!! There were quite a few authors I got to meet this year and I hope that continues in 2014.

My top reads of 2013 are (in no particular order):

• The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak
• Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini
• The House Girl by Tara Conklin
• Lady of Ashes by Christine Trent
• Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
• The Lavendar Garden by Lucinda Riley
• The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley
• The Promise of Stardust by Priscille Sibley
• A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams
• The Perfume Collector by Kathleen Tessaro
• The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty
• The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes
• Hush Little Baby by Suzanne Redfearn
• The Supreme Macaroni Company by Adriana Trigiani
• The Wrong Girl by Hank Phillippi Ryan

So,
here are my stats for 2013. Overall, I completed 160 books (that
includes audio books) which is the most I have ever read in one year! I
also participated in some fun challenges that caused me to alter some
of my reading habits – all for the good.

Challenges participated in that have ended:

2013 Read-a-Latte

Goal: 100+ books

Completed: 125 books (did not include audio books in this challenge)

Support Your Library Challenge

Goal: 50 library books

Completed: 50 books

Off the Shelf Reading Challenge

Goal: 30 books

Completed: 11 books

Tea & Books Reading Challenge

Goal: 2

Completed: 0

First Reads Reading Challenge

Goal: 11

Completed: 39 

 

Classics Reading Challenge

Goal: 2

Completed: 1

Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

Goal: 25

Completed: 25

E-Book Reading Challenge

Goal: 25

Completed: 47

1st in a Series Reading Challenge

Goal: 10

Completed: 6 + 7 additional

Finish the Series Reading Challenge

Goal: 3

Completed: 2 + 2 additional

Cruisin’ Thru The Cozies Reading Challenge

Goal: 13

Completed: 10

Audio Book Challenge

Goal: 26

Completed: 36

Reading Challenge Addict

Goal: 12

Completed: 6

Of the 12 year-long reading challenges
that I participated in for 2013, I completed 6. While I started to freak out about this back in November when I realized I wasn’t going to finish a bunch of them, I decided to just let it go. After all, I did read quite a lot of books – and with some of the reading challenges, I crushed the goal, so in the end, I’m very happy with my results.

In the next few days I will be adding
the challenges that I plan on participating in during 2014 – they are a
combination of ones I’ve done before and some new ones. Some of these I sign up for merely to help me keep track of what I read – for instance, how many audio books I listen to in a year or how many e-books I read in a year. I also use one to track how many books (print or e-books) I read and don’t include audio in that one. Others are more to challenge myself to read certain types of books – for instance, chunksters or the classics –  books I might be a bit more hesitant to pick up.

Thank
you again to all my readers – I love reading and sharing with you my
thoughts on the books I read. I also love reading all your blogs. I
look forward to seeing what 2014 brings for my reading.