2017 Reading Review

Happy New Year! I'm sure no one is actually reading this blog at midnight, so I hope you had a good time celebrating and are ready to tackle the challenges of a new year.

Every year, I set up a reading challenge for myself on Goodreads. My original goal for 2017 was 180 books. (Since Goodreads counts everything from individual short stories to multi-book box sets, I'll just call everything a "book" for convenience.) I lowered my goal to 160 books a couple of months ago, but I had a bit of a challenge meeting even that number. I had to remove a couple of books that were counted twice, and at some point, I set the wrong "finished reading" dates for books I read prior to 2017 but were counted for that year anyway. I compensated by reading a short story and a novella yesterday, so by my account, I reached exactly 160 books. (Ironically enough, I didn't include my short story collection or Summon the Seasons, though I probably should.) Here's the breakdown by genre:

Science Fiction: 24
Fantasy: 72
Other Fiction: 19
Non-Fiction: 45 (this includes 7 books on writing and 27 science-related books)

The vast majority of books (about 70%) were eBooks. I read 38 library books, and some of them were eBooks too. The shortest "book" (actually a short story) was 19 pages, and the longest was a four-book box set that totaled 788 pages. The total number of pages was around 41,000 (I'm underestimating Goodreads' number to compensate for books that I didn't actually read this year.)

I recommend the books listed below, even if I'm too lazy to link to each listing on Goodreads.

Sprite Night
Watership Down
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
Getting to Green
This is Your Brain on Parasites
I Contain Multitudes
All of Us Were Sophie
The Ancestor's Tale
The Paper Magician
All the Single Ladies
You're More Powerful Than You Think
Earth in Human Hands
Pemberley: Mr. Darcy's Dragon
Queen Mab
Tinder Stricken

 Let me know if you have any questions about them.

As for my reading goals for this year, I'm lowering my count slightly to 150 books. After all, I do have a lot of writing, publishing, and costuming, and crocheting to do in 2018. One of my self-challenges is to read at least one "diversity" read by a minority author each month. I also plan to read at least 10 books this year on writing and/or marketing. Guess I better get started!

What were your favorite reads in 2017? Feel free to share them in the comments.