2016 Readers Room Recap

It is finally time for our final monthly recap of 2016! Find out which books were favorites and which were duds. We’ll end our wrap up with a a list of books due out this month and a glimpse of our upcoming content for next year. We also want to hear from you so let us know what you read this month and what are your reading goals for 2017.

Jen: With one day left in 2016, I’m two books away from completing my GoodReads goal of 125 books for the year. I will hopefully manage to complete two books today since I’m halfway through one and on a plane for 6 hours later today.

Halfway through 2016 we decided to do an informal challenge to create greater diversity in our reading.  You can read about that challenge here. I read quite a bit in December in part due to pressure to meet my GoodReads challenge goal and in part because I was away on vacation during the last week of the month. I read 15 books in December and here are my “read different” stats:

books by women: 9
translated works: 3
POC author: 5
featured LGBTQ characters or by LGBTQ+ authors: 3

Favorite book read in December: My favorite book of the month was The Nix by Nathan Hill. It was funny, engaging, and read like Jonathan Franzen minus the pretentious air. Honorable mentions go to Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime and Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges are Not the Only Fruit.

Least favorite book read in December: I didn’t read any terrible books this month. My least favorite was a 3-star read: Timebound by Rysa Walker. It was entertaining but not in a high-brow way. The plot was rather silly buy I found it to be an engaging book for my beach vacation.

2017 Goals: I hope to get back on track with the blog and regular posts. The last few months of 2016 were hectic at work and after the Man Booker long list we got sidetracked. My personal reading goal will be 125 books with at least a 1/3 being books published in 2017. I’ll also be finally getting to Infinite Jest.

Book Worm: At the start of the year I set myself the target of reading 110 books in 2016. At the moment my total is 111 (go me). I am hoping to make this 112 because I need to finish Anna Karenina before the end of the year and I am halfway there…

Favorite book read in December: The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden. I chose this for my chutes and ladders debut author read and I was blown away. I absolutely loved it and I am now looking forward to the rest of the series. Get writing Katherine Arden!! Honourable mention goes to Oranges are not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. I may have mentioned before that I love Winterson’s writing.

Least favorite book read in December: The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe. This was a 3 star read and in some respects it was great. I just found it all a bit repetitive.

2017 reading Goals: I am keeping my book goal at 110. I think this is a good level which allows me to read a variety of books including longer works. I aim to only allow myself to purchase a new book when I have read an older one from my TBR (lets see how long this lasts) and I aim to read at least 1 physical book from my TBR per month (please stop laughing, I really mean it this year), and finally I intend to continue to read more diversely and to actually record my diverse stats which I didn’t do this year.

What can you look forward to on our blog in the new year? We got thrown off a little with the Man Booker judging so will hopefully get back on track with our regular blog posting schedule. That will include Love it or Hate it posts, Featured author, Read Around the World, and Terrible Reviews of Great books. We also have some great challenges planned for the year with prizes.

We want to hear from you. So what are your plans for the new year? Which books were your favorites and least favorites in December? Those participating in the Read Different Challenge – What books did you read this month and how did they represent your read different goals?