July 2018 Wrap-Up: Books and Reviews
Ye Grande Olde TBR(e) Challenge Update
I started July with 204 unread books sitting around my house. And I ended with … *drumroll* …203! Yay! I did some traveling in July, which is always iffy for reading – sometimes I’m able to spend whole plane rides absorbed in a book and spend my vacation downtime reading, but other times I’m busy with all of my anti-anxiety flying tricks (mostly knitting) and can’t stay focused on a book, and have too much scheduled on my vacation to have much leisure reading time. Unfortunately, this year’s trip was more of the latter, but I still managed to get a decent bit read! (Especially considering that The Luminaries took me a month to read just by itself. That thing is a brick.)
…anyways, let’s take a look at the breakdown:
Neutral books – Read, but don’t affect the TBR pile
|
Audiobooks |
 |
 |
 |
|
Read But Not Owned |
 |
 |
 |
|
Re-Reads |
 |
||
Changes to the TBR pile
|
Read from my TBR pile (huzzah!) |
 |
||
| Added to my TBR/eTBR pile (all-around shame!) |
| Nothing. That’s right, flat out NOTHING. Good job, self! |
© 2018 Fyrefly’s Book Blog. All Rights Reserved. If you’re reading this on a site other than Fyrefly’s Book Blog or its RSS feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is being used without permission.
Year in Review 2017
If we can have Christmas in July, we can also have a year-end wrap-up in July, right? Let’s not think about the state of my to-do list; let’s look at some of my reading stats instead, shall we?
- I finished 82 books this year, 55 of which were new-to-me, and 27 of which were re-reads.
- 47 of those were paper or e-books, for a total of 14,988 pages read. The remaining 35 were audiobooks, with a total of 16.39 days of listening time. (Not included in either of those tallies are all the individual short stories I read and/or listened to.) If you count the text equivalent of the audiobooks, I consumed 29,122 pages of reading material this year.
- I read books by 53 different authors, about 45% of which were new to me. My gender split was pretty good; 42 of the books I read were by men, and 40 were by women.
- I didn’t do a great job of reading my own books this year (new books, anyways, I re-read a bunch of my own books). Of the new books I read, only 26% came from my TBR pile. Another 38% were audiobooks, 31% were from the library, and the remaining 5% were e-books freebies or from the eTBR “pile”.
- I was pretty good about not acquiring new books! I only added 13 books to my TBR pile – which is BY FAR the lowest its ever been since I’ve been keeping track. I only read 10 books from the pile ,but I cleared another 7 when I moved, leaving me with a net change of -4 TBR books!
- Of the books I read from my TBR pile, the average length of time between when I acquired them and when I finished them was 381 days.
- About a third of the new books I read were published in 2016 or 2017, but another third were from the 1990s, so the average publication date of my books was 2008.
- Unsurprisingly, about half the books I read this year were fantasy; with historical fiction taking up another 18%, science fiction and non-fiction coming in at 9% each, and mysteries, contemporary fiction, and classics accounting for the rest.
- About 41% of the books I read were young adult or mid-grade.
You can calculate these kind of stats for yourself using my reading tracking spreadsheet. You can download the 2014 version here: 2014 reading tracking spreadsheet; just change the tabs for 2018. You can find the instructions for using it here: reading tracking spreadsheet instructions.
Here are my picks-of-the-month for the year! (Among my new books – picking books that I already loved enough to re-read as my favorite of the month just doesn’t seem fair.)
Read more…
June 2018 Wrap-Up: Books and Reviews
Ye Grande Olde TBR(e) Challenge Update
I started June with 205 unread books sitting around my house. And I ended with … *drumroll* …204! June was a pretty good month, y’all! Not much clearance from the TBR pile, but some, and a fair bit of reading overall, enough to get me back on track for my yearly goals.
…anyways, let’s take a look at the breakdown:
Neutral books – Read, but don’t affect the TBR pile
|
Audiobooks |
 |
|||
|
Read But Not Owned (Books) |
 |
 |
||
|
Read But Not Owned (Graphic Novels) |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
E-books |
 |
|||
|
Re-Reads |
 |
 |
 |
|
Changes to the TBR pile
|
Read from my TBR pile (huzzah!) |
 |
| Added to my eTBR pile (non-storage-space-related shame!) | |
  – Circe by Madeline Miller |
 – What Unites Us by Dan Rather |
 – Food: A Cultural Culinary History by Ken Albala |
 – Cosmos by Carl Sagan |
 – The Flowers of Vashnoi by Lois McMaster Bujold |
* Pursuant to the discussion on this post, I’ve decided to create an eTBR pile for e-books and audiobooks that I accept for review or for which I actually pay money. I’m not adding them into my total TBR numbers, but I have to fess up about them somewhere. Keeps me honest. |
© 2018 Fyrefly’s Book Blog. All Rights Reserved. If you’re reading this on a site other than Fyrefly’s Book Blog or its RSS feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is being used without permission.
May 2018 Wrap-Up: Books and Reading
Ye Grande Olde TBR(e) Challenge Update
I started May with 204 unread books sitting around my house. And I ended with … *drumroll* …205! Not bad! It takes me a while to get back into a reading groove after a busy semester, especially with paper books, but overall May treated me pretty darn well!
…anyways, let’s take a look at the breakdown:
Neutral books – Read, but don’t affect the TBR pile
|
Audiobooks |
 |
 |
 |
|
Read But Not Owned (Books) |
 |
 |
|
| E-books – The Power by Naomi Alderman (review coming soon) |
 |
||
|
Re-Reads |
 |
||
Changes to the TBR pile
 |
|
| Added to my TBR pile (all-around shame!) | |
| – The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton |
|
| Added to my eTBR pile (non-storage-space-related shame!) | |
| – War Storm by Victoria Aveyard |
– Justice Hall by Laurie R. King |
 – A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas |
* Pursuant to the discussion on this post, I’ve decided to create an eTBR pile for e-books and audiobooks that I accept for review or for which I actually pay money. I’m not adding them into my total TBR numbers, but I have to fess up about them somewhere. Keeps me honest. |
© 2018 Fyrefly’s Book Blog. All Rights Reserved. If you’re reading this on a site other than Fyrefly’s Book Blog or its RSS feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is being used without permission.
April 2018 Wrap-Up: Books and Reviews
Ye Grande Olde TBR(e) Challenge Update
I started April with 204 unread books sitting around my house. And I ended with … *drumroll* …204! It was a long semester, and April was a loooong month. But I survived! (And have spent most of May recuperating.)
…anyways, let’s take a look at the breakdown:
Neutral books – Read, but don’t affect the TBR pile
|
Audiobooks |
 |
 |
|
Read But Not Owned (Books) |
 |
|
|
Re-Reads |
 |
|
Changes to the TBR pile
|
Read from my TBR pile (huzzah!) (Technically not part of my TBR count, so my numbers didn’t go down, but I did already own it, so it sort of half counts?) |
 |
 |
|
| Added to my TBR pile (all-around shame!) | |
| Nothing this month! Good job me! | |
| Non-TBR acquisitions (storage-space-related shame!) | |
 – Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species: A Graphic Adaptation by Michael Keller |
|
| Added to my eTBR pile (non-storage-space-related shame!) | |
 – Head On by John Scalzi |
– The Unpleasantness at Baskerville Hall by Chris Dolley |
| * Pursuant to the discussion on this post, I’ve decided to create an eTBR pile for e-books and audiobooks that I accept for review or for which I actually pay money. I’m not adding them into my total TBR numbers, but I have to fess up about them somewhere. Keeps me honest. | |
© 2018 Fyrefly’s Book Blog. All Rights Reserved. If you’re reading this on a site other than Fyrefly’s Book Blog or its RSS feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is being used without permission.
March 2018 Wrap-Up: Books and Reading
Ye Grande Olde TBR(e) Challenge Update
I started March with 205 unread books sitting around my house. And I ended with … *drumroll* …204! March was a pretty good month, reading-wise, although only one of the books I read was off my TBR shelf. I got the chance to take a short vacation this month, so travel time always helps with the reading. Plus I’m in the middle of quite a lot of books (more than usual, anyways), so I should be able to knock out a fair few in April.
…anyways, let’s take a look at the breakdown:
Neutral books – Read, but don’t affect the TBR pile
|
Audiobooks |
 |
||
| E-books – The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller * (review coming soon) |
 |
||
|
Read But Not Owned (Books) |
  |
  |
 |
|
Re-Reads |
 |
||
Changes to the TBR pile
|
Read from my TBR pile (huzzah!) |
 |
| Added to my eTBR pile (non-storage-space-related shame!) | |
 – H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald |
 – In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan |
| – I Know I Am, But What Are You? by Samantha Bee |
– The Power by Naomi Alderman |
| * Pursuant to the discussion on this post, I’ve decided to create an eTBR pile for e-books and audiobooks that I accept for review or for which I actually pay money. I’m not adding them into my total TBR numbers, but I have to fess up about them somewhere. Keeps me honest. | |
© 2018 Fyrefly’s Book Blog. All Rights Reserved. If you’re reading this on a site other than Fyrefly’s Book Blog or its RSS feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is being used without permission.
February 2018 Wrap-Up: Books and Reading
Ye Grande Olde TBR(e) Challenge Update
I started February with 208 unread books sitting around my house. And I ended with … *drumroll* …205! I’m pretty happy with this month; I didn’t spend quite as much time as I’d wanted reading print (non-graphic-novel) books, but I got through a few, and any month that decreases the TBR pile is a good month.
…anyways, let’s take a look at the breakdown:
Neutral books – Read, but don’t affect the TBR pile
|
Audiobooks |
 |
 |
|
Read But Not Owned (Books) |
 |
 |
|
Re-Reads |
 |
 |
Changes to the TBR pile
|
Read from my TBR pile (huzzah!) |
 |
 |
 |
|
Added to my TBR pile (all-around shame!) |
|
| Non-TBR acquisitions (storage-space-related shame!) Nothing this month either! |
|
| Added to my eTBR pile (non-storage-space-related shame!) | |
 – Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders |
 – The Dispatcher by John Scalzi |
 – So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo |
* Pursuant to the discussion on this post, I’ve decided to create an eTBR pile for e-books and audiobooks that I accept for review or for which I actually pay money. I’m not adding them into my total TBR numbers, but I have to fess up about them somewhere. Keeps me honest. |
© 2018 Fyrefly’s Book Blog. All Rights Reserved. If you’re reading this on a site other than Fyrefly’s Book Blog or its RSS feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is being used without permission.
January 2018 Wrap-Up: Books and Reviews
Ye Grande Olde TBR(e) Challenge Update
I started January with 209 unread books sitting around my house. And I ended with … *drumroll* …208! Not too shabby! I managed to read more than I usually do at the start of a new semester, and I’ve been very good about not acquiring new books, so that’s something.
…anyways, let’s take a look at the breakdown:
Neutral books – Read, but don’t affect the TBR pile
|
Audiobooks |
 |
 |
| E-Books – A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas – The Austen Escape by Katherine Reay (reviews coming soon) |
 |
 |
|
Re-Reads |
 |
 |
Changes to the TBR pile
|
Read from my TBR pile (huzzah!) |
 |
|
Added and then read (um… huzzah?) |
 |
 |
|
| Added to my TBR pile (all-around shame!) | |
| Nothing this month, hooray! | |
| Added to my eTBR pile (non-storage-space-related shame!) | |
| – The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill |
 – The Fold by Peter Clines |
 – Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart |
– The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baron Orczy |
| * Pursuant to the discussion on this post, I’ve decided to create an eTBR pile for e-books and audiobooks that I accept for review or for which I actually pay money. I’m not adding them into my total TBR numbers, but I have to fess up about them somewhere. Keeps me honest. | |
© 2018 Fyrefly’s Book Blog. All Rights Reserved. If you’re reading this on a site other than Fyrefly’s Book Blog or its RSS feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is being used without permission.
December 2017 Wrap-Up: Books and Reviews
Ye Grande Olde TBR(e) Challenge Update
I started December with 210 unread books sitting around my house. And I ended with … *drumroll* …209! The holidays are always hectic but I managed to get a fair bit read anyways. Didn’t get any books for Christmas other than a cookbook, though, although that’s probably for the best. I did acquire a fair number of ebooks and audiobooks, though. I can’t be good all the time!
…anyways, let’s take a look at the breakdown:
Neutral books – Read, but don’t affect the TBR pile
|
Audiobooks |
 |
 |
 |
|
Read But Not Owned (Books) |
 |
 |
|
| E-Books – A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas (review coming soon) |
 |
||
|
Re-Reads |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|||
Changes to the TBR pile
|
Read from my TBR pile (huzzah!) |
 |
 |
|
| Added to my TBR pile (all-around shame!) | |
| Miraculously, nothing this month! | |
| Non-TBR acquisitions (storage-space-related shame!) | |
 – The City Tavern Cookbook: Recipes from the Birthplace of American Cuisine by Walter Staib |
|
| Added to my eTBR pile (non-storage-space-related shame!) | |
 – Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink |
– Hidden Figures: The Untold True Story of Four African-American Women Who Helped Launch our Nation Into Space by Margot Lee Shetterly |
 – Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan |
 – The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell |
| – A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas |
 – A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas |
 – Uprooted by Naomi Novik |
* Pursuant to the discussion on this post, I’ve decided to create an eTBR pile for e-books and audiobooks that I accept for review or for which I actually pay money. I’m not adding them into my total TBR numbers, but I have to fess up about them somewhere. Keeps me honest. |
© 2018 Fyrefly’s Book Blog. All Rights Reserved. If you’re reading this on a site other than Fyrefly’s Book Blog or its RSS feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is being used without permission.
November 2017 Wrap-Up: Books and Reading
Ye Grande Olde TBR(e) Challenge Update
I started November with 211 unread books sitting around my house. And I ended with … *drumroll* …210! I had houseguests for a large chunk of the month, and I never get much reading done when I’ve got houseguests – there’s always something else to be doing, or else I feel weird reading (or having my earbuds in for listening) instead of being social. So it was a pretty sparse month, reading-wise. But at least I was good about not acquiring more (physical) books.
…anyways, let’s take a look at the breakdown:
Neutral books – Read, but don’t affect the TBR pile
|
Audiobooks |
 |
|
|
Re-Reads |
 |
 |
Changes to the TBR pile
|
Read from my TBR pile (huzzah!) |
 |
| Added to my TBR pile (all-around shame!) | |
| Nothing this month! | |
| Non-TBR acquisitions (storage-space-related shame!) | |
| Nothing this month either! | |
| Added to my eTBR pile (non-storage-space-related shame!) | |
| – The Pearl Thief by Elizabeth Wein |
 – Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor |
 – Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel |
 – Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige |
 – Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart |
* Pursuant to the discussion on this post, I’ve decided to create an eTBR pile for e-books and audiobooks that I accept for review or for which I actually pay money. I’m not adding them into my total TBR numbers, but I have to fess up about them somewhere. Keeps me honest. |
© 2017 Fyrefly’s Book Blog. All Rights Reserved. If you’re reading this on a site other than Fyrefly’s Book Blog or its RSS feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is being used without permission.
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