Posted in Reviewing Habit

Reading and Reviewing in 2016

g reading-2016

 

Well here we are nearly at the end of 2016 and as usual I will soon be posting my top 10 books published this year – but here is a chance for those books not published this year to have their moment in the spotlight as well as indulging me in my love of facts and figures.

So far I have read, and reviewed 148 books in 2016 which add up to a total of 47,624 pages which tells me 2016 has been spent reading even more books than normal! On the whole 2016 if nothing else, has been a fantastic year of books for me.

 

 

Goodreads tells me that the longest book I read was Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain with 562 pages, whilst I am only one person out of five on the site to have read a book set here in Jersey,  Standing in the Shadows by Jon Stasiak.

 

101,541 other Goodreads readers have also read Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight with me, making this my most popular read in 2016Psychological Thriller 4*s

Did She Kill HimAs usual my reading matter is crime heavy with 87 books equating to 59% falling squarely into the crime fiction or psychological thriller categories, but of course they can crime also features in my historical fiction section as well as popping up in the non-fiction category. This year I have had the pleasure of reading many true crime books featuring Victorian poisoners including the fabulous Did She Kill Him? by Kate Colquhoun

 

Pictures of perfection.jxrOne of my goals for 2016 was to read more of my own books to get a balance with all the wonderful books I receive for review. In 2015 I only read 34 of my own books, this year I have read an impressive 49 or 33%! I read 20 of these (some very belatedly, as in earlier this month,) for Cathy’s 20 Books of Summer which provided some exceptional reading in the form of Pictures of Perfection  by Reginald Hill

 

In 2016 I read 65 authors who were new to me, down from 71 in 2016 and of course once again, I have met some fantastic Buriel Ritesauthors who I hope will be revisited in 2017, including Burial Rites by Hannah Kent which I finally got around to reading early this year – I was blown away and it is one of my favourite reads of the year so I’m looking forward to The Good People which will be published early next year, aka very soon!

 

I also discovered #49786eBeryl Bainbridge via her book featuring two teenaged girls, in Harriet Said, enjoying a Harriet Saidtotal of three of her books this year alone.

So there’s a small taste of what I’ve been reading. In 2017 I plan to finally hit my target of 40% of my reading to be from my own selection of books with the help of the Mount TBR Challenge on Goodreads and of course Cathy’s 20 Books of Summer Challenge which she’s confirmed she will be running again this year. Funnily enough I have plenty of books to chose from, especially with the Christmas additions.

 

As for you all, the Top Five Reviews of 2016 by viewer are as follows:

  1. My Husband’s Son by Deborah O’Connor
  2. The Swimming Pool by Louise Candlish
  3. Distress Signals by Catherine Ryan Howard
  4. Kindred by Steve Robinson
  5. The Trespasser by Tana French

top-five-reviews

Coming very soon are my chosen top ten reads published in 2016– you can see all 148 books read and reviewed so far here or for a more compact view check out those books I chose for 2016 book bingo!

I’d like to thank all those authors and publishers who’ve given me a fantastic selection of books, the readers and commenters on this little blog and those who connect with my reviews via twitter, you have all made my world brighter in 2016.
Happy reading everyone and here’s to a Happy New Year full of more fabulous books!

Author:

A book lover who clearly has issues as obsessed with crime despite leading a respectable life

43 thoughts on “Reading and Reviewing in 2016

  1. Well done, Cleo! Those crime fiction statistics make me SO happy. I know I can always come here for a good crime fiction/psychological thriller recommendation 😛

    Like

  2. You’ve done brilliantly! I’m hugely impressed that your own books make up 33% of your reading, and you’re just about 10,000 pages ahead of me – how do you fit it all in?? I suspect you must have two heads…

    Glad you had a great reading year, and here’s to many more fab books next year! 😀

    Like

    1. Why thank you – I was quite impressed by the 33% haha not two heads I’m just a deeply repulsive person so everyone leaves me alone to read!!
      I have a feeling 2017 is going to be great judging by the avalanche of books that arrived last week 😉

      Liked by 1 person

  3. You had a great reading year, Cleo, and I”m very happy for you. I’m impressed, too, with the variety of books that you’ve read. You’ve read all sorts of different things! Thanks for sharing your finds with us this, year, and here’s to more great reading in 2017!

    Like

  4. Very cool Cleo. I would be interested in the most popular book I have read and top comments on a review.

    Burial Rites is a popular choice so far, adding to my TBR list. Great year Cleo and your doing better reading your own, well done.

    Like

    1. I can’t recommend Burial Rites highly enough and I’d had my copy for ages before I got around to reading it – definitely one of my favourite reads of the year. I am determined to hit the 40% I quoted at the end of 2014 in 2017!

      Like

  5. Always love checking in here and finding out what you are reading, Cleo! Our tastes are similar, though you do read a lot more non-fiction than I do. Here’s to some great reading in 2017! How long do you think the psychological thriller/mystery trend will continue? I’m not burned out yet, but I do find myself dipping into other areas of fiction more and more. I still love them but can figure them out almost all the time. It’s all good though, as they say. Happy New Year to you and yours!!

    Like

    1. Good to hear from you Kay and 2016 was a big year of non-fiction for me a trend which I suspect will continue. I’m not sure, I think the psychological thriller genre is already transforming to more ‘issue’ led type of plots and I go through phases where I think I need a break but I just can’t resist others that capture my attention!
      Wishing you a Happy New Year too!

      Like

  6. You have had a wonderful 2016 in terms of reading! 🙂 I love those numbers and facts, I was happy to discover mine earlier this month on Goodreads and surprised to see I had devoured more than 25,000 pages! Anyway, thank you for a year of great reviews and recommendations, my first year of blogging has been difficult at times but you have inspired me a lot. Here’s to an equally bookish 2017! 🍸

    Like

    1. Aw thank you Donna – what a lovely thing to say. I love facts and figures and also giving the spotlight to some of the wonderful books I’ve read that weren’t published this year.
      I raise my glass to you and I’m sure we will have a wonderfully bookish 2017!

      Liked by 1 person

  7. Wow!! 148 reviews is amazing!! Using GR to check which is my most popular read is something I haven’t thought about.. interesting..
    I love going through your blog to check out all the psych thriller recs, I think yours is definitely one the best blogs I have seen that covers a whole range of crime/mystery/psych thriller fiction.
    Happy holidays and wish you an even better bookish 2017!!

    Like

  8. Very impressive numbers Cleo! I have a vision of you as a reading gif, eyes rapidly flicking left right left right . You could learn Japanese and perfect the up down up down eye flick as well!

    Like

  9. I’m impressed by your reading total of 148 books. A very interesting roundup of stats – I rarely look at my Goodreads stats in detail, I think I should in future. Looking forward to seeing what you are reading in 2017.

    Like

  10. Burial Rites was one of my favourite reads last year – a wonderful, wonderful book, happy to see it on the list. I’m also very much looking to The Good People.

    Like

  11. Goodreads told me that the most popular book I’d read this year had been read by ~450,000 others. This was pretty depressing. The book concerned isn’t actually total crap, but it’s pretty mediocre.

    They also told me that one of the books I’d read had also been read a whole gollygosh one other person! Oh my! When I checked I discovered their computer had fouled up and that, er, I was in fact the only Goodreads reader to have recorded reading it. Ever.

    Like

    1. Haha – after I published my post I was given a different, much better book as the most popular read – oh well!! I wasn’t entirely surprised by my least popular read but at least four others had read it!

      Like

  12. Wow, impressive stats and you’ve been a prolific reviewer of many many books too, well done! I managed to read 55, which means I attained my goal of reading a book a week and that’s quite a big enough challenge for me, though I’d love to have time for more!
    It’s interesting the stats that Goodreads pull out, my chunkster was Annie Proulx’s Barkskins at 736 pages and not surprisingly the most popular book I read was Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God 212,410 readers!
    What Goodreads didn’t tell me, but that I find just as interesting, was that I managed to read books by authors from 26 different countries, a number of them translations.
    I look forward to your top ten Cleo and all the best for your reading year in 2017!

    Like

    1. Thank you Claire, it has been a good year for books all round. My 660+ Testament of Youth was a real labour of love given the subject matter so I’m in awe of your 736 page read. What a great selection of countries you read from, something I really should do more of but I’m wary of setting myself too many challenges as I have a massive TBR to demolish in 2017 – we’ll see how that goes. I’m still, yes really, pondering my last couple of choices for the top ten but it will be published tomorrow!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Well, dang! I’m now really regretting that I read Charles Palliser’s The Quincunx (947 pages) in mid-December 2015 rather than leaving it another couple of weeks . . .

        My own longest read of 2016 was Sarah Waters’s The Paying Guests at a humble 564 pages.

        Like

          1. That is huge, was it in ebook format – I’d need stronger fingers to prop that up!

            No. But I was kinda grateful that my library-sale purchase was of the bookclub edition, not the trade hardback!

            Liked by 1 person

Leave a Reply, I love hearing what you have to say

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
https://cleopatralovesbooks.wordpress.com/2016/12/28/reading-and-reviewing-in-2016/
cleopatralovesbooks.wordpress.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2022-49
280777
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:FLLX2GWB56O6HIHZ4XQLYZLHG7CHBWGI
<urn:uuid:0e2b6b10-9a00-4914-a426-a8fc3927fbcb>
2022-11-29T18:38:21Z
192.0.78.12
text/html
sha1:PIQ4LF4B2X47RLFC2ZMCC4W5UZR3NNJ4
<urn:uuid:2261946e-525e-4b4e-8945-d271bc484235>
https://cleopatralovesbooks.wordpress.com/2016/12/28/reading-and-reviewing-in-2016/
response
<urn:uuid:a5acea64-5487-49a8-b6f4-44c1b5e780c4>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2022-49
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for November/December 2022
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-199
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.4-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/