Wrap Up – Looking at what I’ve read in the last 6 months…

It’s June… JUNE already, 6 months of this year have gone and so quickly! This year has already been an exciting one for reading, with the blog starting in January I really think its helped inspire me to read a lot more and also helped me with writing about a hobby I have been so passionate about my entire life. Now that it’s half way through 2018 I felt this would be a great opportunity to reflect on what I have read so far. I know most people do a monthly blog wrap up, but I am just going to do them every 6 months. So read on to find out what books I loved, what I hated and what I recommend to you.

For any book with a link this goes to any reviews I have written this year. So if a book tickles your fancy click on it and see what my thoughts are. 

What have I read this year?

1. The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan
2. The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett
3. Humble Pie by Gordon Ramsey
4. A Wasted Hour by Jeffrey Archer
5. The Gifting by K.E Ganshert
6. A Street Cat Named Bob by James Bowen
7. Starter for Ten by David Nicholls
8. The Gilded Cage by Vic James
9. The Pact by Jodi Picoult
10. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
11. Rivers of London by Ben Aaronvitch
12. Funny Girl by Nick Hornby
13. Based on a True Story by Delphine De Vigan
14. Tarnished City by Vic James
15. The Girl In-between by Laekan Zea Kemp
16. Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
17. Happy by Fearne Cotton
18. This is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay
19. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
20. Umami by Laia Jufressa
21. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
22. The Next Girl by Carla Kovach
23. La Belle Sauvage by Phillip Pullman
24. A Shiver of Snow and Ice by Lisa Lueddeke
25. What Milo Saw by Virginia MacGregor
26. The Boy in Striped Pyjamas 
27. The Woman & The Little Girl by Jacob Modak
28. The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusamo by Martha Bataklha
29. Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Bali Kaur Jaswal
30. Paper Aeroplanes by Dawn O’Porter
31. The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
32. The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Anne Shaffer
33. The Party by Elizabeth Day

So far this year my…

Favourite fictional novel was:
c3ff5a31-d372-4269-9cb3-ac5060706d40
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine… I hate being part of any hype and jumping on the bandwagon but I must say this has been my favourite book so far this year. Devoured in one sitting I adored the characters, plot and the way it was written. Just felt like the perfect book.

Favourite non-fiction novel was:
41IkL7k1m-L._SX323_BO1,204,203,200_

This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay. One of the funniest books I have read in a while and also very eye opening on what Junior Doctors have to go through on a daily basis.

Most hated fictional novel was:
24480276
I have read quite a few terrible books this year, it’s actually hard to pick my most hated but I think it must of been Laura Barnett’s Versions of Us. I had no connection at all with the characters, the entire story was confusing and just not delivered well. I really struggled to finish this book but I did and then regretted wasting my time with it.

Surprisingly great read was:
32075853
Erotic Stories for Punjabi Women, I didn’t really not what to expect with this book and I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it at all. But I loved it so much, it was funny, provocative, modern, refreshing and exciting. A wonderful surprise!

Surprisingly not so great read was:
61f7iyJLzGL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_
La Belle Sauvage by Phillip Pullman, I did enjoy it but it had nothing on His Dark Materials Series, I much prefer Lyra and his older work so I was a little surprised and disappointed that this book didn’t live up to my expectations.

Reads I started but never finished were:
– Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
– The Bees by Laline Paull
– Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor
– Happy by Derren Brown

Most popular blog posts were:
– Mystery Blogger Award
– Why Reading Makes Me Happy
– Top Ten Tuesdays Books I Loved but would never re-read

Reading Plan for the next 6 months…

I am really surprised I have read so many books this year, I am hoping to keep up the good work and read at least another 30 before the end of the year. My main goal is to get through my TBR pile on my bookshelf. As you can see I have quite a variety of books there to get through, plus monthly book club books, reading in heels subscriptions and anything I borrow from friends. I am going to try and resist purchasing new books before I read what I have but I can never promise myself anything when it comes to new books.
Screen Shot 2018-06-04 at 20.15.02.png
Hope this has given you an insight to what I have been reading this year. Also I would like to thank everyone who gets involved in the blog all the likes and comments you give its been fabulous and overwhelming, here’s to the next 6 months of blogging! 

How many books have you read so far this year? What did you love or hate? What books would you recommend to me? Thanks for reading. Katie x

PS. Don’t forget to follow Brunching Bookworms on Instagram.

9 thoughts on “Wrap Up – Looking at what I’ve read in the last 6 months…

  1. charlesjli says:

    That’s amazing! 33 books halfway through the year! I just started blogging 3 months ago and my goal for this year is 20 books 🙂 Saw you listed your most hated fictional novel. I’m trying to get better at stop reading books that aren’t applicable to me as well. Keep up the good work 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    • brunchingbookworms says:

      Thank you so much 🤗 blogging has really helped me to improve how much I read. In a year I normally average about 30-40 books so to read over 30 already I am surprised myself! Well that particular book was from a book club I attend but I have read some terrible things this year so I need to stop myself when I am no longer enjoying it as there is so many good books out there. Hope you achieve your 20 goal for this year 🤗📚

      Liked by 1 person

  2. bookwormbloggerweb says:

    Wow, this is the kind of reading I need to be doing. There are a few on there I’ve already read and I completely agree that Eleanor Oliphant is an amazing book. Likewise I struggled with The Versions of Us, I actually tried it twice and didn’t get very far. It was far too confusing. Good luck with the next 6 months 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    • brunchingbookworms says:

      Thank you 🤗 I read all of The Versions of Us it was such a struggle! I liked the concept though, I am finding that with a lot of books lately, I am currently reading The Power, again a great concept but not enjoying the execution much. Think I have become too picky recently 😂🙈

      Liked by 1 person

Leave a Reply

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 )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google 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
https://brunchingbookworms.co.uk/2018/06/04/wrap-up-looking-at-what-ive-read-in-the-last-6-months/
brunchingbookworms.co.uk
crawl=CC-MAIN-2019-35
102077
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:43BQOTJM2XIZGFTAOWZ3WQLG6K6FZMJS
<urn:uuid:0b229eb3-3068-4bca-a354-12c05ce78b34>
2019-08-22T03:49:41Z
192.0.78.25
text/html
sha1:HQD6PC476S75DP7PXR7DMD54WGRBYE26
<urn:uuid:52a711d1-f8cf-40b0-97d5-d48ddb0a124a>
https://brunchingbookworms.co.uk/2018/06/04/wrap-up-looking-at-what-ive-read-in-the-last-6-months/
response
<urn:uuid:90bdcbcb-77a1-4896-a297-1676461b1914>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2019-35
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for August 2019
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-192.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.1-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/