Happy New Year everyone! I hope your year has started off right. As the fireworks were going off last night I didn’t think I was going to make it through to midnight but I managed to stay away and wish my loved ones a Happy New Year and opened up my first read of the year.

A dear friend who knows me too well gifted me Upstream by Mary Olive and I thought what a perfect way to start my reading year with this collection of essays. I never read essays so this helps me get out of my comfort zone and a book that focuses on nature and the power of observation sound like a good way to start the year.

“Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor. With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats. I didn’t choose them, I don’t fault them, but it took time to reject them.” 

I really like these lines and have a feeling I’ll be jotting more as I continue to read.

Today has been a nice quiet day. We went out for Indian food, spent some time at the bookstore (another New Year’s day ritual) and I had a nice time catching up on some blog reading this afternoon. I can’t believe my time off is almost over and soon it’s back to the office so hopefully I can take advantage of another free day on Monday and read a bit more.

Oh and last but not least my husband gave me two fabulous bookish gifts this Christmas. I got Literary Listography: My Reading Life In Lists. The journaler in me loves this already. And, he also gave me Flow Book for Paper Lovers. I love these special Flow editions. This is my third one and it almost seems bigger than the others. Can’t wait to play with the paper.

As it’s time to do a roundup of my year in books I won’t be doing a separate post on just a December review. So let’s get into what have I liked, how many books have I read, and all those other fun stats.

Here are my stats for 2016.

My favorites in Fiction: Like Family by Paolo Giordano, The Expatriates by Janice K. Y. Lee and Gabi, A Girl In Pieces by Isabel Quintero

My favorites in Mystery: Perfect Days by Raphael Montes, Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris and All Yours by Claudia Pineiro

Other Genre Favorites: While The City Slept by Eli Sanders (non-fiction), Displacement: A Travelogue by Lucy Knisley (graphic novel), and Blue Horses by Mary Oliver (poetry)

The Numbers:
Total books read in 2016: 56
Books by women: 40
Books by men: 16
Fiction: 19
Mystery: 27
Classics: 0
Non-fiction: 4
Romance: 1
Short Story Collection: 1
YA: 1
Graphic Novel: 3
Poetry Collections: 2
Books in translation: 10 (Italian, Japanese, Danish (2), French, Swedish, Spanish, Portugese, German, Finnish)
Books from the library: 24
Kindle reads: 15
Challenges participated in: 6
Challenges completed: 2

I ended up reading a couple of more books this year than last even if November and December were not very good reading months. Not sure what happened these months but between work and personal busy-ness it was hard to get to my books. I’m also carrying over a couple of books into the New Year but that usually happens.

Overall my numbers are similar to other years. I always read a lot of mystery so that’s no surprise. I am happy though to see more nonfiction, poetry and books in translation.

Looking forward to 2017 I would like to continue reading across genres but I’d like to see more non-fiction, short stories and classics. Also, the past years I’ve read a lot of books by Scandinavian authors (thanks to the crime fiction that I enjoy) but I have missed Latin American authors and well, the world is a big place and I’d like to expand my reading horizons. Let’s see where my reading takes me in 2017.

I hope you enjoyed reading this and hope 2017 is a wonderful year for you. Wishing you happiness, health and lots of books in the New Year!