Happy 2016! I hope you all had a great holiday. Ours was very quiet but nice. We watched The Martian, had the traditional 12 grapes to make our wishes and although we didn’t see any fireworks, we certainly heard them going off around town.

One of my recent traditions has been to start a new book the first day of the year. I was having a hard time deciding what to read but I figured I couldn’t go wrong with an author I can rely on and chose The Secret Place by Tana French.

I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to start with a mystery as I actually have two more going on and I prefer not to do that but I was spending too much time deciding and just wanted to get started with a new book. Such a bookish problem right?

And, if you haven’t yet checked it out, visit Sheila’s post on the first book of the year. Lots of bookworms are sharing their first reads. Very cool.

What else, we also went to Barnes & Noble today so I got caught up on some magazines and added more books to my TBR list. Yep, the year is starting off just right.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend. I need to the make the most of it as it’s back to work on Monday.

Another year is ending and it is time for a recap of my reading year. I love to go over my spreadsheet (yes, I keep an excel spreadsheet) and look over all the books I’ve read.

I get to do a bit of reminiscing about the great books, maybe even the not so great ones. But anyway, let’s get started.

Here are the stats for 2015:

My favorites in Fiction: The Dinner by Herman Koch and Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

My favorites in Mystery: The Last Policeman by Ben Winters, Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by Edward Runcie, And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander and The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

The Numbers:
Total books read in 2015: 50
Books by women: 31
Books by men: 17
Books by a couple: 2
Fiction: 12
Mystery: 26
Classics: 1
Non-fiction: 4
Romance: 1
Graphic Novel: 3
Poetry Collections: 2
Horror: 1
Books in translation: 6 (German, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Swedish)
Books from the library: 21
Kindle reads: 19
Challenges participated in: 10
Challenges completed: 2

The reason I break out favorites in Fiction and Mystery but not other genres is because those are the genres I read the most and feel like I can make a better comparison.

I’m very happy to have finally added more non-fiction, at least one classic, several poetry collections and even a horror book. I love to see a variety of genres so this was great. I didn’t get any YA reading done or Fantasy but there’s always next year.

Also audiobooks did not happen this year. I tried a few but always had to return them to the library before I was finished with them. I actually had several DNFs this year but didn’t keep track. I think I need to do that next year.

Finally with respect to reading challenges as you can see I joined a lot of challenges and reading projects but only finished two. I’m not sure which ones I’ll join in 2016 but I’ll keep you posted.

As usual, no reading goals for 2016 but just wishing that a lot of good books end up on my nightstand. I wish you all the best in the New Year and may it be filled with a lot of health, happiness and great books!