One of my favorite yearly blog posts is doing a recap of my reading year. It’s always fun to reflect back on the books that I enjoyed and to think about what next.

So here are the stats for 2014:

My favorites in Fiction: The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud, Casebook by Mona Simpson, The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri and Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo

My favorites in Mystery: The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton by Elizabeth Speller, The Absent One by Jussi Adler-Olsen and I Will Have Vengeance by Maurizio de Giovanni.

The Numbers:
Total books read in 2014: 45
Books by women: 30
Books by men: 15
Fiction: 20
Mystery: 18
Young Adult: 2
Romance: 1
Graphic Novel: 1
Poetry Collections: 1
Audiobooks: 3
Books in translation: 5 (Swedish, Danish, Japanese, Italian, and Icelandic)
Books from the library: 13
Kindle reads: 19
Challenges participated in: 6
Challenges completed: 0

Another year where my overall books read number went down. What is going on with me? Oh I know, life! Anyway, I’m very happy I continued to incorporate books in translation, poetry collections and I finally “got” into audiobooks. There were some DNFs but I forgot to keep track of those. And, I do wish there had been more classics, more non-fiction and more variety but I think that’s my typical wish. Let’s face it, I do love my comfort books and those are mainly fiction and mysteries.

Let’s see where 2015 takes me. I have not joined any reading challenges yet because I was checking out A Novel Challenge and got a bit overwhelmed with all the variety that is out there. I didn’t do that great on my reading challenges this year but I do have fun making my lists. Ha. Let me know which challenges you are participating in and I may join too.

No reading goals for next year just hopeful for a lot of good reads. Wishing you a wonderful year ahead filled with lots of good books and good times!

Dear Friends,

I’m sorry the last few months I’ve been so absent from this blog and blogland but I want to just pop in here and wish you all a wonderful holiday season with your families. It’s going to be a quiet Christmas here and I’m looking forward to that.

I’ll have a few days off from work as well so I can’t wait to enjoy trips to the coffee shop, the bookstore and time to play in my studio with all the paints, stencils, papers, etc. that I keep amassing. Ha.

I hope Santa brings you much happiness (and lots of books!) this Holiday Season. I look forward to reading about your new bookish gifts.

And, I’ll be putting together my end of year favorites list! Isn’t it fun to look back on the year and remember all you’ve read? You know I can’t wait to read yours lists too. Merry Christmas!

Hugs,
Iliana