MY 2017 IN BOOKS

This is the time of year when we take a look back at what we read, retracing our steps and revisiting some of the books we most enjoyed in our reading journeys. Thanks to the summary offered by GoodReads I can explore the past twelve months and amuse myself with some statistics.

Here is the visual overview of the books I read and reviewed in 2017:

 

65 titles sounds like an incredible amount, even taking into account that some of them are novellas, so they are shorter than an average book. Still, the overall page count gave me pause: 21.859 – I certainly spent a good amount of time with my nose in a book, and considering that most of my reading happens during the hour-long commute to and from work, I am deeply grateful to all those authors and their stories that distracted me from the daily drudgery of my subway travels.

As far as genres are concerned, they are more or less equally divided:

FANTASY                   26
SCIENCE FICTION 21
URBAN FANTASY  12
HORROR                    6

Once I tended to read more SF than other genres, but I have to admit that in recent years Fantasy and its close relative Urban Fantasy take up a much larger space on my virtual shelves, thanks to the discovery of authors whose books I buy sight unseen, knowing I will enjoy their stories no matter what they feature. Still, I hope to read more SF in the near future, if nothing else because I want to find a better balance in my reading choices.

On the subject of ratings, I have been fortunate enough, in 2017, to encounter very few books I did not enjoy, so that only 3 of them did get a rating that was less that 3 stars over 5 (not unlike last year): my average rating comes up to a little over 4, which means that I loved what I read. Speaking of which, I feel the need to stress how 2017 was an amazing year for debut novels and that it’s only proper to list them again here (in the order I read them):

KINGS OF THE WYLD by Nicholas Eames
SOUL OF THE WORLD by David Mealing
FIRST WATCH by Dale Lucas
AGE OF ASSASSINS by R.J. Barker
THE COURT OF BROKEN KNIVES by Anna Smith Spark
THE TETHERED MAGE by Melissa Caruso (forthcoming review)

If this has indeed been a great reading year, it’s also because of these wonderful stories and their creators, and I hope of seeing more of them soon.

A  Happy 2018  to all of you, and may it be filled with great stories!

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Vacationing Owl…

 

The suitcase is packed, the tickets bought, everything is ready for a well-deserved vacation, so this bookish owl is waving goodbye to everyone for the next two weeks.

I have scheduled a couple of posts, just to keep my blog’s muscles in tune (but do blogs have muscles?  that’s an interesting question…) but I might be unable to reply to your comments – or to comment to your always intriguing posts – during my absence, so I’m making my apologies now, and hope to be able to do it all once I’m back.

Keep reading great stories, keep having fun and… see you soon!

My 2015 in Books

51 titles… It’s not much, not if compared with the stats of the majority of my fellow bloggers (by the way, I’m amazed at the number of books I see listed in the year’s-end posts that are cropping up these days. How do you manage so much?  Superhero-like reading speed? 48-hour days? Or both?  😀 ) but for me it’s a good number, taking into account my limited free time and the pressures from work: 11 books more than last year, and an average of one book per week, more or less.  Not bad at all…

Even better if I consider that, with a few exceptions, they were all greatly enjoyable books, with several new discoveries among them: authors I never read before, independent authors who submitted their work for review, allowing me to find new, unknown talents, and a couple of titles from genres I would not have suspected would fall into my preference range.

Apart from the pleasure of reading, something that I guess was born at the time when printed words ceased to be a mystery for me, this year has also been another year of “sharing the wonders” with other book bloggers and with the people who kindly commented my ramblings. This enhanced my enjoyment, people, because it was – and still is! – an amazing experience.  Thanks!

So here it is, my collection of read books’ covers for this year. The list of books I want to read, or have lined up next is even longer, but that’s a matter for 2016…

Good reading, everyone! And a Happy New Year 🙂

In the Beginning…

They say the first post is the hardest, so… let’s get this over and done with!

 

I love reading, and I love even more discussing books with other people: observing the development of a story-line, or the shaping of a character, through the eyes of a fellow reader is a thought-provoking experience, because no one sees things the same way.

Therefore, discussion becomes enrichment, and adds unexpected insights.

 

Even if I enjoy mainstream fiction, my deepest interests lie with speculative fiction – be it sci-fi or fantasy, or the various declinations of both sub-genres. As I did last year, when I monitored my own reading progress on GoodReads, I will try to expand my horizons by trying out new (or new to me) authors and new genres.

 

This blog will be my journey’s diary. I have to thank Old Bat’s Belfry for this idea: after finding her blog and the post about a reading challenge for 2014, I was prompted to try a new adventure on Pinterest, sharing my reading adventures, so this will be the place where I store my thoughts and reflections on the books I read.

It promises to be a fun road…