A Year of Books - 2017

I feel I have had quite a good year of reading in 2017, for the past few years I've been partaking in the Goodreads Reading challenges. In 2015 I read 55 books after I'd challenged myself to read 35, in 2016 I challenged myself to read 60 books and I only read 57. This year I decided to set a harder challenge and read 65 books (just to see if I could), and this year, somehow I managed to read a whopping 122 books with still 7 days to spare and because of that I'm going to see if I could read three more books to get it to a nice even 125.

2017 Reading Challenge

Ella has completed her goal of reading 65 books in 2017!

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122 of 65 (100%)

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I have read some brilliant books such as The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks and more. I also discovered some truly amazing writers such as Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970), Danielle Paige, Peter Swanson and again so many more.
This was the year that I left my comfort zone in terms of what I read and moving from simply reading young adult fiction to classics such as the works by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Psychology books such as Jon Ronson, Tony Buzan, non-fiction such as Sins of the Family by Felicity Davis and simply general fiction such as Vibrator by Mari Akasaka and Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi. I have also developed a love for plays, specifically Shakespeare plays since I really became invested in my work as a Theatre Technician and I even have a favourite of the year, The Tempest.
This year I have finally finished the Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), I don't think I enjoyed them enough to read them again any time soon as it took so very long to get through them all but it was a fantastic read. I have this gift I think, I can read the first book in a series (The Fellowship of the Ring for example) in 2015, I can read the next book in the series a year later and the last one a year after that and still remember exactly what has happened in the previous books. Just thought you'd all be curious.
I have also developed in my love for a genre called cozy mysteries which consist of books written by people like Agatha Christie (1890-1976) and Frances Brody, cozy mysteries are defined as being "a sub-genre of crime fiction which sex and violence are downplayed or treated humorously, and the crime and detection takes place in a small, socially intimate community". I have spent many an evening curled up next to our wood burning fire reading books in this genre.
Overall I feel I've had a pretty good reading year and if anyone is curious in what I've been reading then feel free to click the widget above and it will take you to goodreads.

As for next year, I am going to continue to read books I haven't read before, I am going to read more books to do with the technical theatre industry and I am going to learn to write reviews, improve my Bookstagram (@book.monkey) and hopefully expand how far this blog is reaching.

Thanks for reading.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from me xo