2017 Wrap-Up

I can’t believe it’s 2018 already! I’ve now had this blog for almost a year and I’m so proud of myself for not giving up on it, indeed this blog has definitely helped me so much in both the amount I read and in increasing the diversity in what I’ve read.

People may have noticed I stopped doing Monthly Wrap-Up posts for the past few months and I completely apologise for that, life got in the way a bit and I felt I’d focus on the reviews and just wrap everything up now.

So, the first thing is naturally to talk about all the amazing books I read this year!

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The Books

So, I’m not going to list all the books because I read a grand total of 210 books this year. However, for those that want to know then you can easily look at my Goodreads because I always keep that up to date (after getting home this morning, one of the first things I did before going to sleep was setting my 2018 challenge on there)

A lot of the books I read were fantastic so I’m also really struggling with trying to narrow it down to just a top 10 or top 20 or even top 50. I always struggle with picking favourites though so I just won’t. I did want to post some book covers here so you had some nice pictures to look at but honestly I’d feel bad at leaving out so many great books so instead I’ll provide you with some nice stats.

Of the books I read this year, 98 of them were by women, 3 were by a non-binary author and several (forgot the number) were collections of short stories by multiple authors which is something I’m quite pleased with.

I’ve not made an exact count, however a lot of these books were also by POC (indeed in February I exclusively reviewed books by black authors for Black History Month) as I made a significant effort to try and increase the diversity in my reading and I also actively sought out translated literature too for even more diversity. I read 6 books by Muslim authors, as mentioned in my last post, and I’m hoping to read even more this year.

I’m pretty pleased with everything I read and most of the books were all fantastic, which contributes towards it being difficult to choose favourites.

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The Blog

So, I started this blog back in January 2017 and honestly had no idea that so many of you wonderful people would enjoy reading it so much! I really enjoy looking at my stats and seeing all the different ways you find my blog and where you all come from.

I’ve learnt that my most popular posts are the recommendation ones and those are definitely the best way to promote my blog on other sites, but my reviews are still read more than I’d expect which means a lot (I know I end most of my reviews going “I recommend this!” but honestly I really do recommend almost all of the books I read)

One thing I really enjoyed last year was the two “themed” months I did where in February I focused on books by Black authors for Black History Month and in November I took part in SciFi month on twitter. I think I might do the same thing again this year because they were a lot of fun and definitely helped motivate my reading.

I’ve ended the year just short of 200 followers and so my goal is to hit 250 which hopefully shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve!

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So, despite the lack of pretty book covers I hoped you enjoyed my wrap-up and continue to keep reading this year! If there are any types of posts you’d like to see then please let me know, as I’m always happy to get more feedback. I’ve got a lot of reviews of books from last year to write so should hopefully be pretty active this month trying to catch up on everything.

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