Happy new year everyone!  I hope 2015 is a good one for you.  It’s about time I got on and did my review of my reading year.  It was a good year in general.  I did have a couple of major reading slumps, which meant that this was the first time in many years that I didn’t make my GoodReads challenge.  I had set my challenge at 100 books of which I read 91, which isn’t too bad going, I suppose.  My challenge goal didn’t take account of the fact that this year I listened to far more audiobooks than previously.  These do take me much longer than reading a Kindle book, but are very enjoyable.

Some stats

One reason I love GoodReads is that is can give you some interesting stats and a record of your reading progress.  Here are some of mine.

I read 91 books in 2014.  The longest of these was Brandon Sanderson’s Words of Radiance, which weighed in at a whopping 1,088 pages or 48 hours and 15 minutes of listening pleasure.  I gave my father-in-law this audiobook for Christmas – it will take him a bit of time to get through it!

I rated 21 of those 91 books as five stars.  I do tend to be quite generous with my five stars!

I rated 41 of those books as four stars.  This means that I really enjoyed over two thirds of the books I read in 2014 which is awesome.

23 books were rated three stars on my scale.  These were books that were quite good but didn’t fire up my imagination.

This leaves 6 that were two stars or unrated.

Here is the GoodReads chart showing which categories I read most in 2014:

That is pretty much what I would have expected.  I do love my young adult fiction.

Lowlights

I suffered a couple of major reading slumps this year, one of which I’m still working my way through.  Part of it is due to my hearing challenges and being fitted with hearing aids.  I know that, technically, there is no real reason why I can’t enjoy my audiobooks as before, but yet I can’t get into them.  I had really wanted to be able to stream my audiobooks direct to my hearing aids, but the ones I was prescribed for other reasons don’t have this functionality.  Ah well.

Highlights

One thing I really loved doing this year was my trip through Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings in which I marathoned a significant chunk of Hobb’s epic fantasy series.  This was in preparation for the release of the first Fitz and Fool book in many years.  I do love Hobbs’ writing style and her world building – it’s a testament to her craft that I was able to sustain interest in her world for six whole books one after another.  That is very unusual for me; generally I like to mix up my reading.  I remain on record as being totally on board the Fitz/Fool ship.

I read some excellent books in 2014. Ones that jump to mind are:

Marissa Meyer’s Cress.  This is the third book in the Lunar Chronicles series which is a contemporary/sci-fi retelling of classic fairy tales.  They have kick ass protagonists, imaginative world building and are just awesome.  Go read them.

Ian Doescher’s William Shakespeare’s Star Wars series.  This is best experienced in audiobook format.  The cast really brings out the humour in Doescher’s adaptation and I found myself laughing out loud many times.

I have also really enjoyed Rachel LeFevers’ His Fair Assassin trilogy.  I credit this with kicking my out of a major reading slump.  Kick ass teenage nun assassins in sixteenth century Brittany.  That says it all, really.  I won’t say too much more as I’ll do a full series review at some point soon.

Keira Cass’s finale to her Selection series, The One, was another great read this year.  A great series ender.  I would recommend any and all of these.

So there you have it; my reading year for 2014.  Here’s to 2015!