How has your reading year gone?

[BookWitch]

How many books have you read this year? (if you are a counter)
Highlights?
Low points?
Any classics you are please to have read?
What did you give up on?

I will have read 60 by New Years Eve (have two nearly finished at the moment) I understand why people don't count but I do as it keeps me focused and I keep a journal.
I am aiming 75 in 2020.

Highlights were
The Hearts Invisible Furies by John Boyne
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Mythos by Stephen Fry
Lamentation and Heartstone by CJ Sansom
Becoming by Michelle Obama
Educated By Tara Westover

Low points:
Tin Man by Sarah Winman (confusing, underdeveloped characters, badly written)
Sing Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward (massively frustrating, lots of potential, nothing happens)
A Month in the Country by JL Carr (over-rated, boring, thankfully short)

I'm proud I finally got around to reading all 1500 pages of A Suitable Boy. I thought I would love it, I usually enjoy a family saga, and while it was OK, and did like some of the storylines, found huge chunks of it tedious and confusing. Won't rush to re-read.

I did give up on Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeline Thein. Unnecessarily complex, vague and confusing.

I use the Goodreads app to count mine. I set myself a random 'target' of 50 and I'm on number 49. Unfortunately it's The Sunne in Splendour- a novel about Richard III - and it is 1,232 pages long!!! I don't think I'm going to make my target.... unless I stop and read a couple of Ladybird Books instead.

Also enjoyed Heart's invisible furies and Educated.... but my favourite read of the year had been various Scarlet Pimpernel stories. I'd never read any before and found them to be great fun.

I've read 98 so far, & will probably finish no. 99 (Hello World by Hannah Fry) before the end of the year.

Highlights:
Fiction - Seven Surrenders and The Will To Battle both by Ada Palmer
Non-fiction - The Heartland by Nathan Filer, Wilding by Isabella Tree & Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
Low points / abandoned - I tend to DNF anything I'm not enjoying pretty quickly, so lots of abandoned books but fewer real low points in reading.

Haven't read any classics this year!

I use Goodreads too.
I read the Sunne in Splendour years ago, remember enjoying it. I like her Welsh books too, Here Be Dragons

Come to think of it, my two low points - both DNF-ed - were books I had high hopes of from recommendations on here, Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez, and This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson.

I think the latter just isn't my type of book (was lead into it by the fact that everyone on the 50 books thread seemed to love it), but only 99p so little lost.

The Criado Perez I bought full price & still have sitting downloaded on my phone, but I just feel she takes pretty well known & unsurprising information and beats you over the head with it until all meaning is lost in a barrage of statistics without either a great deal of context or any real suggestions as to ways things could improve & move forward.

I set myself a goodreads target of 500 books - I'm at 440 so definitely not making my 500 it was aspirational anyway
Books I've loved this year include
The murder of Harriet Monkton by Elizabeth Haynes
One summer by David Badacci
No further questions Gillian McAllister

I've had some misses but the most recent was The Secret of Cold Hill by Peter James- second book in the 'series' and I'd really hoped it would shed a little light on the original book but I ended up more confused than when I started

@beccy11 500 books! That's really impressive, more than one a day, close to two a day. I wish I could read that much. Are you a very fast reader? Or able to listen to audio books all day?

You know I have really struggled my attention span and thus my reading have gone right down the nick after illness in the last years.

I used to get to 100 books minimum

I've read 1 this year

It's so bad that I am challenging myself to twelve next year as a new year resolution!

@BookWitch I'm a really fast reader, I'm not an audio book fan I can't settle listening to a book I need to read it iyswim?
I don't really watch tv so will happily read 10 books in a weekend 😄

@VanyaHargreeves I'd set myself a target of 80 this year and I was ahead of that schedule u til about May. My reading really fell off since then and I think I'll make just 60.

Trying the age old resolution- less internet and tv for 2020, aiming for 75

Some impressive levels of reading here! I've only managed about 30 this year as life has got in the way. My selection is not very current as I almost only buy from charity shops.

I've had a good reading year. Finally back up to my pre children concentration level now my youngest is four. I've read fifty five books this year and was aiming for fifty.

Highlights - The diary of a bookseller, English Animals, The stranger diaries, The garden of lost and found, Everybody died so I got a dog, Names for the sea, You think it, I'll say it and The easternmost house.

I'm currently reading Heart's invisible furies and enjoying it. I also gave up on This thing of darkness.

With a big promotion in a new organisation in January I wasn't sure how this year would be reading wise, but I have read 29 books and may get to 30 by Tuesday.

Best book was Laura Purcell's The Silent Companions. Low point for me was 7 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle which I abandoned.

Hoping there will be a 25 books thread in 2020 as I have lurked on this year's but didn't feel I could jump in part way through the year when I figured out that I would be able to keep up the pace.

I’ve read around 35 this year.

Highlights included The Great Gatsby, Standard Deviations, Educated and The Witches Of Eastwick.

I was disappointed by Normal People by Sally Rooney. Couldn’t understand the hype and didn’t finish it. I wasn’t that blown away by Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me, either.

My reading resolution for next year is to read Moby Dick, and I’m particularly excited for the third part of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy.

I use Goodreads too and set myself a target of 70 and have currently read 72. Hoping to read more next year as I'm not working so many extra hours.

Highlights: The Crow Road by Iain Banks, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? by Henry Farrell, The Outsider by Stephen King, A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (re-read in anticipation of getting The Testaments for Christmas) and Born a Crime by Trevor Noah.

Lowlights: Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney (I hated this book with a passion), Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (finally got round to reading this and thought it was awful), The Wych Elm by Tana French (loved her other books but was soooooo disappointed in this one) and My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (so very dull).

I'm hopefully finishing the year on 22 books. Not a lot by standards on here, but I've barely read for the past few years. In 2018 I probably read 3 books!

Highlights for me have been:
The Cut Out Girl - Bart Van Es
Afloat - Danie Couchman
The World I Fell Out Of - Melanie Reid

I don't read too much fiction, but my favourite fiction of the year was Hearts Invisible Furies and My Brilliant Friend.

Ambition for 2020 is to make 30+ books and try to broaden my fiction reading.

I've read 167, but a few of those were Chalet School ones which I knocked off in a couple of hours apiece at most!

Highlights were probably Warlight by Michael Ondaatje, The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo.

Books I read but thought were terrible included: Until We Meet Again by Miranda Dickinson (partly set in Scotland, written by someone who knows bugger all about the place and with a deeply irritating protagonist), The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson (pitched as "Sliding Doors in a bookshop", actually full of offensive theories on autism) and Oligarchy by Scarlett Thomas (full to the brim of fat-shaming for anyone over a size 4).

In 2020 I'm looking forward to the new Hilary Mantel and to working through my TBR pile. The new Erin Morgenstern is at the top of that, and is perfect for these quiet days between Christmas and New Year because it's a hefty hardback!

I’ve only read about 8 books. I’m not a fast reader and if I get totally lost in a book i find I can’t get into another book easily I need a break. This year I’ve struggled to read but it’s improved so setting myself 25 books for 2020

I’ve enjoyed
The Lost Man by Jane Harper
Scrublands by Chris Hammer
Silent Hearts by Gwen Florio
The Whisperman by Alex North (reading this at the moment)

Didn’t enjoy so much
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng.

Really not very well! I set up the reading challenge on Good Reads. I decided on a total of 24. Which I thought was safe.?With the rule of them being physical books. And to finish them. I've read 11! Pathetic! And 80% of them were at best meh! Need to change my rules next year!

I'm another one who uses Goodreads to track books. I set a target of 65 at the beginning of the year but upped it to 70 a few months ago. I've read 70 so far so will be 71-2 by Tuesday.

I've had a really good reading year and have lots of favourites:
Stoner by John Williams
Kindred by Octavia E Butler
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
The Sixteen Trees of the Somme by Laars Mytting
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
I know this much is true by Wally Lamb
The Rotters Club by Jonathon Coe
Plus Educated, Becoming, the first Book of Dust......

The only book I really didn't like was Snap by Belinda Bauer. How was this Booker long listed? Part way through I had to google it as I was sure I'd picked up the wrong book.

Other books that were fine but a bit disappointing were:
The Secret Barrister (way too much history for me)
Archangel (not as good as Robert Harris' other books)
The Temple of my Familiar (not a patch on The Colour Purple)

No DNFs but I did put down Lincoln in the Bardo, Milkman and Beloved very early on. They weren't the right books to read when exhausted due to insomnia but will try them again next year.