Ani's Book Abyss: Monthly Reading Wrap Up -- December 2018

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Monthly Reading Wrap Up -- December 2018

So, first of all, a Happy New Year to everyone! Best wishes for each and every day starting today!

I'm a little disappointed that the gifs I chose don't keep cycling on repeat, but they were cute and I MUST have penguins!

Anyway, here's my wrap up!

So rather than creating a separate Year in Review, I decided to just include a whole bunch of Year End Stats in this Monthly Wrap Up, because, why not? And then I will move onto the monthly wrap up itself.

So... 2018...

For starters, I read exactly 100 books. My initial challenge started me at a goal of 150 books. But I couldn't make it, so decided to give myself a break, dropping my challenge goal to 100 around mid-year. With the slump I was going through those first few months, I had a feeling I wasn't going to make 150 books.

My average book rating for 2018 was 3.29 Stars. It looks like a fairly mediocre average, sadly because I DID read a lot of mediocre books with a fair balance of crap books and great books. The highest rated books were 4.5 Stars, of which there were only four. The lowest rated book was a 1.5 Star; there was only one.

Here is the break down of how many books for each star rating I had:
4.5 Star reads: 4
4.0 Star reads: 26
3.5 Star reads: 22
3.0 Star reads: 25
2.5 Star reads: 14
2.0 Star reads: 6
1.5 Star reads: 1

These were my highest rated books as well as my most favorite for 2018 (book covers link to the review if I wrote one):

Honorable mention goes to one young adult book I read:

For more stats and updates about my 2018 reading year, I've already included some ramblings in the 24 Festive Tasks updates, as well as a brief rambling with some 2019 forecasts in a separate post.

Ani's 2019 Reading Challenges | With a short 2018 reflection
24 Festive Tasks | Door 22: New Year's Eve -- (See first two Tasks: 2018/2019 ramblings)
24 Festive Tasks | Door 7: Mawlid -- (Task 1: prophesying for 2019)
24 Festive Tasks | Door 19: Festivus -- (Task 1: the airing of grievances 2018)
24 Festive Tasks | Door 9: Thanksgiving Day -- (Task 1: books I'm most thankful for in 2018)

The post for Thanksgiving was written before I read Chasing Fire by Pamela Clare, and I'm too lazy to update the post with the new book, so I'm leaving as is. After all, I'm fairly thankful for The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson just as well.

A few other tidbit stats for 2018:
-- I read 17 books 2018 releases.
-- I read 19 new-to-me authors.
-- My most read author was Jayne Ann Krentz!
-- I read 86 print novels (digital and physical)
-- I listened to 9 audio books.
-- I read a total of 29,037 pages.
-- I listened to a total of 83:17:52 hours of books.
-- The longest work I read was 544 pages (Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier)
-- The shortest work I read was 3 pages (Madame Esmeralda Makes a Prediction by Courtney Milan)
-- The longest audio book I listened to was 15:10:16 hours (Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton)
-- The shortest audio book I listened to was 6:14:03 hours (Endless Night by Agatha Christie)

And now moving onto the December Wrap Up!

December Reads

Books Dropped/Put On Hold

None this month! Yay!

Currently Reading

December Reading Stats

Total works read: 8

4 print/e-book novels
3 audio books
1 anthology

Average rating: 3.35 Stars

Highest Rated: Chasing Fire by Pamela Clare // 4.5 Stars
Lowest Rated: Midnight Sacrifice by Melinda Leigh // 1.5 Stars

Series I started reading:

None!

Series I completed:

None!

Series I have made progress on:

Discworld by Terry Pratchett
Colorado High Country by Pamela Clare

Favorite reads: As we can see, my highest rated book this month was Chasing Fire by Pamela Clare. Always a delight, her books are, when they don't get overly schmaltzy, and Chasing Fire was thought-provoking and heart-warming and thrilling!

Disappointing reads: My lowest rated book was Midnight Sacrifice by Melinda Leigh, but my biggest disappointment would actually have to be Amanda Quick's Scandal. It had the charm and wit of an Amanda Quick book, but I couldn't stand the characters.

Reviews & Notable Posts

Reviews Written

Memes

24 Festive Tasks | It's Monday! Style - Random Book Update #2

Coming Up In January

Tentative TBR

Other Stuff

So I've listed most of my goals in one of the posts I listed above--I won't go through them again. For the most part, I'm taking a different approach to my reading year this time around, and hoping that things will work out better. No more reading slumps!

Meanwhile, January will hopefully be a great start to a new reading year, as I'm super fired up to start jumping into several reads, starting with the ones I've listed above... and then some. I will be reading the two Amanda Quick books and the two Julie Garwood books for my Reading Assignment challenge for January. Cold Dark Places is a book I've been meaning to read, but hadn't gotten to yet. And the rest of the books, the Mary Stewart and the two Phyllis A. Whitney books are books I've had checked out from the library, hoping to get them read.

Meanwhile, I've already started reading The Anatomist's Wife and The Neverending Story for the Reading Assignment challenge.

January will also be boasting two readathons: 24in48 (January 26 & 27) and Bout of Books (Jan. 7 to 13). I'm hoping to be able to post regular updates, but my plans in the past always ended up falling through, so we'll play by ear.

I will also be rolling over series for my 2019 Personal Series Challenge, and continuing this project once again! A tentative listing of series will be forthcoming!

2018 Wrap-Ups

Ani's Book Abyss

Pages