End of year review 2014

Another year of reading done. I wanted to get this posted just after New Year's, but work commitments and illness got in the way. Here it is at last, I'm sure you've all been waiting with bated breath. As has been obvious on the blog for the last few days of the year, I took part in, and completed, a huge amount of reading challenges in 2014. I completed my first Cannonball on May the 11th, and was the second person to make it to 52 this year. My double Cannonball was completed by the 22nd of September and in total I managed to blog 138 books. I also completed 12 other reading challenges, and spurred by my great success, not to mention finding so many new ones over the course of December, I suspect I will end up trying for even more in 2015.

I am of course going to take part in the Cannonball Read again, but have promised myself (and others) that I will try not to stress too much about being first to 52, or 104 this year. One of the good things I achieved through my many reading challenges in 2014 was trying new things and reading more diversely than in some previous years, I´m hoping that some of the new challenges I plan to sign up for will help me be even better at discovering new authors and titles. I want to read more comics and graphic novels, I want to read more books either featuring LGBTQ characters and persons of colour or written by non-white, non-straight authors.

It´s been another very good year for reading. My favourite book of 2014 was without a shadow of a doubt The Suffragette Scandal by Courtney Milan, a book so engrossing I had to re-read it right after I finished it, because I was unable to concentrate on anything else until I did so.

My other top books from 2014 are published in the order I read them:
The Girl with All the Gifts - M.R. Carey
Cress - Marissa Meyer
Murder of Crows - Anne Bishop
Fool Me Twice - Meredith Duran
Saga, vol 3 - Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
Dreams of Gods and Monsters - Laini Taylor
Skin Game - Jim Butcher
Landline - Rainbow Rowell
Magic Breaks - Ilona Andrews
The Winter Long - Seanan McGuire
Jackaby - William Ritter
Burn for Me - Ilona Andrews
Yes, Please - Amy Poehler
Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover - Sarah Maclean

Best of the books published before 2014:
The Golem and the Jinni - Helene Wecker
Changes - Jim Butcher
Cold Days - Jim Butcher
Creation in Death - J.D. Robb
Indigo - Beverly Jenkins
Across a Star-Swept Sea - Diana Peterfreund

Worst books read in 2014:
3. Spider´s Bite - Jennifer Estep
2. Somewhere I´ll Find You - Lisa Kleypas
1. This Heart of Mine - Susan Elizabeth Phillips - just thinking about it makes me stabby

Books I'm eagerly awaiting in 2015:
The Darkest Part of the Forest  by Holly Black - The Coldest Girl in Coldtown was one of my very favouritest books of 2013 and in this book Black is back to writing about sinister faeries, which she has done excellently in the past.

Trade Me by Courtney Milan - her first contemporary romance, and a New Adult book at that. I would read any book Milan wrote, even if she decided to write about spiders or cockroaches.

Vision in Silver by Anne Bishop - book 3 in The Others series. I think this may be the best paranormal/urban fantasy series I'm reading at the moment, it's certainly the most engrossing.

Black Dove White Raven by Elizabeth Wein - what's that? Another book featuring pilots and most likely extremely touching depictions of hardship and female friendship? I'm in.

Stiletto by Daniel O'Malley - the sequel to The Rook is finally coming out and I'm excited.

Armada by Ernest Cline - Ready Player One was all kinds of awesome, so I feel I pretty much owe it to Cline to buy and read this one.

Magic Shifts by Ilona Andrews - I will never not buy anything these authors decide to write. I can't wait to see how Kate and Curran's life has changed after the upheaval in the last book. I would also add the next book in their Hidden Legacy series to the list, but that sadly doesn't have a date yet.

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell - why yes, I WILL buy and read Rainbow Rowell writing a whole novel of the fan fiction featured in Fangirl. See the above comment about Milan, spiders and cockroaches. The same applies here.

Winter by Marissa Meyer - the concluding volume in The Lunar Chronicles. It's nearly a year until it comes out, but luckily, there are so many other shiny books to distract me.

The number part of my end of year:

Total pages read: 56099 pages

Re-reads:12

Comic book collections:7

Novellas:13

New (i.e. never read before) books:126

Total:169

July was once again the month when I read the most, with 19 books and 7721 pages (not counting the re-read of Courtney Milan). November was the month I read the least - 8 books (2661 pages).

Genre breakdown:

Romance: 30.5 %

Urban/paranormal fantasy: 27.2 %

Young adult: 13.6%

Fantasy: 9.8%

Historical fiction: 8.4%
Contemporary fiction: 4.5%

Science fiction. 4.5%
Mystery: 3.9%
Horror: 3.2%

Non fiction: 1.9%

I still read mostly romance, but urban/paranormal fantasy is a closer second than in many previous years.

Books acquired in 2014: 171 - where 47 were gifts (34 bought with vouchers), one was a prize and 14 were audio books (one which I got in a giveaway). 

E-books: 73%

Dead tree: 18.7%

Audio books: 8.3%