My 2014 Wrap Up

What a crazy year this has been. Have I mentioned that I am tired of crazy? My one ULTIMATE resolution for 2015 is to find a job teaching at another school - but the resolution post will come tomorrow (when I have thought of more things besides 'get another job'). This post is about what I read this year.

2014 Reading Challenge

Pan has completed her goal of reading 50 books in 2014!

76 of 50 (100%)
view books


OK. So according to Goodreads, I got through 76 books or 28668 pages! Shew! With my work schedule, I don't know how I did that!

There were two reading challenges that I had. The first was to read 30 books for the year (I was thinking one a week not including November (Nano), or the majority of the second and forth terms at school as I have ALL the English exams to set (16 in total) and sleeping is the only thing I plan to do when I am not working my 20 hours a day (no exaggeration there - see why I want another job?)). This challenge was met, raised to 50 and met again then surpassed. Yay!

My second challenge was less of an official challenge for me, but an incentive to try new things. It was the book alphabet challenge. It got me to read The Virgin Suicides by Jeffery Eugenides (would you believe that my thoughts are still out on that one) and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I came close to actually finishing the challenge, but my TBR pile is short of books starting with J, Q, X and Z. But I think four short is not bad, considering the letters that were left (if I had another week, I would have got Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton).

This is the 3rd book in the Night
 Angel series and the one with
super stalking powers.

I had some great experiences reading this year. I discovered Brent Weeks and decided to give him a go. (Actually, his books were stalking me for months, and I decided to give them a go as a result.) I really enjoyed his Night Angel trilogy. It is high adult fantasy with plot twists and turns, but without the grim, gory details of GRR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. Talking about GRR Martin, I suppose I should mention the low point in the reading year: Book 5 - A Dance with Dragons was such a disappointment. You can check out my review of it here.

Other great reading experiences happened too. I read a load of Neil Gaiman, and that can only ever please. I think he is fast becoming my favourite author. I discovered Cinda Williams Chima's Seven Realms series and breezed through those with delight (my first ever blog post was a review of this! You can read it here if you are curious.). Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy was also a HUGE hit for me. I read this during the BookTube-a-thon. It was brilliant. I read some classics and thoroughly loved them. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (Oops! Just discovered that I wrote the review of this and never posted it!) and Brave New World by Albert Huxley come to mind here. I love it when books make you think about them months or weeks after the fact.

My TBR pile is still at a reasonable number. It did go through a moment  where it threatened to grow out of proportion when I got over stressed and needed to feel better (which means I spend a lot of time in book shops) but I got both it and myself under control in time. I have not totalled it recently - in fact I reorganised my book cases again and just put them where they are supposed to be so that I don't look at a pile of books that was starting to sway and threatening to fall. I am not worried about it though. I read from my TBR pile all the time. Since I can remember, I have always had a fairly healthy TBR pile and have liked it that way. Then, when I am in the mood for "insert genre here", I have something to read. I am looking forward to 2015's reading. My TBR pile is awesome and should keep me happy for months. It has a combination of classics, award winning books, light fluffy reading, more light fluffy reading, adult contemporary, middle grade and crime - to name a few.

Well, that was the 2014 brief wrap up. I apologise to all the books I loved that I didn't mention. (I didn't want my post to look like a novel.)