2017 was an awesome reading year for me. I’m going to share my favourite books, my my top re-reads, the biggest disappointments, then polish the post off with a bunch of cool reading stats.
Favourite books
2017 started out with me addicted to sci-fi. The binge began with Illuminae, then carried me though Gemina, Defy the Stars, Starflight, and Dare Mighty Things.
But my top books of the year came down to:
I was intimidated by this book because of the unique format and huge size, but it was AWESOME! You get used to it quickly. The format also makes it a very fast read.
This was a perfect book to read right after Illuminae. I ADORED it!
This book was everything I hoped it would be! It’s a wonderful fantasy story with a great setting.
I FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY finished The Lunar Chronicles series. I can’t believe it took me so long. What a great ending.
After rereading the first three books, I finally got around to Queen of Shadows, Empire of Storms, and Tower of Dawn. ♥ I’m so glad to be caught up on this series now.
This was my last read of 2017 and it was FANTASTIC! Everything I hoped it would be: fantasy, kingdom politics, and revenge.
Most enjoyable rereads
After a really difficult month of mediocre reads and piles of books I couldn’t finish (see next section!), I decided to reread many of my old favourites. Almost 30% of the books I read this year were rereads, and it was amazing. It was such a comfort to spend time reading books I knew I’d love. This is definitely something I plan on continuing in 2018.
Here were a few of my absolute favourite rereads of the year:
I re-read this book twice: once in preparation for reading Breath of Fire, then again in preparation for Heart on Fire. This is one of my all time favourite series!
I may have re-read this five-book series twice in 2017. I love it THAT much! I think it’s my #1 favourite series.
This was my third re-read of The Winter King. I love it every time. You need to read it if you like A Promise of Fire and/or Roar.
Honestly I’d kind of forgotten just how much I love Eragon. I reread the whole series and loved it even more than I remembered. I hadn’t read this series in like 10 years!
I re-read almost all of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s books. They’re so amazing!
I kind of hated Heir of Fire the first time but I adored it the second time! This was a huge relief.
Biggest disappointments
June was a really rough month for me. I slipped into a reading slump of epic proportions where I couldn’t finish a single book! Very sadly this included a huge number I got from BookExpo America, including Amid Stars and Darkness, Nyxia, The Tiger’s Daughter, and The Belles.
Some of my biggest disappointments were:
DNF
I was bored out of my mind!
DNF
It really sucks when a dragon book lets you down. 🙁
DNF
This was my most highly anticipated book from BEA. I was DEVASTATED when I didn’t finish it. It just had too much of a middle grade vibe for my taste.
Reading stats
- Total books finished: 107
- New reads: 76 (71%)
- Re-reads: 31 (29%)
- Pages: 47,263
- Different series: 55
- Standalones: 30
- Different authors: 77
- Average rating: 3.5 (counting DNFs as 0)
- Reviews written: 50
Rating breakdown
| Rating | Number of Books |
|---|---|
| 5 Stars | 23 |
| 4.5 Stars | 9 |
| 4 Stars | 27 |
| 3.5 Stars | 5 |
| 3 Stars | 13 |
| 2.5 Stars | 2 |
| 2 Stars | 2 |
| 1.5 Stars | 0 |
| 1 Star | 0 |
| 0.5 Stars | 0 |
| 0 Stars | 0 |
| Did Not Finish | 13 |
You can see I didn’t have that many low star reads this year and that’s because I’ve become a merciless did-not-finisher. If a book didn’t grab me (even after as few as 10 pages or so), I just put it down. I’d rather spend more time reading awesome books I adore.
Pages breakdown
| Pages | Number of Books |
|---|---|
| 200-399 | 61 |
| 400-599 | 47 |
| 600-799 | 10 |
| 800-999 | 2 |
Inheritance (Eragon series) and Winter (The Lunar Chronicles) were those two massive 800+ page books! Phew!
Genre breakdown
For the sake of making the information more useful, I removed any that only had two books or less. Also, bear with me… I know “Adult”, “New Adult”, and “Young Adult” aren’t genres but I don’t currently differentiate between age groups and genres in my cataloguing. Maybe I should do that…
| Name | Books Read | Number of Reviews | Average Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Action | 3 Books | 3 Reviews | 4.33 Stars |
| Adult | 37 Books | 7 Reviews | 3.68 Stars |
| Adventure | 6 Books | 3 Reviews | 4 Stars |
| Contemporary | 35 Books | 9 Reviews | 3.48 Stars |
| Dragons | 7 Books | 3 Reviews | 2.93 Stars |
| Erotica | 5 Books | 0 Reviews | 4.17 Stars |
| Fantasy | 64 Books | 22 Reviews | 3.74 Stars |
| Historical Fiction | 4 Books | 4 Reviews | 3.25 Stars |
| Magic | 13 Books | 3 Reviews | 4.83 Stars |
| New Adult | 11 Books | 4 Reviews | 2.95 Stars |
| Romance | 82 Books | 21 Reviews | 3.63 Stars |
| Science Fiction | 22 Books | 14 Reviews | 3.12 Stars |
| Space | 8 Books | 5 Reviews | 3.19 Stars |
| Sports | 3 Books | 1 Review | 5 Stars |
| Thriller | 4 Books | 2 Reviews | 4.12 Stars |
| Young Adult | 72 Books | 36 Reviews | 3.53 Stars |
Source breakdown
| Name | Books Read | Number of Reviews | Average Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| ARC From Publisher | 3 Books | 2 Reviews | 4 Stars |
| BookExpo America | 19 Books | 12 Reviews | 2.62 Stars |
| Edelweiss | 11 Books | 9 Reviews | 3.32 Stars |
| NetGalley | 14 Books | 13 Reviews | 3.46 Stars |
| Purchased | 70 Books | 10 Reviews | 3.77 Stars |
Sadly BookExpo America books didn’t fare well this year. Funnily enough, those BEA reads were all either 5 star reads or DNFs and that’s why the average rating is so poor. 🙁
Publication years
It’s clear that I mostly read new releases this year. That’s pretty typical of me. I think most of the older books were the re-reads I did.
Book formats
| Format | Number of Books |
|---|---|
| Physical ARC | 23 |
| eARC | 4 |
| eBook | 26 |
| Hardcover | 23 |
| Paperback | 16 |
These numbers don’t quite add up to all the books I read this year, I think because I changed how I track my formats halfway through the year and I’m missing some data. But I’m really curious to see how these numbers will change in 2018 now that I’ll be buying more physical books.
How did your year of reading go?
What were some of your favourite books? What about the biggest disappointments? Did you do much re-reading this year? Do you have any goals for 2018?
I always love seeing bloggers’ end-of-year reading stats, especially how the genre and format counts break down. The merciless DNF-ing sounds like a brilliant idea…although I’ve found sometimes I need to read junk as a break from school? Congrats on a great reading year Ashley!
I used to be a bit obsessive about finishing every book I started. But my new merciless DNF-ing is so much better. I spend less time reading books I don’t like and more time hunting for and reading ones I love.
It must have taken some time to compile these stats! I wouldn’t even know where to begin mine!
Just finished The Winter King last week and I really enjoyed it as well! Have heard some mixed things about the sequel, though, so I’m not sure if I’ll pick it up.
I’m so glad you loved The Winter King!
I read The Sea King and I enjoyed it but didn’t love it quite as much. Here’s my review if you’re curious: https://www.nosegraze.com/sea-king-c-l-wilson/ In short it just got kind of repetitive and I was annoyed at the main character for rejecting the love interest for so long.
However, I’d say it’s worth reading anyway just because the rest of the series sounds like it’s going to be so amazing. So it’s worth reading The Sea King as a gateway to what will come after.
You did great with your reading for 2017! Illuminae and Breathe of Fire are on my TBR for 2018. I had 1 DNF for this year but I had a couple of books that I was disappointed in and gave low ratings. I hope you find some great books in 2018. Happy New Year Ashley!
Thanks Kathy!
I hope you love Illuminae and Breath of Fire! I bet it’ll be awesome to be able to read the whole Illuminae series at once when Obsidio comes out.
You had a great year! I loved Defy the Stars as well and might do an Inheritance Cycle reread this year.
I 100% approve of an Inheritance Cycle reread! 🙂
I love reading other people’s book stats, partially because I never manage to keep track of stuff like this. It looks like you had a great year overall!
I cheated and built a plugin that handles the stats for me. 🙂 I log information like which books I read and in which format, and which genres the books are, etc., but then the plugin calculates all the stats for me automatically.
I hope you had a wonderful year too!
Yay for not finishing books you aren’t enjoying! I am a HUGE proponent of that. Life is too short and there are too many books! This isn’t really an issue for me at the moment since I just started blogging, but I’d imagine that presents a bit of a conundrum when you have to finish an ARC in order to review it. I kind of think I don’t ever want to go down that road because I like dropping books too much!
Yeah I do feel a bit bad when it’s an ARC. I usually try to still explain to the publisher what happened so they at least know I tried it. Sometimes I also do roundup mini reviews of books I didn’t finish where I just list a few reasons why I couldn’t get through it. Usually those are just a few sentences.
I love all these pie charts I’m seeing for 2017 bookish wrap up posts — they all look super professional, but I’m so impressed with how detailed your pie graphs are! I read a lot of new releases this year too, but I also want to focus more on reading older books that are just as amazing as new releases this year. It’s easy to get lost in the hype of new releases coming out every month ? I hope you have an amazing bookish year for 2018!
It is definitely nice to go back and read some old books. 🙂 I have a few older series I’m particularly interested in reading/finishing!
Have a great year, Zoie! 🙂
You had a great year of reading. I actually got around to 10 new releases in 2017. I usually don’t get around to more than 5. I still focused a lot on backlist books.
Focusing on backlist books is awesome!
I really like your reading stats! I never thought to do that kind of goodreads-ish breakdown of total pages, series vs standalones, etc.. I’ve had After I Do on my TBR list for a while. Seeing it on here makes me eager to bump it up my list.
Thanks Ashley! 🙂
I hope you love After I Do! I think it’s a really interesting story, as it’s not your typical “fall in love” romance.