End of Year Wrap Up and Everything

Hi, Hi, Hi! Here I am, limping in on the last day of the year like I've been here all along, did you miss me so much or what? As always, I come without promise of any kind of posting consistency in the new year, but with much enthusiasm for the year just passed.

Having looked back on this post from last year, I can see that I got a little out of control with the word count, mainly because of, you know, having to fit the news of a whole year into one post because hey, remember me? I am the girl who is bad at updating her blog. This year, I'll try to keep it brief, but who can promise about such things? Definitely not me.

So, 2017. The biggest personal thing for me was moving away from the house I'd been in for 4 years, and moving in with my boyfriend! This is definitely not what I expected at the start of the year, but it has so far turned out to be the best big life decision I've made since... Well, the last time I moved! Work wise, things haven't been so good, but I may have news regarding that soon so watch this space (which, you know, I will try to update hopefully maybe more often but who knows).

Life this year, though, has really been all about spending all the time with my boyfriend that I can (he has had three different jobs and all of them have had weird ass hours), making good use of my network railcard to visit him until we lived in literally the same place, and the rest of the time trying to see friends and family and generally having a balanced life and stuff. I guess it makes sense that the year feels like it's been split into two (uneven) halves, but it's strange to think that at the start of the year I was living in a completely different place, newly in love and going about my usual daily business and now I'm basically just a cohabiting partner, innit?

Reading wise, it's also been a split year. To start with I was really spending a lot of time with my boyfriend and so practically forgot that books existed, and now I spend over an hour on buses every day which has been so good for my reading I can't even tell you. It's also the year I discovered Rupi Kaur, finally, FINALLY finished my Stephen King challenge, and ALSO finally read all of Maya Angelou's memoir series. I guess it's been a year of finallys, in that sense, and I feel like I can face the new reading year with less things to feel guilty about not reading, and more things to look forward to reading.

Shall we look at some stats? I think we should.

Number of Books Read: 80
Number of Pages Read: 27,720
Fiction vs. Non-Fiction: 59/21
New Reads vs. Rereads: 74/6
Men vs. Women: 36/44
White vs. Non-White: 62/18 (ooof)
Translated vs. Not: 6/74
Digital vs. Physical: 3/77

I think from that, we can pretty much ascertain that I read physical books originally written in English by white men or women. I'm fairly proud that my women reads outweigh men this year (this might be the first year that's happened because of Stephen King reasons) but overall MUST DO BETTER. I'm thinking of maaaybe doing a challenge or two this year though, so that might spur me on to read better. You know, maybe.

And and and can we look at this little thing because I have NEWS:

So last year, I didn't do so well with this challenge. I read my own books, sure, but I also bought a lot of books to replace the ones that I had read. That was not the point AT ALL, so nice work, me. This year, yes, I still bought books. Of course I did. However, I definitely tried to stay conscious whilst in a bookshop and only buy books that I REALLY wanted, rather than ones that just sounded kinda interesting. Of the books I've bought, I would only count 29 as outstanding, which means less than 30 books added this year to the books left to read, which I don't think is so bad. More importantly, though, let's talk about this figure. I started the year with 338 books left to read, and I am ending the year with, wait for it, 256! Still an obviously ridiculous number, but let me tell you, moving does wonders for getting rid of a whole load of books you're probably never going to read. And that's not all- out of 80 books read this year, 58 of them were books I had already owned, and I am very very ok with that number.

In 2018, I'm still completely focusing on reading my own damn books, and because I kind of want to try and save some money a little, I kind of don't even want to buy any books (she says now)? I'm not enforcing any kind of strict ban, but at the same time I'm just trying to be sensible and also read all of the lovely books I've already bought! I have very very very many obligation things to do next year (THREE WEDDINGS!) so who knows how much I'll get to read, but, you know, I can guarantee it'll be something...