The ubiquitous question in all bookish communities, Instagram posts, blogs, or booktuber’s (that is a word) videos: did you have a good reading year? I don’t think I did. According to Goodreads I surpassed my challenge (which I set at 71 books) and read 92 books this year. Well, um, kind of? What I consider to be actual books are novels, short story collections, cookbooks (which I became obsessed with in the last year and read cover to cover, every recipe completely read), collected volumes of comic books, and of course non-fiction books as well. Going by those guidelines I read 57 books; this is because of the fact that I do not consider single issue comics to be books. I read 35 single issue comics, partly because I subscribed to Comixology unlimited this year and became obsessed with it (and a very specific comic series which you’ll see when I break my year in books down more in depth later in this post). So, I feel like I had an okay reading year.  I set my Goodreads goal for 2019 at 71 again this year because I want to hit that goal of reading 71 books, single-issue comics not contained in that.

As far as the POPSUGAR reading challenge…yikes. I completed 38% of the challenge: 19 of 50 prompts (that is if you include the advanced challenge in that, if not it’s 19 out of 40 or 47%). I began the year wanting to only read books that would check off a prompt until I completed the challenge. What ended up happening is that the first few books I read just for the challenge I really was not into at all and it slowed my reading down a great deal. I would love to complete the 2019 challenge, but if I run into a book that I’m really not enjoying it just isn’t worth my time to force myself to finish it. I can put it down, shelve it in my DNF (did not finish), and pick up a different book. The challenge is fun and takes you out of your normal reading habits (I read some amazing books that were just for checking off a prompt, as well) but if it is torturous to get through a book just stop reading it, life is too short to read awful books.

Now for the more complete break down of my year in reading:

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Along with my Goodreads Reading Challenge goal this year (71 books), I am also participating in the PopSugar 2019 Reading Challenge! Come back here often to see when I have checked a prompt off the list- the title and author of the book will be added underneath the corresponding prompt. The page with the full list of prompts will be in the menu (for a tiny bit of clarification, check there- not back to THIS post).

If you would like to know more about this challenge, go here. The Goodreads group for the challenge is a safe, fun, and very active community. I encourage you to join in! You can also visit and follow/friend my Goodreads account to track my progress on both challenges.

Leave a comment below if you’re interested or are going to participate in this challenge- or if you have any reading goals for this year, as well!