I was aware during 2019 that my reading experiences weren’t reaching the highs that other years have. I put it down to me being disgruntled about things in general, but mainly the news in the UK and elsewhere. I read fewer books than I had since joining Goodreads, but still more than my Goodreads Challenge which was 100, I read 111. I thought that maybe I had actually read more pages as quite a lot of my reading seems to have been of chunksters, but no – I read fewer pages than ever before, but that was still 32,492 pages. Oh well, who cares, it isn’t a race! If you’re interested you can look at the books I read here.

I read 39 books by male authors and 72 by female authors (unusual for me as it usually inadvertently ends up being a fairly even score.)

Books by Scottish authors – 22 (must do better)

Books supposedly for children – 14

Vintage crime – 8 (must be the lowest ever and could be the source of my reading woes)

classics – 21

contemporary crime – 6

non-fiction – 14

books in translation – 8

historical fiction – 14

The book that most disappointed me was (it might be a shock to some) One Hundred Years of Solitude. It’s a complete mystery to me why that book is so popular.

Despite moaning about it being a bad year reading wise for me there were several that I felt really lucky to have found.

I loved Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety.

Also Conn Iggulden’s Wars of the Roses series.

I read some Edna O’Brien books and wondered why I left off reading her for about 30 years.

I loved reading Lucy Mangan’s Bookworm

Hmm, maybe it wasn’t such a bad year for books after all. How was your reading year?