2015 book roundup

One of my goals for 2015 was to read 100 books. I read 62 – more than last year’s 56, but still not there. My son is getting into longer chapter books, so I included some of those this year (I didn’t last year). I didn’t include textbooks or journals that I read for school.

This list only includes books I finished. There are dozens that I started but didn’t finish (often not even the first chapter) either because they were poorly edited or didn’t hold my interest.

Here’s a breakdown of what I read:

• 2 (3%) were either kids or young adult; the rest were adult.
• 3 (5%) were nonfiction and the rest were fiction.
• 14 (23%) were single short stories (yes, I realize it’s cheating to include those), and 10 (16%) were short story anthologies.
• I know the authors of 29 (47%) of the books; 7 of the authors (9 of the books or 15%) of them are also with my publisher, Evolved.
• 6 (10%) were in a series. I tend to binge read those. A couple more were also in a series but the other books haven’t been released yet (or hadn’t been after I read the first one and I didn’t track the next ones down later).
• 5 (8%) came from Buzzfeed’s list of 32 Books That Will Actually Change Your Life, which I started in 2014. These were some of the best books I read this year.
• 15 (24%) were books I’d downloaded at some point (probably free) and found on my Kindle; another 13 (21%) were books that randomly caught my eye, something I’d wanted to read for awhile, or were based on a movie I watched. All the rest (55%) were either recommended or written by someone I know or follow online.

Best books I read in 2015:

• Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Pamela Smith Hill – I practically have the Little House books memorized, so this was a must-read.
• Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates – Yates is one of my favorite short story authors, and this collection contains some of his best works.
• The Viper and the Urchin by Celine Jeanjean – a great steampunkish adventure involving a squeamish assassin and a mouthy street kid.
• Those Buzzfeed books, especially The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon and Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk.

If you challenged yourself to read a set number of books in 2015, how did you end up doing?  What were your favorites?  Anything you particularly disliked?