My books resolution last year was 15 books, and I used Goodreads to track my progress with that resolution as I have the past few years. I was reading very long and hefty books this year, which was sometimes very frustrating with hitting a certain number of books (versus pages, I guess) because the 14th book I started reading this year was super dense and fairly technical. I loved the book but it was frustrating to read for hours and only have progressed 2% further than when I started that day. If I hadn’t started other books before finishing it, I would never have hit my goal of 15. I also read most of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, aka the Game of Thrones books, which are very, very long. The longest book I read this year, according to my Goodreads Year in Books, was A Storm of Swords at 1,177 pages. For reference, the average number of pages of the books I read this year was less than 500.
Without further ado, here are the books I read this year:
- In Other Words – Jhumpa Lahiri
- A Storm of Swords – George R. R. Martin
- Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby – Sandi Metz
- The Inkblots – Damion Searls
- A Feast of Crows – George R. R. Martin
- A Dance with Dragons – George R. R. Martin
- China Rich Girlfriend – Kevin Kwan
- Ready Player One – Ernest Cline
- The New York Times: Footsteps
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – Mark Manson
- Rich People Problems – Kevin Kwan
- Modern Lovers – Emma Straub
- Spark Joy – Marie Kondo
- Sharp Objects – Gillian Flynn
- everyone’s an aliebn when ur a aliebn too – jomny sun
- The Comic Book Story of Video Games – Jonathan Hennessey & Jack McGowan (review coming soon!)
- Turtles All the Way Down – John Green
- The Pragmatic Programmer – Andrew Hunt & David Thomas
- The Gene – Siddhartha Mukherjee
I already have some titles loaded on my Kindle Paperwhite and I’m very excited to get reading this year! Here’s hoping I can make good progress with some easier to manage books and avoid pedantic fictions that make me so nervous about checking out new fiction titles…
Do you have any book recommendations for me going into 2018? Read anything good last year that you’d suggest? New titles, classics? Fiction, non-fiction?
What’s your reading look like? What are your 2018 reading goals?
Previous years: 2016
Sip of Starrshine 
Love this! I’m trying to read just 12 books in 2018, which is so little compared to how much I used to read, but is more than what I’ve read in recent years. The Gene (along with the Emperor of All Maladies) is on my to-read list! Was it good? Also I’m jealous of how far you’ve made it in ASoIaF – I’ve only read the first two books of the series even though I have all the books in both hard copy and on my kindle.
Next up for me is the Hate U Give, but I’m also hoping to read Americanah, Homegoing, and Swing Time in the near future. Any from your list that you recommend for me to add to my to-read shelf?
LikeLike
I really liked The Gene BUT it is really dense and there is a lot of heady science. I had a hard time following along when I wasn’t super engaged with reading it, despite the fact that I almost went to med school XD
I wasn’t into ASoIaF at first but I guess I got into it by the end! The books are so dang long though.
I haven’t even heard of the books on your next list! I’ll definitely look into them. From my list this year, I actually didn’t love a lot of the books I read that weren’t part of a series. The Rorschach biography was super interesting as a history of psychology that we really didn’t get as psych majors. The jomny sun book was cute and tickled my soul. I am still taken by the prose of Anthony Marra, he has 2 books and I really loved his second one if you are interested!
LikeLike
Ooh I’ll have to check out Anthony Marra and the jomny sun book! The jomny sun book seems right up my alley haha. And it sounds like if I start reading the Gene, I will have to have a more fun, less dense book to read concurrently.
The length of the books and the fact that the tv show was currently on was a reason why I couldn’t get past the second ASoIaF book originally – they were enjoyable but so slow. But now that there is a huge break between seasons I will definitely give it another go. I feel like I should almost go back and start over from book 1, since I read it in 2013, but then I’m worried I’ll never finish the series XD
One thing I’ve always struggled with is when it is okay to quit reading a book that I’m not enjoying versus struggling through in case I end up really liking it by the end. Like, I almost stopped reading Gone Girl because I thought the first half was annoying, but then I ended up liking the second half and am glad I read it since it was such a popular book. Also, it somehow took me like 3 years to finish A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, and for awhile I was going to give up but then I was sooo happy when I finally finished it. It wasn’t even dense or anything, it just had parts that weren’t super engaging. But I have a bad habit of flitting between books and only reading the first halves before moving on. I should join a book club or something so I am more motivated to get to the ends of books XD (Sorry this was a super long comment/rant haha)
LikeLiked by 1 person
The jomny sun book was a perfect way for me to finally hit 15 books while reading The Gene because it was so light and easy but not in a shallow, vapid way.
Yeah I picked up the books between the last 2 seasons because I had binged the first 5 seasons and need ma fix hahaha
I am REALLY bad at quitting books that are bad, I feel like such a quitter! I felt the way you felt about Gone Girl about her other book Sharp Objects, except I never wound up liking it. (Same with Modern Lovers… really hated that one actually.) Sometimes I’m glad I stick with a book but most of the time I find myself hating these books and really lamenting wasting the time to finish them. At least I have gotten better about picking up other books to read in the meantime when I hate a book. I feel like with Blogging For Books, I force myself to finish books that I hate so much so that I can write a review but man, some of these books are so bad and difficult to finish. (I’m having that problem with some of the movies I’m reviewing, too.)
I love your long comments, keep ’em coming! ❤
LikeLike