Hello!
I can't believe 2015 is already over, and I can't believe how much I've read this year! My goal for 2015 started out as 25 books or something, but as the year progressed I realised that I needed something a lot more challenging, and two days before the new year I finished my final goal, 80 books. When I look back, I don't understand how I managed to read so many. With everything that's been going on at school, I don't get how I had time to read anything else.
As I did read 80 books, I will obviously not talk about all of them here. If I did, this post would take forever to write, and to read. I will just sum it up. Overall, I feel like I had pretty awesome reading year. Yes, some of the books I read did disappoint, but you can't really expect anything else. I read so many fantastic books, and I discovered new authors that I want to read more of.
I want to mention some books in this post, so I'll do some categories.
The first category:
Favourite book(s) of the year
I'm having a lot of trouble with this category, because there were so many good books. I excluded Harry Potter, Hunger Games and other rereads, because that just wouldn't be fair. But, after careful thinking I have come up with my answer, and that is
Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas. Or really, the entire series. I started it back in January, and though I had some trouble getting into it at first, I fell in love with it. And yes, the books are great, but have you seen the covers? They are so amazing as well, and they all look so pretty together. Everything Maas writes is so great, and her other book, A Court of Thorns and Roses, are high up on the list of favourite books as well.
Here are links to my reviews for
Heir of Fire (ToG #3),
Queen of Shadows (ToG #4) and
The Assassin's Blade (#0.1-0.5), as well as my review for
A Court of Thorns and Roses.
Then, moving on to the second category:
Biggest disappointment
Unfortunately, I did read some disappointments this year as well, but luckily there weren't many of them. The biggest disappointment was
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Going into it, I really thought that it was a book that I was going to enjoy a lot, but I found it really confusing and boring. It's not a book I'm recommending to anybody, even though it is considered a "classic". The other classics I've read I've enjoyed, or at least understood why they became famous.
You can find my review for Slaughterhouse-Five
here.
The third category:
Prettiest cover
Hands down, the prettiest book I read this year must be Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley. I noticed that people were talking about it online, but the main reason I decided to actually buy it was because of the cover. I think it's so fascinating and beautiful, and I can honestly spend a long time looking at it. Fortunately, this books doesn't just have a pretty cover. I didn't have any expectations about this book, and I didn't really know what it was about, but it blew me away.
You can read my review for Magonia
here.
The fourth, and last, category:
Favourite author
The absolute first name I though of was
Sarah J. Maas, and I'm going to stick to that answer. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that know me, because I've been talking so much about her. I didn't really discover Maas until this year, and during 2015 I managed to read all of her published books so far. I read the entire Throne of Glass series, the ones that has been published that is, and I read A Court of Thorns and Roses. My most anticipated releases this year are her books, A Court of Mist and Fury and the 5th book in the Throne of Glass series. Something about her writing just calls out to me, and I am always completely immersed in her books whilst reading them. And she is fantastic at writing swoonworthy male characters, and how can I not like that. And she's not only a really talented writer, she's also super funny and nice. I've personally never met her, but you can see videos of her on youtube, and you can tell that she has humor. It might not be the best sense of humor, but it's similar to mine, and that just makes me like her even more. She seems so down to earth, at least according to her instagram, and just seems nice. She's someone you would like to have as a friend.
And remember, if you need to buy some more books, you can get them really cheap at the
BookDepository (affiliate link)
How was your year? Did you read a lot of great books, and if you did, which ones are your favourites? Which ones disappointed you?