Tag: Goodreads

Well, first off, welcome to 2025. I won’t lie and say I’m looking forward to this year, but time moves on no matter what we want. I hope 2025 goes better than I currently have reason to expect.

Anyway, another year gone means another reading challenge complete. I’m surprised by how much I read this year. I didn’t feel like I was reading a lot, and there were even times when I read very slowly because I was reading non-fiction.

I find it fascinating to look back and see where I read a lot, where I slowed down, and what I was reading. To facilitate that more easily — and since I’ve gotten tired of Goodreads deleting Harry Potter fan fiction — I also tracked my books manually, this year. Since I’m tired of re-adding books, my numbers on Goodreads don’t quite match my manual tracking.

Another year gone means another reading challenge complete. As I’m sure you can imagine, 2023 had some highly-stressful times. As often happens when I’m stressed, I read a lot.

I finished 104 books in 2023. That’s high even for me. That averages to 2 books a week, or a book every 3.5 days. Of course, the average doesn’t tell the whole story. As I mentioned in last year’s post, I have periods of voracious reading, followed by periods of relative calm.

My numbers are also skewed by when I’m offered free, or drastically reduced, Kindle Unlimited subscriptions. I don’t know why Amazon keeps offering me 3 months for 99¢, but I’m not complaining.

While I’ve meant to, I’ve never actually written a post about my Goodreads Reading Challenge activity. I’ve actively taken part in the challenge every year since 2018. Generally, I’ve been conservative with my goal. In 2022, I went fairly easy on myself, setting a goal of only 36 books.

Since I haven’t looked back at my reading in previous years — on my blog, at least — I want to provide a brief overview of the previous years’ challenges, too. After all, while I know many of my readers are here for the fountain pen posts, 32% of my blog content is related to books.

If you’re interested in what I thought of the books I read, you can take a look at my book review posts, or my Reviewed list on Goodreads. I don’t always review the books I read, and, even for those I do, they aren’t guaranteed to make it on here.