What I Read in 2016

Of the goals I made for 2016, I am chagrined to admit that I only succeeded in achieving one of them: reading 25 books. In fact, I managed to read 31.5* books this year, so really I’m an overachiever. While for some this is a paltry amount, I’m rather proud of it, as my reading in the past few years has been scattered and lackluster (I didn’t read more than 15 or 16 books in 2014 and in 2015). Like I have for several years, I tracked all of my books using Goodreads, and I thought I would also share them here. I’ve listed the books in the order that I read them, along with the rating I gave each one.

Photographic proof of my goal achievement. 128%! It’s better than getting an A. 🙂 And yes, that profile picture is not at all current.

1. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (4 stars)
2. Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster (5 stars)
3. Undone by Michele Cushatt (4 stars)
4. The Trunk Key by Carolyn Nash (2 stars)
5. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (I didn’t rate this, but this was my review: “This book was so disturbing I can’t recommend it at all.”)
6. Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith (3 stars)
7. Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan (4 stars). I read this aloud to Charlotte and enjoyed it as much as I remember enjoying it as a kid. I read a lot of other books to Charlotte but didn’t think it was fair to count those, so I just counted one. 🙂
8. Holding on to Hope: A Pathway Through Suffering to the Heart of God by Nancy Guthrie (5 stars)
9. Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult (2 stars)
10. Looking for Lovely: Collecting the Moments that Matter by Annie Downs (4 stars)
11. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (5 stars)
12. The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom (3 stars)
13. The Insanity of God by Nik Ripken (5 stars)
14. Spurgeon’s Sorrows: Realistic Hope for Those Who Suffer from Depression by Zack Eswine (5 stars).
15. Everyone Brave Is Forgiven by Chris Cleave (4 stars)
16. Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice by Curtis Sittenfeld (2 stars)
17. I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh (4 stars)
18. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by JK Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne (4 stars)
19. The Girl in Seat 24B by Jennifer Peel (2 stars)
20. *No One Knows by JT Ellison, the reason I only read 31.5 books. I realized about halfway through this one I didn’t care what happened to any of the characters, so I stopped reading. Life’s too short to read books you don’t like, unless you’re in school, kids. Then tough it out. 🙂
21. Big Little Lies by Lianne Moriarty (4 stars)
22. Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple (4 stars)
23. A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park (4 stars)
24. Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala (3 stars)
25. Someday, Someday, Maybe by Lauren Graham (4 stars)
26. Distant Shores by Kristin Hannah (3 stars)
27. All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda (3 stars)
28. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (3 stars)
29. Before the Fall by Noah Hawley (2 stars)
30. The Scars that Have Shaped Me: How God Meets Us in Suffering by Vaneetha Rendall Risner (4 stars)
31. A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman (4 stars)
32. Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing (4 stars)

Before I looked at this list I felt like I read a lot of the same kind of book, but I think I ended up with more variety than I initially thought. 19 out of the 32 books got a rating of 4 or above, and I am pleased with that. All of the books that got 5 stars (5 of them) I absolutely loved and would wholeheartedly recommend, but they are all pretty different from one another. The books that got 2 stars (5 of them) I really didn’t like much at all, but I kind of hate giving out 1 star ratings, so I ended up not even rating the one book I detested (looking at you, Sharp Objects). Of all the books I read, only 2 are books that I purchased. The rest I read through my library’s online eBook collection, borrowed from a friend (thanks, Leah!), or got for free on my Kindle. I used to buy a lot of books, but as I have gotten older and have more limited space, I really appreciate the ability to borrow books from the library and hope to read most of my books in 2017 that way as well.

I want to approach 2017 with a more structured plan (more on that later), but I’m happy with what I read this year and can’t wait to discover more great books! What were your favorites books from this year?

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