Apart from how I did with my reading goals from 2016, this is the only post I’m going to do about my reading in 2016. You all know what I read! I showed you every month. I just like to go over my statistics and hand out my favourite book of the year award! So in 2016, I read 61 books! 5 more books than I read in 2014, but 19 less than I read in 2015! Although at around 19,000 pages, I only read 2,000 pages less. It’s strange how the length of book can really effect things like that.
This year there were 12 books I rated ✮✮✮✮✮
I rated 19 books as ✮✮✮✮
I rated 15 books as ✮✮✮
I rated 14 books as ✮✮
And 1 book as ✮
My average rating was 3.4 which is another reason two of my 2017 reading goals are to stop delaying and say goodbye to my comfort zone. I’m sure if I read books that I know are challenging, but probably amazing, my average rating will go up and I’ll have a better reading year! That being said, I did read some phenomenal books and here are my favourites…
Third place goes to… Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen by Alison Weir
I wrote a whole review about this book back in July, a couple of weeks after I finished the book actually. Any book that takes me a month to read and isn’t given up on is a good book. It’s very rare I don’t mind slow-reads. I fell in love with Katherine of Aragon and Alison Weir when I read this book, and the next book in this series is basically my most anticipated book of 2017!
Second place goes to… The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
Surprised, huh? Expected this to be number one? I loved The Fellowship of the Ring with as much devotion and amazement at Tolkien’s genius as anyone would expect from someone who spends every birthday watching 11 hours of the extended edition movies. I was all set to put it up there in first place and call it a day, when I realised that as much as I loved it, I loved another book slightly more…
My favourite book in 2016 was… If You Go Away by Adele Parks
This is just such a beautiful novel. Even with my rave review back in October, there’s a hundred more reasons why I adored it. I could talk for days about the growth of the characters, the honesty and brutality of its depiction of war, the slow-burning development of the relationships. This novel melted my icy heart with the love story, and I haven’t met a story since that has wrapped my feelings so tightly around its pages.