Reading has always been a passion, and an escape, but I don’t think I’ve ever read as much as I did last year. By the end of 2017 I had read 43,796 pages across 122 books, and in addition I managed to meet my reading challenge of reading at least one author from A to Z (surnames) – not bad, even if I do say so myself!! To see the full list of books from the author challenge, take a look at An A-Z of Authors

Literature and fiction has always been my first love when it comes to reading, but I did tell myself I would start to read more non-fiction again last year – with a final ratio of fiction (60%) to nonfiction (40%), I’d definitely consider that target met. I can also now safely say I love audiobooks, especially well-narrated memoirs like Born a Crime and personal development books like The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – they make my commute in the morning so much more fun (with a marked reduction in road rage – don’t judge me if you have never driven in Kenya!).

The longest book I read was Shogun by James Clavell, which was 1,152 painful pages of drivel, and the shortest one was The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a long-standing favourite.

Regarding best and worst books, my average star rating was 3.7 out of 5, so I’m clearly not overly critical and a book has to be pretty terrible to warrant a 1-2 star rating!

My five-star reads (and some re-reads) were:

The one-star duds where I almost lost the will to live (or carry on reading) were:

Thank goodness there were only four.

Of the authors I discovered, or was introduced to, this year, I loved Menna van Praag, Emma Cline, Celeste Ng, Yuval Noah Harari, A.J. Fikry and Iman Verjee and there is already a delicious sense of anticipation as I wait for their next ones! Paul Kalanithi and Mary Ann Shaffer both wrote 5-star winners and it is heartbreaking that such talent has been lost to us. Historically, I’ve also struggled with poetry and verse but after Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down and Rupi Kaur’s The Sun and Her Flowers I may just be inspired enough to explore this area a little more – if you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them, because I honestly am not even sure where to start!

This year I want to revisit quite a few favourites this year and I’ve already started that goal off with A Little Life. Other than that, I want to experiment more with this blog and just carry on exploring. Wishing you all a wonderful 2018 and happy reading!