Mid-Year Reading Update (2016)

June is over and I was looking at all the ‘Mid-Yead Reading Goals Update’ videos on booktube and I immediately decided to do a blog post on this myself. It seems like a good way to look back at the books I read the last six months, and overall analyse the stuff I’ve read and liked/disliked.

Let’s talk about goals! Now, tbh, I did not keep any reading goals for this year. Like, literally : any goals. After reading 116 books last year, I brought down my Goodreads Reading challenge to a goal of 35 books. Because I knew going into this year that I wouldn’t have a lot of time to read or blog (12th board exams) and I didn’t want to pressurize myself into reading too many books and runing my exams. In fact, initially I had kept a goal of 30 books, but because I completed it too soon, I upgraded it too 35, and even though I’ve completed that too, I’m not upgrading it anymore.

So basically what I’m going to do in this post is present a picture of the type of books I’ve read, and the frequency of various genres and star ratings.

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Books Read

Number of books read : 43 (excluding re-reads and current reads)

Currently reading : 3

Re-reads : 8 (I have not recorded my re-reads and these are the only ones I can remember)

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Star ratings

[Not counting any re-reads]

Going through all of the ratings I’ve given to books this year…I’ve realized that I’ve become a much more critical reader than I was before. I don’t know whether it comes from being well-acquainted with a genre, or something completely different – but fact is : out of the 43 books I’ve read this year (so far), I’ve given a 5 star rating (on Goodreads) to only 4 books. 10% of the books I’ve read, which seems shocking because not long ago, I dished out 4 and 5 stars to anything which moderately impressed me. Whereas now a book has to be something really spectacular and out of the world for it to cross the threshold of 4 stars which I maintain for all books.

So what were these 5-star books?

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas

(Please note that I haven’t given them 5/5 stars in the reviews I’ve written for them. The maximum I give a book in a review is 4.75/5 stars, which I think I’ve given to all of them. But on Goodreads, all of them have received a 5 star from me.)

As for the other books…

4 stars : 16 books

3 stars : 9 books

2 stars : 4 books

1 star : 10 books

Out of these books, I DNF’d 7 books. Which also is a huge thing for me, because I always used to force myself to complete books, but have lately realized that I’m much bolder when it comes to giving up books.

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Genres

The first thing I noticed when I viewed the books I read is that I’ve hardly read any classics. I’ve read (shamefully) only two classics this year, which is atrocious because I read way more classics last year, and then completely stopped this year. And this is surprising because I do love classics, and it’s not even like I haven’t been ‘feeling’ like classics all year. It’s just…weird that I haven’t picked up anything classical and half the year is over and I realized just now. However, rest of the year is there to make up, and plus I have one classic I mean to read this month so I hope to get to that soon.

Here are all the genres I read :

Fantasy

Adult : 1 book

YA (sci-fic/paranormal/dystopian etc.) : 16 books

Contemporary

Adult/NA : 6 books

YA : 12 books

Children : o books

Literary Fiction : 5 books

Classics : 2 books

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Reading Goals for the rest of the year

• Read at least one classic a month.
• Read more plays/anthologies/short stories
• Stay away from YA contemporary
• Pick up more literary fiction

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Also, if you want to check out all the books that I’ve read : click here.