Books Read in 2024 - I met my goal!

Every year since I believe 2015 I have been setting a goal for myself on how many books I could read throughout the year. You can go HERE to read a wrap-up of the previous years. For this year I am just going to post the summary that Goodreads.com provides.

That's all I really have for now. I hope to write more about how my mom is doing later this week.

Books I Read in 2023 and 2022

 I started keeping track of books that I read way back in 2012 using the website goodreads  

I also started doing a blog post every year with pictures of the books I read each year, but I believe in 2022 I was a slacker and didn't do it...so this is a twofer, you get two years combined in one post. Yay you!

Well you don't have to read this post much because mostly I just want to have a record of what I've read, although Goodreads keeps the record on their website as well. But hey, if you read any of the books I read, let me know. If you have books you want to recommend then recommend away.

2023

I'll start with 2023. I challenged myself to read 25 books and I exceeded that goal by 4! Below is the list:

2022

Now on to 2022 where I challenged myself to read 50 books but I only read 34. Luckily in 2023 I was more realistic.

Just for my own records and for posterity since I'm sure someday when I'm dead and gone my kids will probably come back to this blog to remember their mom and I want them to remember that I gave them a love of reading and I hope they always read; I want to keep track through the years, so here's the list from 2012 to the present. Isn't Good Reads great to do this for us?

I've already started 2024 with a bang, I'm reading Me Before You by JoJo Moyes. Jo Jo is my new favorite author and I have her book The Ship of Brides up next on my nightstand. I think I may only read JoJo Moyes books in 2024, she's definitely got enough of them!

Are you a reader? What are you reading? What's your favorite book?

Books Read in 2021

Happy New Year to each 

and every one of you!

Here's hoping and praying that this new year with be just a bit better than last year, that the pandemic will become simply a memory and that we can all learn to be better humans!

As I do each year, I share the books that I've read in the year that just ended.  I began my blog in 2008 and started keeping track of books read on my blog since 2009.  

In 2012 I signed up with Goodreads and I've been keep track of my books online and it's been so much easier! I love setting goals and meeting them and looking back at the history of the books I've enjoyed through the years. 

Here's a screenshot of the books I've read before signing up on Goodreads: 

What I love about Goodreads is that it keeps track of the goals I've set and the books that I've actually read. Here's my list from 2012 to 2020: 

So without further ado....

BOOKS READ IN 2021 

(drumroll please!)

As you can see, I exceeded my goal! I attribute this to less TV time. Instead of sitting mindlessly at the TV and playing on my phone I watch just the shows I enjoy and Football and if there is nothing I have scheduled to watch, I turn the TV off and read instead. As you can see, I was wasting a lot of time watching TV.

Here's all the books that I read:

I have to say that my favorite books that I read this year were the ones by the author Kristin Hannah. Wow can that lady write! I hope to read several more of her books in 2022!

Books Read in 2018, 2019 and 2020

 I just came on in here to do my Books Read for 2020 and realized I never did the one for 2019 or 2018! I have no clue what happened and why they did not get done. I thought I was keeping such good track. 

The great thing is that Goodreads keeps track of all my challenges for me. This post is basically just for my own personal history. I don't review any of the books, I just want to keep track.

~~~~2020~~~~

The Year of COVID-19. Let me just say I killed it! I'm sure the reason was because of COVID.

The goal I set for myself was to read 12 books in 2020. Drumroll please! I read 34!!!

Below is the list of all the books read. I will say that many of these were amazing! My favorite though would have to be THE HOME FOR UNWANTED GIRLS by Joanna Goodman. It was so good that I'm now reading the follow up book to that one THE FORGOTTEN DAUGHTER also by Joanna Goodman.

~~~~2019~~~~

In 2019 I again set a goal to read 12 books. I'm not even going to drumroll this one because it was only just adequate, I read 14 books.

My gift and my curse is when it comes to books and movies once I am done I completely forget them, so I couldn't even tell which of these was a favorite, but I do love Jodi Picoult, she's always been my favorite author. 

~~~~2018~~~~

My goal in 2018 was to read 25 books, sadly I only read 10. I think this was the beginning of my YouTube affair. I just love YouTube and watching artists create and watching tutorials. So a lot of the time I would have spend reading was spent watching others live their lives creatively!

In looking at my list below I see that I read a book called The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison and in 2020 I read The Silent Wife by Kerry Fisher, I find that funny. The one by Kerry Fisher is still fresh in my head and that one was pretty amazing and I highly recommend it!

Here's the total of books I've ready by year since 2009.

For those keeping track, that's 265 books!

For the year 2021 I've decided to set a goal to read 40 books! So far I've read one. I may even try to review a book now and again when I read one I really like.

So that's it for now, Happy New Year people and get reading! 

The Lost Art of Reading

I've always been an avid reader, something instilled in me and my siblings by our mother. It probably helped that we grew up on the ranches my dad worked for, without cable TV, video games, NetFlix or YouTube. During the day we played outside to our hearts content, riding bikes, playing school with the neighbor children. 

But when the sun came down and I returned home my trusty friends were waiting for me in books. I traveled with them and through them and learned about the world and places I knew I would probably never see. As a child my favorite books were Little Women by Louisa May Alcott and The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney and any of the Nancy Drew Series books by Carolyn Keene that I could get my hands on. I would read those over and over again. 

In high school I was introduced to Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and I had new favorites that I would read over and over again.

As I got older I would purchase books on my own, usually at thrift stores or borrow from the library, so I didn't have to read the same ones over and over. I wish I had kept track of them so I would remember some of the favorites, but I didn't, darn it!

Then in 2009 I started keeping track of books I read on my blog. Wow! Hard to believe I've been blogging that long! In 2009 I read 24 books; 2010 read 24 books and 2011 read 29 books. 

In 2014 I joined the Goodreads website and started setting goals and logging in my books online.

• 2012 goal was 30, read 26
• 2013 goal was 30, read 18
• 2014 goal was 20, read 33 
• 2015 goal was 35, read 19
• 2016 goal was 35, read 19
• 2017 goal was 12, read 15

For 2018 I set a lofty goal of 25 and I've only read 7. I am way behind and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get to that goal considering there are only 2 and a half more months left in the year.

I believe the reason for not reading as much as I used to is Youtube. Yep, Youtube videos are my new obsession! In the past before bed I would grab my book and get into my bed for a good read before falling asleep...now I grab my Kindle and watch Art Tutorials on Youtube instead!

I'm feeling a little guilty that I am not reading as much. I'm also feeling a little guilty that I am not blogging as much, but I am so enjoying creating Art, watching Art being created and learning about Art. I guess "to every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven."  Right now the time for me is Art and there are just not enough hours in the day!

Books Read in 2017

It's that time again....time to write a post about the books that I've read in 2017. 

I've been keeping track of the books I've read ever since 2009 and somewhere along the way I joined Goodreads and they kept track for me, well...as long as I logged the books in they kept track.

So here's a breakdown of books read from 2009 to 2017:

Makes me wonder why some years I read so little? For 2017 I set a doable goal of 12 books, figuring it shouldn't be that difficult to read a book a month. It wasn't, because I actually read 15 books! Yay me! This is the little banner that Goodreads prepared for me.

Here's a list of the 15 books. To tell you the truth, I don't remember too many of them. I did try to review some of them as I went along. I think probably the one I enjoyed the most was The Deepest Secret.

You can read my review of The Deepest Secret HERE. The other books was The Most Dangerous Animal of All which I read while I was at Jury Duty.

If you want to see a list of books by year you can just type in "Books Read" in the search bar to the right and all those posts will come up.

I've set a lofty goal of 25 books for this year. We'll see how I do. I was just telling my mom that I remember that I used to read in bed from half an hour to an hour every evening, but now I have a tablet and instead of reading I watch Art Tutorials every night instead. Maybe I'll do an Art Tutorial one night and read a book the next night.

What about you? Do you do any reading? What kind of books do you enjoy? What book or books can you recommend to tear me away from YouTube?

Happy Reading in 2018!!! 25 books....here I come!