I am quite proud of my this year’s reads. Not so much about the number because I know that with my love for books, I should be able to do so much better than that, but I am proud of the books that I have read – all 30 of them!
2016 has just been a big year for me and my reading. I was able to reach my personal goal of finishing all of Sheldon’s novels, read my first biography, found some of the best books of all time, and finally got around to some of the books that I know I should have read looong time ago.
Here’s a list of all of the titles I have read this year:
- Nineteen Minutes – Jodi Picoult
- Rage Of Angels – Sidney Sheldon
- Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Like Being Killed – Ellen Miller
- The Ice Twins – S.K. Tremayne
- We Should All Be Feminists – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Leaving Time – Jodi Picoult
- Dark Places – Gillian Flynn
- The Grownup – Gillian Flynn
- Change Of Heart – Jodi Picoult
- Morning, Noon & Night – Sidney Sheldon
- Before I Go To Sleep – SJ Watson
- Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
- The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad #2) – Tana French
- Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children #1) – Ransom Riggs
- Confessions Of A Murder Suspect (Confessions #1) – James Patterson & Maxene Paetro
- The Sky Is Falling – Sidney Sheldon
- A Time To Kill – John Grisham
- The Other Side Of Me – Sidney Sheldon
- The Private School Murders (Confessions #2) – James Patterson & Maxene Paetro
- The Interview With The Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles #1) – Anne Rice
- Luckiest Girl Alive – Jessica Knoll
- The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Behind Closed Doors – B.A. Paris
- The Woman In Cabin 10 – Ruth Ware
- The Girl In The Ice – Robert Bryndza
- A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
- The Pocket Wife – Susan Crawford
- The Berlin Conspiracy – Tom Gabbay
- The Picture Of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
I started the year off with Jodi Picoult – a personal recommendation by a very dear friend who worships her, and I read two more of her books. Americanah is a book I have been wanting to read ever since it came out a few years ago and it easily became one of my favourite books of all time. Like Being Killed has also been sitting on my to-read list for while thanks to Goodreads book recommendations. Books like Dark Places and Before I Go To Sleep have left me disappointed but I soon found other thrillers that are really great like Behind Closed Doors and The Girl In The Ice. I loved Tana French’s In The Woods which I have read last year so I was excited to read The Likeness and enjoyed every word of it! Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children has hit the theatres this year and I got to read the book just in time for the movie. I found James Patterson’s Confessions series on sale at TK Maxx (three books for 6,-€ !!!) and thought I should give them a try. As it turned out, it’s not exactly for my age group but it was entertaining nonetheless and I have decided to send them over to my tweeny cousins in the Philippines for them to enjoy. I have watched my father reading John Grisham ever since I was little and it was this year when I decided to read his books as well, and so far made it to A Time To Kill but I already hoarded other titles from the nearby used bookstore – just like I did The Vampire Chronicles. I am excited to read them all after finally having read Interview With The Vampire, and there have been talks about a TV series! Really mainstream book-to-movie titles like A Clockwork Orange and Fight Club, where my only regret is not having read them sooner, also made it to my read list for 2016. I’m happy to have read The Secret Garden – a classic which I have loved as a child, and another classic, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, which has caught my attention after watching Penny Dreadful. I know it might be considered cheating but off my list, We Should All Be Feminists and The Grownup are an essay and a short story, respectively – but they are available in print and were considered to be put on the list by Goodreads. It was also my first time with audiobooks, so my wife and I have listened to Luckiest Girl Alive and The Pocket Wife during our road trips. And to close this year off, I have read a book I got from one of the many used bookstores in Bratislava, a title that has caught my attention right away: The Berlin Conspiracy. Ah, finally. To live in a place that people write books about. 🙂
I don’t think I will up my goal for 2017, though. I just don’t think I’m there yet. To everyone else who has reached their goal, congratulations! And to all the others who haven’t, that’s fine. I’m sure it’s been a busy year for all of us. 🙂 Let’s try and make 2017 another great year!
