two friends and too many books
I love the feeling of a fresh year of reading. There’s always so much anticipation when it comes to the new books I’ll pick up or even the old books that I’ll revisit.
I’m off to a good start when I comes to reading this year. In January I read 21 books, of a variety of qualities. One was pretty low in the rating departments, but one will be one of my favourites of the year.
You’ll find everything I read below the cut:
One of my favourite box discoveries this year has been the LitJoy Crate Magical Editions. Harry Potter is one of the great loves of my lives and I will always love items related to the books. I’ve tried a few different Harry Potter subscription boxes and this is one of the best I’ve found despite it not being a monthly subscription.
As I said on my Worst Reads of 2019 post, I’m a pretty easy to please reader. I tend to get swept away in the story and for the most part I enjoy almost everything I read. So when it comes to choosing the best books I read this year, I have to admit that I had a really hard time. There are so, so many good books that I read over this year that it was hard to choose the best, and even harder to narrow it down to the top 5. So in order to do this, I gave myself some criteria. In order to end up on my Top 5 Reads of 2019 list, the book couldn’t be a re-read. It also couldn’t be a sequel, and so I will admit that I cheated a little bit and made a list of the best sequels I read in 2019 just to make narrowing this down a little easier. With those criteria in mind, I was still left with a fair bit of a list, so I had to narrow it down some more. That was the hard part, but I was able to do it. Below the cut, in no particular order, you will find my five best reads of 2019.
I am someone who is rather easy to please when it comes to books. I often fall in love with the books that I read, and it’s not very often that I find a book that I don’t like or even a book that I rate lower than a three stars. I always try to find something redeeming, and maybe that’s a bad thing, but it’s just the kind of reader that I am. I tend to fall deeply into whatever book I’m reading. However, I can’t say that every book I read in 2019 was a positive experience for me. Below the cut, you will find the five worst books I read in 2019.
Another year and another year of reading! There’s something about a fresh start and a new year that just makes me really excited! So because 2020 is here, I decided to set a new batch of reading resolutions. Well, they are somewhat similar to last years, but personally I don’t mind that so much.
OwlCrate has been by my side for a most of the time that I’ve been really active in the bookish online community. It’s the subscription service that I get every month and I’m always so excited about it. To be clear, I purchase this every month and this is not an ad.
Conversely to going into books with high expectations, sometimes you go in with pretty low expectations or no expectations. Those are always really nice times because then you end up falling in love with something you never expected. That’s why it felt most appropriate to follow up my most disappointing reads of 2019 with its opposite: my most surprising reads. You’ll find them below the cut.
How is it the end of the year already? I can’t believe we’re about to start a brand new decade. This past month I read 18 books, which is pretty exciting because I officially beat my record of books read this year by reading 235! I also participated in the winter session of the Magical Readathon, which was definitely fun. I have a few books at the beginning of January to finish it up. You’ll find everything I read this month below the cut.
It’s hard to go into books with no expectations, as much as I try to. I try to keep myself neutral but then I get my hopes up anyways. However, sometimes when I get my hopes up, I get let down. This year there were five books that disappointed me. That doesn’t mean they were necessarily bad books, but I just wasn’t happy with how they turned out. Below the cut you will find those five books.
Does anyone else have a problem with follow through? I do. I fall in love with these series and then I need to have their sequels in my life and then I put off reading them. I don’t know why I do this, but it just seems to be something that happens. That being said, I did try my best to finish up some series I was reading and to continue one with some of the series I was reading. This post is a highlight reel of my top 5 best sequels I read in 2019.