Read In 2017 & 2018

Once again I did it: I read 52 books in 2017. For your pleasure, I have listed them here once again, together with the short stories I’ve read. By far my most-read author this year was Lemony Snicket with 19 (!) books. Titles I particularly liked are in bold, and the list also states which books went with a particular challenge.

I participated in the Dumbledore’s Army Readathon this January. A post to view my progress can be found here.

I also hosted the Mental Health Reading Challenge and participated in Femividual’s Feminism Reading Challenge. Her Bingo Card is at the bottom of this post.

January

1. Grief Is The Thing With Feathers – Max Porter

2. The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison (bingo square: black feminist)

3. The Bad Beginning – Lemony Snicket

4. Girl, Interrupted – Susanna Kaysen (Mental Health Reading Challenge) (bingo square: book about being a girl)

Dumbledore’s Army Readathon SCORE

For the first two weeks of 2017. I participated in the Dumbledore’s Army Readathon, and here’s my final score.

For the sake of clarity: “an own voices book is a book featuring a marginalised perspective, written by an author who shares the same marginalised characteristics.” says Read At Midnight.

Uncharacteristically, I read one whole book and parts of three more, because I was just that eager to get started on all of them. I’ll finish them soon though, promise.

Find out how many points I earned for Gryffindor House…

LGBTQIA Challenge

The LGBTQIA Reading Challenge

Books I read this year with LGBTQIA main characters:

1. Crush – Richard Siken
2. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
3. Maurice – E.M Forster
4. Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
5. The Thing Around Your Neck – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
6. I read 11 essays in August on the topic of Gender for the Summer School I’m taking at the Radboud University in Nijmegen.
7. Swing Time – Zadie Smith
8. Edit: before the end of the year but after this post was published I also read Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

I was aiming for level Yellow, which means I wanted to read between 13 and 20 LGBTQIA books. As you can see, I never got that far. I read eight, which means I made it to level orange. Furthermore, part of the challenge was to write a review for each book, so I’m doing that now and making it into a game. There is only one rule: each review must be exactly ten words long. Here goes nothing.

Feminism Reading Challenge

This year I participated in the Feminism Reading Challenge, organized by Femividual, who has since taken her blog offline. The idea was to read as many books as possible from her list of feminist titles, as well as any other books that deal with feminist themes or topics.

My favorite feminist book of the year, perhaps my favorite book of the year full stop, was Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I know few novels that are simultaneously as rich and as light as this one.

Mental Health Reading Challenge 2017

Hey there everyone,

As you probably know by now, I am completely obsessed with reading challenges, especially ones that encourage you to read books centered around a theme. So, this year, I’ve decided to host my own. Welcome to the Mental Health Reading Challenge, which will kick-off on January the 1st.

The aim of the challenge is to raise awareness for the complexity and difficulty of mental illness, to erase stigma and to promote understanding and support. Reading, for me, is a transformative experience. It takes me out of myself and into the experience of other people. If all of us could bring ourselves to that level of empathy, the world would be a better place. I’ve written on this topic before here.

You can sign up for the challenge by commenting on this post. Please include your name or username, the number of books you want to read, and a Goodreads profile or blog where you’ll keep track of your progress.

There are going to be different levels of reader-awesomness.

• Read 5 books and you get one gold star
• 6-12 books gets you two stars
• 13-20 books gets you three stars
• 21- 30 books = four stars
• More than 30 books gets you five stars

To make it easier to find books you like, I’ve compiled a list of some of my personal favorites that deal with mental illness, as well as ones I haven’t read but that are widely popular. Of course, books that aren’t on this list are still admissible, as long as they feature at least one character with a mental health problem.

The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge

Hey everyone,

In this post I will keep track of my ongoing quest to read all of the books read by Rory Gilmore on everyone’s favorite feel good TV show: Gilmore Girls. I’ve copied down the list of books below. If anyone wishes to join me on this venture, drop me a line.

Source of the list is here.

Books I’ve read are in bold. 

Books read so far: 41 of 340