Goodreads Reading Challenge

I challenged myself to read 52 books in 2016 and (drumroll) I succeeded!

The longest book I read was Harry Potter & The Goblet Of Fire. The shortest was probably The Lady With The Pet Dog by Anton Chekhov. I read two books of poetry, one by Richard Siken and one by Alan Ginsberg. I read eleven books I would classify as Young Adult and only one play: Brecht’s Dreigroschenoper.

Here’s a top five of my favorite books I read for the first time this year.

5. Doktor Glas by Hjalmar Soderberg

4. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

3. Reasons To Stay Alive by Matt Haig

2.  The Yellow Wallpaper & Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

1. Americanah by Chimananda Ngozi Adichie

My least favorite book with absolutely no competition was:

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Here’s the full list of books I read in 2016:

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.