Though the number of total books that I’ve read increased this year (57 versus last year’s 55), the number of pages read has actually decreased!

In 2017, I read over 19,767 pages, whereas, in 2018, it was considerably less than that. This only goes to prove my initial intuition that perhaps book pages ought to be another target category that Goodreads should introduce — just so that we don’t become obsessed with reading shorter and shorter books to match those book target numbers we have!

I think an overall trend in my reading in 2018 was paying more attention to the classics, thanks to the Back to the Classics Challenge and the Classics list. I am very pleased with that, as I don’t regret reading a single one of those books. I hope I keep up the good work this year 🙂

There have been several books that have made my soul sing this year– here are a few honourable mentions (this is by no means a complete list):

Kazuo Ishiguro Remains of a Day — this short novel reminds me of a beautifully executed piece of classical music. Not a note out of place.

Joseph Conrad The Shadow-Line — An oddly overlooked work of Conrad’s: but don’t miss it! It is moving stuff.

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary — I put reading this one off for ages, and now I just want my French to improve enough so I can read at least bits of it in the original… Yeah, I’m hooked

Jared Diamond Guns, Germs and Steel — I’ve been annoying my friends with interesting facts from this book for months. Do you know why a zebra was never tamed whereas horses were? No? Read this book.

Martin Luther King Jr A Gift of Love — I read this one during my visit to Dr. King’s hometown. It is incredibly inspiring.

Watch this space for a post about my bookish resolutions for 2019 (and my calculation of how much money I’ve spent on books in 2018 – it’s terrifying…)

How many books did you read in 2018? What were your favourites?