2019 – an annual wrap up of the year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR (and decade!) EVERYONE! I hope you all had a great time celebrating, I was at a friend’s party with my whole friend group and had a blast! Suffering from extrem tiredness and headaches, I am still writing this post and hope not to get too nostalgic thinking about this past year and how everything will be different as it’s a new decade! Here’s a wrap-up of all the books I read in 2019, the best, the worst and the one’s in between!

how many books i read:

Am I happy about that? Not really. I set my Reading Challenge to 50 books and I didn’t even achieve that. I saw so many other bloggers setting their goals to 100-200 and they all achieved it. However, I know that the last year (so two school years) have been extremely stressful for me and since I wanted to get good grades, I often had to take a step back from reading and prioritize studying – so I understand why. I’m not sad, there’s always a next try and I’m hoping to do better this year!

The length of the books I read:

Not very surprising, the shorted book was a play I had to read for German class last school year which (thankfully) only consisted of 141 pages. It was easier to get it over with then.

The longest book with 912 pages was Queen of Air and Darkness and I don’t regret reading it in 3 days – it was a brilliant and phenomenal finale to a series I will forever treasure! I’m so sad that my favorite Shadowhunters series ended last year, but it was a book I looked forward to sooo much and it being the first book I read made it even more special!

The average length isn’t super surprising for me because 399 pages (let’s make it 400) is a little above average of most YA books I read and then there are some very long ones to even it out!

The popularity of the books i read:

That picture isn’t super informative, but here you have it anyways: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was the most popular book – I don’t wonder why, rereading it was a great experience! I don’t understand why Letters to a Law Student is least popular, however, because it’s a truly great guide for everyone thinking about or already studying law. It contains helpful tips, methods of writing essays, lists of necessary competences and much more!

my Harry Potter readathon:

Sadly, I didn’t participate in an actual readathon, because I’m always to late to realize that one’s being organized. However, I reread some of the books and called it my own Harry Potter marathon! It was fantastic, I started with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, then read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, then Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and last but not least and the Halfblood Prince! I know, the order doesn’t really make sense, I just read whatever I was most excited to read that day and then it turned out to be completely messy.

Anyways, it was great fun! My mum accompanied me by watching all the movies with me every evening and that’s how we spent some cosy quality time together! The books themselves were magical and I hadn’t thought to be that enchanted and emotionally loaded while reading it for the second/third time. I’m not the biggest person to reread books (unless I love absolutely everything about them), but this reread transported me back into my childhood and it was the best thing I could have done this year.

Listed – my favorites of 2019!

1. The Wicked King by Holly Black: the sequel to The Cruel Prince absolutely had me in shock – one intrigue after another, one twist following the next and the best possible choice of plot and characters.
2. My Silver Trilogy reread by Kerstin Gier: It’s a reread I know, but the books were once again so gripping that it would be a shame not to include them.
3. If We Were Villains by ML Rio: the mysterious murder of a boy at college studying theater. The aspect that they played (and the reader got to experience) various Shakespeare plays and adopted their roles in reality made this book a masterpiece.
4. Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas: I finally got around to read this FAMOUS series everyone can’t stop talking about and it indeed was fabulous.
5. Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo: I read the entire Shadow and Bone Trilogy last January, but the second book was the most brilliant!

Most disappointing reads:

1. Un Sac de Billes by Joseph Joffo: the fact that I rated my least favorite book with 3 stars has to say something – last year was a great reading year! However, this book just wasn’t gripping, had no ups and downs and was just not very enjoyable.
2. Prince Charming by Rachel Hawkins: what a sad disappointment! I really wanted this book to be awesome as I longed for a cheesy and easy read, but so many things felt staged and unreal which made me rate it 3.5 stars (not everything was terrible, as you can see.)
3. The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren: it was a funny and entertaining read, but that was all. No depth and no true meaning.

That’s it – I hope you had as much fun reading this as I had writing! I wish everyone of you nothing but the best for 2020 & happy reading!