2017 in Books

Hello!

Happy 2018!! (I don't know when I'll get used to that, if ever)

So this post is a little bit overdue maybe, so I'll just get right to it. I read more books in 2017 than any year before it, so it's only fair I do some statistics / recap of them et cetera.

In total, I read 56 books. According to Goodreads, that's about 18,606 pages but I'll take that with a pinch of salt since I might have logged in some different editions and so on.

Out of those books,

17 were Finnish (30.3%)

20 were in Finnish (35.7%)

36 were in English (64.3%)

18 were British (32.1%)

32 were written by women (57.1%)

24 were written by men (42.9%).

11 were on the Kindle (19.6%)

10 were audiobooks (one was a podcast!) (17.8%)

35 were traditional books. (58.9%)

7 had main LGBT relationships (I excluded token gays from this because bleh) (12.5%)

4 were from outside North America, UK and Finland (7.1%) (This is something I'd really like to improve in 2018, I'm rather tired of all the US-centric literature especially)

I rated 15 books 5/5 (probably the easiest way to see them is here)

and only one book 1/5 (it was Charisma by Jeanne Ryan).

I also participated in, and completed, the Helmet 2017 reading challenge, which was 50 books in different categories such as 'animal on the cover', 'a book about faith or religion' and 'a book where nobody dies'. It was a lot of fun and had me picking up a lot of books I probably wouldn't have read otherwise, so it was a very good experience.

I also completed my Goodreads Reading Goal, which was set at 30 books. That was mostly due to the former reading challenge, of course. While both of these challenges were really fun and, well, challenging, they did make me pick up a lot of books that were short and probably ignore a lot of great ones. Because of this, I decided not to take on any reading challenges this year. It's kind of nice, for a change.

I also personally wanted to read more Finnish books, which was questionably successful(?) because living in the UK, it's kind of difficult to get my hands on as many of them as I'd like. Still, 17 isn't too shabby. I'll definitely continue with my challenge in the future too!

So that's that for 2017! Hopefully this year I'll have more specific stats for you, I'll try to make them as I go this time.

Reading Marathon #2 (updating)

Heyo!

Reading marathon #2 of the summer is here today (8th of July) and as promised, I convinced Daniel to take part with me!

We started at 8PM today and will finish at 8PM tomorrow and I'll be updating our feels here a couple of times during the marathon!

22:58

Right now I'm reading Pollomuhku ja posityyhtynen (a book on how the Harry Potters were translated into Finnish) by Jaana Kapari-Jatta and Daniel's reading The Story of Kullervo by J.R.R. Tolkien. I'll probably finish that and then wrap up for today. [Daniel] After getting not so far into Kullervo I decided to return to the beginning as the dialect went over my head; second time round and the book is captivating me due to its poetic passages.

23:34

That's my book and the first 114 pages finished! Maybe good to wrap up for today? Daniel is still battling with the complicated names and stuff in Kullervo.

14:28

Started Eurooppalaiset unet ('European Dreams') by Emma Pulkkonen and read the first 50 pages. Kind of heavy to get into and jumps around a lot but I do enjoy it. [Daniel] Enjoying Kullervo hugely! As a Tolkien fan I expected I'd like it but its enjoyably poetic in the telling of the tale. Still rather heavy with sonnet-like passages.

16:19

Done 110 pages of this thing. I kind of really want to finish it today. There was a bit about a Somali refugee girl that was almost too difficult to read. Hope we never get back to that again. [Daniel] Finished the actual story part of the Kullervo and it was pretty amazing, definitely going to read Kalevala when I master Finnish! Currently reading the essays regarding the Kalevala by Tolkien and the forewords to the book.

19:03

Finished my book (179 pages) and feel wholly confused. What is life. It was a bit too weird for me, which is a real shame. Maybe would have benefited from being read one story at a time but I don't really think a great book should suffer from being read 'wrong'. Think I'll start a bit of Caraval by Stephanie Garber with the remaining time. [Daniel] Still reading the essays and notes associated with Kullervo. I'm developing a new sense to Tolkien and also a greater understanding of Kalevala and how it influenced his further works.

Overview

Me:
Pollomuhku ja posityyhtynen (114 pages, partly)
Eurooppalaiset unet (179 pages, complete)
Caraval (64 pages, partly)
Total of 357 pages

Daniel:
The Story of Kullervo (158 pages, partly)
Total of 158 pages


Not too shabby with 515 pages between us! Definitely happy I now have 2/3 of the library books I loaned for this actually read and Caraval too seemed rather exciting.

I nearly read the book! I only have the foreword to finish off. For my first marathon I am very happy as this was indeed a very heavy book
to read with lots of dialect, notes, sources and references. Despite the heaviness this was a poetic and beautiful book. I hope to finish two books for our next marathon!

Reading Marathon #1 - 17th June

Heyo!

I felt so blessed after managing to take this picture!!! ;o;
That's I Let You Go by the way, amazing stuff!
Mum commented that the book cover has a butterfly like
this one too!!

So, the first reading marathon of the summer took place today, though I took a head start yesterday evening and finished this evening so that I could go to town after with mum and not think about all the books I'm not reading! So that was 6PM to 6PM exactly. :) If you missed the earlier post where I talked about it, basically the idea is to give yourself 24 hours, some of which at least within the day (that was 17th of June for this one), and just read as much as you can!

How did it go, then? Well, today the weather was absolutely gorgeous so I spent the whole morning and afternoon reading outside - first moving as the sun did and then trying to stay in the shade as it got too hot to be in the sun!

I started with I Let You Go (my hardback copy is in Finnish, mind you), which I got signed by the author when she was in Helsinki on Thursday! It was absolutely amazing and I'll be gushing much more about that when I review the book, which will happen... soon, I hope. I actually have three books read but not reviewed at the moment, which is an incredibly strange feeling. It's like I'm actually doing something, wow.

Anyway, I started that, got to the big plot twist! and then went to sleep. I don't know how I even managed to sleep after that. Then I continued - outside, how wonderful it really was - in the morning, and after finishing that, I started The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, the first Flavia de Luce book. I managed to read 90 pages of that before my 24 hours were up. Altogether, that was 503 pages! It's quite a decent amount, I think. Obviously it feels pretty great to have finished a whole book within the marathon, and I Let You Go didn't really feel like an easy book because of all the emotions running high in it. It was incredibly good, though!

I'll try and link the reviews for these two books here when I get around to writing them! I totally hopefully will! Edit: I Let You Go is up!

I hope summer's great for you too! Hope you're doing amazing things that make you happy, whatever that might be!

Whoops + Reading Marathon #1 on 17th June

Hello!

So yesterday I went to the library and then to the book store and somehow all these books jumped at me? On my defense, the book store had a sale, which, considering Finnish book prices, is pretty much my only chance to actually buy books.

Anyway, I bought a ton of books I've been eyeing and got some from the library that seemed interesting. I already started The Danish Girl yesterday and it's been very good so far.

Others I picked up from the library:
- The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin (she also wrote the Earthsea Cycle if you, like myself, didn't know) which came highly recommended from Alex.
- Island by Aldous Huxley since Brave New World was really quite decent.
- Ihmisiä suviyössä ('People in the Summer's Night') by Frans Emil Sillanpää, who is to date the only Finnish Nobel Literature prize winner. Surely you can see why I've been meaning to read this.

Also picked up from the bookstore:
- Wool by Huck Howey because apparently depressing dystopias are a thing I need more of in my life.
- The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, since I've been meaning to read Flavia de Luce and because the Finnish translation of the name is genius? I don't know how to make this linguistic thing work but in Finnish it's 'A Pie's Taste Sweet' and due to the non-existing word order rules it sounds so good. Mum already took this from my pile to read herself.
- "Et kuitenkaan usko..." ("You won't believe this either way...")  by Ville Haapasalo. He's definitely the most famous Finnish person... in Russia. More about this when/if I ever read it.
- House of Cards by Michael Dobbs because obviously.
- The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe by J. Randy Taraborrelli because well, Marilyn Monroe's life is really interesting, I hope you'll agree.

Why did I list all of this stuff for you? So that you can judge me if I don't read any of these in the nearby future, naturally.

Reading Marathon #1 on 17th June

So anyway, this summer has three Blogistania reading marathons, on 17th June, 8th July and 19th August. I'll try and convince Daniel to do the second one with me as well. The idea is to take 24 hours, some of which on the actual date, and read as much as you can during that time. It's being organised by Hannan kirjokansi but obviously that's all in Finnish.

My plan for this one is to start it on Friday evening and finish on Saturday evening, and I'll let you know in intervals and then after how much I actually get done, so I'll be posting about that on Friday, hopefully. I'll try and entertain mostly the books aforementioned ^ and maybe I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh because she's coming to Helsinki on Thursday and I was thinking of going to take a look at that. Wish me luck on reading! I took part in 2014 as well and read 528 pages, mostly The Picture on Dorian Gray and then one of the House of Night novels. Now that I think back to it, that's actually quite a good amount? I'll try and match it regardless, just for fun. It's good to have goals in life.

Anyway, have a good day, you. Hope summer's treating you well.