Christmas Books

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a lovely Christmas break. I had a book filled Christmas, as you can see from the picture on the left and I can't wait to get stuck in to my 2016 reading list. I've already devoured the amazing The Wrath and The Dawn (review coming soon) and I think I'm going to start An Ember in the Ashes next as I've been waiting to read it for ages. But first, inspired by the stunning BBC adaptation of War and Peace, I bravely downloaded Tolstoy's epic onto my Kindle yesterday (completely free - classic ebooks are the best). I read Anna Karenina a few years ago and loved it, but I've been put of War and Peace by the size, so I've decided I'm going to try and read a few chapters each time I finish a book to break it up. I am hoping that breaking it up will make it more manageable and stop me from getting bored. 

With regard to my 2015 reading challenges: 

I (just) completed my goodreads challenge of reading 40 books. 

I read 3 1/2 out of 5 of the classic novels I planned to read last year, finishing Mansfield Park, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Tess of the D'Urbervilles. I will finish 1984 at some point; I got distracted mid way through by other novels and need to pick it back up. 

I read six adult novels, twenty seven YA novels, four short stories, two non fiction books and one play (not including all of the picture books I have been reading with my daughter throughout the year).

Five of these books are considered 'classics'.

Thirty were by female authors, so ten were by male (which is a less even split than last year, despite saying that I was going to be more balanced this year…)

I read 22 fantasy/dystopian novels and 11 contemporary (excluding the classics).

My reading highlights of the year include: discovering the amazing Louise O'Neill; starting Sally Green's addictive Half Bad series;  two Sarah J Maas books; as well as so many other amazing books. I'm not sure I read a bad one all year. Also, Bringing Up Bebe is a parenting must-read; I loved it. 

As well as all this reading, I of course did lots of writing. This included the bittersweet experience of publishing Air, finishing off the Elements of Power series. I'm hoping for lots of writing news throughout this year, provided I can stop reading for long enough to get some work done!