2014 Book Challenges Wrap Up

2014 is over. So then are my book challenges. This year was the busiest of my life. If it was just work considered, no I have had busier. (I don't think anything will surpass my first year as a children's librarian.) But work was quite busy with the YSRT extras and creating new and very successful programs. But let's also throw in that I actually had a social life to speak of this year, which was always a goal. Quite a bit of one! And another musical. And a couple vacations. So life--in work + out of it--was very busy.

I still had the goal to read less, because I would much rather have the social life right now. It felt like I read very few of what I needed to (children's and teen chapter books). The year ended and I could see how it affected my Reader's Advisory skills at work. Not good. So this year we will not have a goal to read either more or less than my norm. Just to read. :-) Still, I'm sure you are dying to know how I did in my challenges. I'll be nice, and I'll end your anticipation.

GoodReads Challenge

I said I would try to read 300 books. I managed! Kind of. I'm 0.5 books short. But oh well. Close enough! (Close can count in horseshoes, hand grenades, kissing, and book challenges.) There were more picture books in that total than I had anticipated, but I'm still OK with that. That may affect the comparisons.

2014 HM & SL & Friends Book Challenge

I was so close. Four books shy of reading 50 books within 12 categories. I tried. Very much. But it didn't happen. So here are the pdfs of my charts. Let's hope they're more readable than last year.

Books I read that were under 100 pages (and not picture books)

 Books that I Own (supposed to read 6)

 Adult Fiction by author I've not read before (supposed to read 4)

 Classics (read 2; we all picked the same two)

 Religion books (read 4)

 Mystery (read 4)

 Books set in other country (read 4)

 Award winner or nominee (read 4)

 Other (read 4)

 Nonfiction (read 4)

 Books on ToRead list (read 6)

 History (read 4)

 SciFi or Fantasy (read 4)

 Totals

Let's See how the comparisons add up. This is the first time I'm seeing these results as well:
Oh my word. I read more books! 299.5 vs 287. I know. Not a lot. And a ton of picture books. But oh my word! I can't believe I managed more.

With pages (which does not include any picture books), I read less. 24,656 vs 29,584. No surprise. So even though more books, I still read less.
And the points? 1429.9 vs. 1152.6. Woohoo! Thank goodness we added way more points to books we owned or were on our to-read list. Otherwise I don't think I could have managed that. Especially when books over 900 pages only gave me 5 points! Such fun.

And, then there's my A to Z Totals (aka The Scrabble Challenge) with comparison to last year:

Count Scrabble points for first letter of each title and author that I read. Bonus points for letters my names start with. (Not including picture books.)


2013 Titles: 223
2014 Titles: 79 (uh, yep. There's the proof of how much less I read when picture books aren't included)
2013 Title Letters not read: G, J, K, N, Q, X, Y, Z
2014 Title Letters not read: K, Q, U, V, X, Z
2013 Highest Scoring Title letter: H (35 points)
2014 Highest Scoring Title letter: B (27 points)

2013 Authors: 254 
2014 Authors: 64 (oh my word)
2013 Author Letters not read: E, I, Q, U, X, Y
2014 Author Letters not read: I, N, Q, R, U, X, Y, Z

2013 Highest Scoring Author letter: Tie! B & H (30 points)
2014 Highest Scoring Author letter: H (35 points) More H's than last year.

2013 Grand Total: 477 
2014 Grand Total: 346. (Very far down, even though I didn't have as many repeat authors this year. At least, it felt that way.)