I chose to take part in three challenges this year – Goodreads (set at 100), The Better World Challenge and the A-Z Reading Challenge. I completely forgot to plan/keep proper track of what I had to read so that left me scrabbling to read a number of books in the last few days of the year. As I schedule this on the 30th I still have one and a bit to go. I will get there though!

Here are the books I read for each challenge

A-Z of Reading

A All the Good Things

B The Bookshop Girl

C Caraval

D Days of the Bagnold Summer

E Eliza and her Monsters

F The Fandom

G Geekerella

H Heartless

I Ink

J Just One Damned Thing After Another change

K Kindness

L The Last Namsara

M My Best Friend’s Exorcism

N The Night Circus

O Otherworld

P The Power

Q The Midnight Queen

R The Reader

S Storm

T Tower of Dawn

U Unconventional

V The Vile Village

W We Can Me Mended (Divergent 3.5)

X MoXie

Y The Yellow Room

Z Zenith

Better World

A Collection of Short Stories – The Language of Thorns

A Young Adult Novel – Truth or Dare

A Book with a Colour in the title -The Taste of Blue Light

A book that’s more than 100 years old – The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

A book you picked based on its cover – Anna Dressed in Blood

A book set in a place you want to visit – Night of Cake and Puppets (Prague)

A book based on a fairytale – Hunted (Beauty and the Beast)

A National Book Award Winner – Holes

A book that takes place in a forest – Spellbook of the Lost and Found

A romance that takes place during travel – The Loneliest Girl in the Universe (travel in space)

A book under 200 pages – I Am Bat

A book over 400 pages – Ink & Bone

A banned book – The Hate U Give

A non-fiction book about nature – Jeremy & Amy

A fantasy novel – Strange The Dreamer

A book by a person of colour – Out of Heart

A book by a female writer – The Witch’s Tears (by two actually )

A book of poetry – hummingbird

A book set in Asia – Flame in the Mist

A book about immigrants – The Bone Sparrow

A book about a historical event – The entire Chronicles of St Mary’s series!!!

A book with a child narrator – Wonder

A book translated from another language – Maresi

A book that’s been adapted into a movie (bonus watch the movie and compare) – Everything, Everything

Goodreads

Will be 209/100 – slightly off last year’s pace, once again boosted by audiobooks. I did write 50,000 words in Nov though (Yes I achieved Nanowrimo for the 3rd time).

Worst Read – The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (Borian!!!)

Best Reads – lots of 4.5/5 star reads but these new to me reads of 2017 were my ultimate favourites:

Godsgrave, Nevermoor, Strange the Dreamer, Heartless, Forever Geek, Geekerella, Ink, The Night Circus, Spellbook of the Lost and Found, A Court of Wings and Ruin, Moxie, Tower of Dawn, It Only Happens in the Movies, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, Lord of Shadows, Night of Cake and Puppets, The Language of Thorns.

And I was lucky to read these 2018 releases which made the list too.

How Do You Like Me Now? and The Fandom

Other booksy highlights of the year

YALC with my besties, and winning the bookish quiz as part of #TeamBarnard.

Talking at a local school about book blogging and having author of Days of the Bagnold Summer Joff sketch me doing it and draw Harry Potter in my book.

Meeting and getting writing advice from Joe Hill at Gollanczfest.

Sarah J Maas event and continuing my LeakyCon LONDON 2013 friendship with Elizabeth and Rachel – and meeting Brittany.

Meeting and interviewing lots of fab authors at Waterstones Castlepoint and introducing Jacqueline Wilson – loved seeing the excitement of the next generations of readers (Thanks to Louise for the opportunities).

Introducing my sister and mum to Rhysand and making my own ACOMAF Chapter 55 funko pops!!!

Also LeakyCon in Dublin was awesome – “actually” staying in the Leaky Caulron! meeting film actors, getting Chris Villain to sign my Teddy Lupin custom funkopop as he was dressed in the same outfit! Running a Cursed Child (aka Scorpion King fan club) session with Janine and Kathleen. And wonderfully re-meeting a person I had randomly sat next to at my first trip to The Cursed Child. Johanna thanks for having the better memory and saying hi. And seeing all my fellow Potterheads again.

And I was a book fairy and gave out free kids books at the New Forest Fairy Festival.

I also added to my booksy tattoo.

I’ve become a lot more involved in Bookstagram – here are a few of my fave pics and I luckily won a free month’s Fairyloot with the yellow picture.

And I met my cat nephew who has joined my bookstagram making it about cats too. He may even have made me a cat person or a Denny person at least!

I finally finished my Hogwarts painting and pottered up my house a bit more including half of the Christmas tree.

And I got round to replacing my custom Phoenix patronus shoe that I lost of the London tube and had a purple book patronus with Nevernight quote one made to go with it.

It’s been another excellent bookish year for this Hufflepuff. What have your highlights been?

Tomorrow I’ll be sharing my “reading and doing” hopes for 2018 but just a note about my reviews.

I’ve started not adding star ratings to my blog reviews because I’m a qualitative fan. You can see my star ratings on Goodread if you really want to. I give half stars all the time. Sometimes I change my mind. On a re-read ratings can go up and down. I’m much more about writing what a book makes you think and feel and admiring the craft than allocating a number.