Statistics Survey 2014

Umm, as soon as I saw tweets about a stats survey, I was like I AM IN.  I totally geek out on this stuff.  So… thanks to Brittany at The Book Addict’s Guide and Andi of Andi’s ABCs for putting this together!

1. Number of books under 250 pages (not including novellas): 6
2. Number of books read between 400-449 pages: 10
3. Number of books read between 450-499 pages: 6
4. Number of books read over 500 pages: 4
5. Number of books read over 1000 pages: 0
6. Number of novellas read: 0
7. Number of books that made you cry: No idea!  More than 1, less than 20?
8. Number of books from a female POV: 34 (including some with multiple female POVs)
9. Number of books from a male POV: 6 (including one with multiple male POVs)
10. Number of alternating or multiple POVs: 27
11. Number of DNFs (did not finish): 5
12. Number of five star reads: 4
13. Number of one/two star reads: 7 (I also included 2.5s)
14. Number of authors met in 2014: 0
15. Number of book events attended in 2014: Uhh, 2 or 3 if you count the library sale and story time
16. Number of books you read in one day: Depends on how you define read in one day… I had 0 books started and finished on the same day, but 3 finished after one day (for example, started on the 1st, finished on the 2nd)
17. Number of audiobooks: 10 (new record for me!)
18. Number of 2015 books you have on pre-order: 0
19. Number of re-reads: 2

1. Book with the highest rating on Goodreads: Funnily enough, my least favorite book of the year, A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, gets a 4.44 on Goodreads.
2. Book with the lowest rating on Goodreads: Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close has a ranking of 3.07… I gave it a 4.  Haha, I really don’t jibe with the Goodreads average, I guess.
3. Book read furthest away from home (vacation reads?): Wild Child by Molly O’Keefe– read it while I was in NYC visiting my sister!
4. Book that took you the longest to read: All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrill took me 29 days to read on audio
5. Book that you personally connected with the most: Either Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close because it was such a perfect depiction of modern life in your 20s or Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty which just hit home in its depictions of parenthood, marriage, and friendship.
6. Book that made you love the villain: Hmm, maybe Stay by Allie Larkin… by the end of the book, I understood some of the bad guys a little better
7. Book you said you’d come back to but still haven’t picked up again: Eventide by Kent Haruf… couldn’t do it on audio and just haven’t felt like reading literary fiction much.
8. Book you read waaaay before it’s publication date: N/A since I don’t do ARCs
9. Book you read on your birthday: The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
10. Book with a character who shares your name: The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith has a character named Elizabeth.
11. Book you weren’t entirely truthful about when rating (Fluff up any ratings? Rated even though you didn’t finish?): Haha, I gave Dreamer’s Pool by Juliet Marillier a half-point boost (3.5 to 4) just because I love Marillier and don’t have the heart to not LOVE her books.
12. Book you read in 2014 but already want to re-read: Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier, Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty, Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close, anything and everything by Sarra Manning… etc.
13. Book you borrowed from a friend a long time ago and still have: I… don’t think I have any of these. (I hope.)
14. Book by a foreign author/originally published in another country: I read a bunch of Liane Moriarty books and she’s Australian, so is Juliet Marillier.  And I read some British writers, too– Robert Galbraith/J.K. Rowling, Sarra Manning.  But nothing outside of the English-speaking world, unfortunately.
15. Book you wish you could go back and read for the first time again: Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
16. Most books read by one author this year: 3 books each for 4 different authors- Liane Moriarty, Sarra Manning, Rae Carson, and Juliet Marillier

1. Happiest & saddest:
   Happiest- mmm, this is hard, I’d say the most joyful book (though it had a lot of angst) was Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz.
   Saddest- One Plus One by Jojo Moyes… so many things go wrong, but it was kind of hopeful sad if that makes sense
2. Longest & shortest:
   Longest: A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin at 801 pages
   Shortest: Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice by Phillip Hoose at 133 pages
3. Best & worst:
   Best: Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier
   Worst: A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
4. First & last reads of 2014: First was a reread of Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins and the last was Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern.
5. First & last books on your bookcase (1st book on the top left and last book on the bottom right):
   First- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling
   Last- The Beatles Anthology (one of my husband’s books… we share shelves)
6. The most disappointing & the biggest pleasant surprise:
   Most disappointing: Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
   Most pleasant surprise: After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid
7. Bandwagon/fandom you joined & one you abandoned:
   Fandom Joined: Juliet Marillier… love her writing
   Fandom Abandoned: Mmm, I think I am done singing the praises of Erin McCarthy… I have only really liked one of her books, the others have been ridiculous.
8. Most lenient & harshest ratings:
   Most lenient: I gave The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz a 3… but I didn’t really like it.  I inflated the rating because I felt it taught me something even if it was not enjoyable to read.
   Harshest: Hmm, maybe Guitar Girl by Sarra Manning? I gave it a 3.5 because it was a really depressing book, but when I reviewed it I found I probably liked it a lot better than just a slightly better than average book.
9. Most hyped & furthest under the radar that you read:
   Most hyped: I read a lot of hyped stuff this year.  I’m going to go with Shadow and Bone.  SO MUCH GRISHA HYPE.
   Furthest Under the Radar: Uhhh, probably The Sundial by Shirley Jackson which was out of print for quite some time and definitely not one of her well-known works.

1. Book you read that is red: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
2. Book you read that starts with M: My True Love Gave to Me edited by Stephanie Perkins and The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman
3. Book you read that you may have hugged when you finished it: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz
4. Book you read that you may have wanted to throw across a room: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
5. Book that has the letters Q, X, or Z in the title (bonus for one of the words in the title beginning with those!): The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen and The Drake Equation by Heather Walsh
6. Book that suffered some damage this year (food? water? ripped pages/cover? Ouch!): Umm, how about my Kindle Fire?  It got covered in fire extinguisher gunk after a minor kitchen fire.
7. Food you craved while/after reading a certain book:  Chex Mix after reading Rainbow Rowell’s story in My True Love Gave to Me
8. First book you read in 2015: It’ll probably be I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson.
9. Number of books read that end with a 6 in the page count: 6!  How perfect is that?!

1. Number of posts in 2014: 65
2. Number of reviews posted this year: 41 (some posts included reviews of multiple books, so more than 41 books reviewed!)
3. First post of 2014: My review of We Are Water by Wally Lamb
4. First review of 2014: We Are Water by Wally Lamb
5. Last post of 2014: My 2014 End of Year Book Survey
6. Last review of 2014: One Plus One by Jojo Moyes
7. Least coherent review: Hahaha, probably my review of All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrill.  I totally did not remember the book well enough to write a review of it.
8. Review with the most views (regardless of post date): My review of Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt got the most views this year.  Anything that gets read in middle or high school classes always gets tons of search engine hits.  Come on, kids, do your own homework.
9. Post with the most comments: My TTT for Top Ten Books I Read in 2014
10. Post you wish you could re-write: Maybe my review of Son of the Shadows by Juliet Marillier.  I felt like I was overly harsh in it, when I actually mostly loved the book.
11. Most popular post this year (that was posted in 2014): My review of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (for some reason the spambots love this post and also the kids not wanting to do their own homework)