2017 Reading & Film Challenge

Happy New Year Internet!

Hope everyone had a lovely & relaxing holiday period. I certainly did & I’m looking forward to starting 2018 and seeing what the new year has in store.

Unsurprisingly, I got quite a few new books for Christmas, which I will hopefully be reviewing for the blog soon. I’ve already finished one and I’m looking forward to sinking my teeth into the rest of them over the next few weeks/months!

For my first post of the year, I thought I would post a summary of my 2017 reading/film challenges…

2017 Reading Challenge

So way back at the start of 2017, I made myself a reading & film challenge, setting targets of certain types of books that I wanted to read. I managed to justifiably achieve 9 out of these 12 targets. There were some categories where more than one book could have counted, but I have just included one title for each category I completed…

2017 Reading Challenge

1 ~ A Book Published In 2017

Into The Water by Paula Hawkins
8th July – 18th July

published  2017

2 ~ A Book Published Before 1900

In A Glass Darkly by Sheridan le Fanu
29th October – 26th November

published 1872

3 ~ A Book Published During The Decade You Were Born (for me, the 90s)

The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves
19th July – 17th August

published 1999

4 ~ A Book That’s Under 150 Pages

A Cup Of Rage by Raduan Nassar
14th October

64 pages

5 ~ A Book That’s Over 600 Pages

X

Sadly, I didn’t read a book of this length. I was pretty close with The Magician King by Lev Grossman. At 560 pages, it was the longest book I read in 2017. 

6 ~ A Book Written By An Author Who Isn’t British, Irish, American or Canadian

A Poison Apple by Michel Laub
19th August – 29th August

Michel Laub is a Brazilian author. 

7 ~ A Book You’ve Been Meaning To Read For A Long Time

X

There were possibly a few books that I could have included here, but they were books that I had been wanting to read for maybe a year or two, rather than for a longer period of time. Therefore, I felt like it would be cheating to include something for this one.

8 ~ A Book You Read A Long Time Ago

X

I didn’t re-read anything in 2017!

9 ~ A Book By An Author You Like, That You Haven’t Already Read

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
12th January – 14th January

I’ve been a massive fan of Patrick Ness for ages, having previously read The Chaos Walking Trilogy and More Than This.

10 ~ A Book From A Series You’ve Never Read Before

Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
2nd January – 10th January

Never read any of the books from this series before. 

11 ~ A Book With A Colour, Season Or Number In The Title

Blue Exorcist Volume 1 by Kazue Kato
16th December – 17th December

I read three volumes of this manga, as well as three volumes of Black Butler, which could have also been included for this target. 

12 ~ A Book Recommended To You By Somebody Else

The Magicians by Lev Grossman
15th March – 31st March

The series was recommended by a colleague at the library and I really enjoyed the series!

 

Of course, this isn’t everything that I read last year, and I didn’t read books just to complete the challenge, so it’s cool I managed to meet 9 out of the 12 criteria. For reference here is a list of the books I read in 2017, and the years they were originally published:

1 ~ Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs (2011)
2 ~ A Monster Calls – Patrick Ness (2011)
3 ~ The Wonder – Emma Donoghue (2016)
4 ~ Radio Silence – Alice Oseman (2016)
5 ~ In A Dark, Dark Wood – Ruth Ware (2015)
6 ~ Reached – Ally Condie (2012)
7 ~ We Were Liars – E. Lockhart (2014)
8 ~ Killing Kate – Alex Lake (2016)
9 ~ The Magicians – Lev Grossman (2009)
10 ~ Butter – Erin Lange (2013)
11 ~ Mister Creecher – Chris Priestley (2011)
12 ~ Tinder – Sally Gardner (2012)
13 ~ Modern Romance – Aziz Ansari & Eric Klinenberg (2015)
14 ~ The Magician King – Lev Grossman (2011)
15 ~ The Magician’s Land – Lev Grossman (2012)
16 ~ Into The Water – Paula Hawkins (2017)
17 ~ The Crow Trap – Ann Cleeves (1999)
18 ~ A Poison Apple – Michel Laub (2017)
19 ~ Alberto’s Lost Birthday – Diana Rosie (2015)
20 ~ Darkly Dreaming Dexter – Jeff Lindsay (2004)
21 ~ Elizabeth Is Missing – Emma Healey (2014)
22 ~ A Cup Of Rage – Raduan Nassar (1978)
23 ~ Gwendy’s Button Box by Stephen King & Richard Chizmar (2017)
24 ~ Black Butler Volume 1 – Yana Toboso (2010)
25 ~ Black Butler Volume 2 – Yana Toboso (2010)
26 ~ Black Butler Volume 3 – Yana Toboso (2010)
27 ~ The Art Of Being Normal – Lisa Williamson (2015)
28 ~ In A Glass Darkly – Sheridan le Fanu (1872)
29 ~ After Me Comes The Flood – Sarah Perry (2014)
30 ~ Blue Exorcist Volume 1 – Kazue Kato (2011)
31 ~ Blue Exorcist Volume 2 – Kazue Kato (2011)
32 ~ Blue Exorcist Volume 3 – Kazue Kato (2011)
33 ~ The Diary Of A Bookseller – Shaun Bythell (2017)
34 ~ Strictly Come Dancing Annual 2018 – Alison Maloney (2017)

Some facts & stats:

~ 18 of these books were borrowed from the library, the other 16 I own
~ 13 of these titles were published between 2015 and 2017
~ Only 3 of these books were published before 2000 (and one of them was published in 1999)
~ I read 3 non fiction books (far more than usual!)
~ 6 of these books were manga volumes from 2 different series
~ I read books by 30 different authors. Of these 30 I had read books by 9 of them before 2017
~ Most of the authors are British, American or Irish as far as I can tell. The 4 exceptions are Yana Toboso & Kazue Kato (both Japanese) and Michel Laub & Raduan Nassar (both Brazilian)
~ As far as I am aware, 29 of these 30 authors are still living.
~ 2 of these books were co-authored (again, unusual for me)
~ The longest book I read was The Magician King and this also took me the longest to read at 35 days. The shortest book was A Cup Of Rage, which I read in 1 day, the quickest of any book last year.

 

2017 Film Challenge

My film challenge was far less successful, as I only managed to watch 3 out of the 12 films I’d aimed to watch.

These 3 were:
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them
The Emperor’s New Groove
and
Chicago

However, despite only watching 3 from my initial target, I actually watched a lot of films last year – a grand total of 42, which is a lot for me!

Some more facts & stats:

~ Of these 42 films, there were 20 I had never seen before.
~ I went to see 2 films in the pictures: It and Jumanji – interestingly enough, both of them were remakes and I’d not seen either of the original movies.
~ 7 films were DVDs I borrowed from the library.
~ There was 1 film I watched twice: Descendants 2.
~ The most films I watched in 1 day was 4 (Christmas Day).
~ I watched at least 1 film every month.
~ The month where I watched the most films was December (12) and interestingly enough these 12 films were watched across the last 13 days of the month.
~ There were 2 months where I only watched 1 film: March (Home Alone) & June (The Emperor’s New Groove).
~ 21 of these films were animated and 21 were live-action.

I will hopefully be setting a fresh reading/film challenge for 2018 and will post about this soon. However, I think I shall leave it there for the time being!

All facts are correct, as far as I am aware.

P. S. My song post for this week is from one of the albums I got for Christmas. It’s from   P!nk’s latest album and is a track called ‘Where We Go’. Hope you enjoy it as much as me.

 

 

 

 

 

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