2011 - End of the Year Round Up

Today is the end of 2011. Here in my part of Minnesota we are having a virtually snow-less winter so far which is perfectly fine with me. At the time I began writing this (10:30 AM) we have 34 degrees and cloudy skies. This is what is in our evening forecast though:

... Winter Weather Advisory remains in effect from 9 PM this evening to 6 am CST Sunday...

* light rain will quickly change to snow later this evening...  with a period of snow expected between 10 PM and 4 am.

* Snow amounts of 2 to 3 inches are expected.

* Winds will increase to 25 to 35 mph with gusts of 45 to 55 mph  later tonight. Considerable blowing snow is expected during  the overnight hours.

* The combination strong winds... snow and blowing snow will  produce periods of very low visibility and near white-out  conditions at times. Travel is expected to become dangerous  later this evening and overnight. 

Doesn't that sound like a fun New Year's Eve? I'm glad that my plans are to stay home and curl up with a good book or two and reflect on the past year.

What I Got This Year

According to LibraryThing I added 664 books to my collection this year. 155 of them were free books for my Kindle. 158 of them were books I received for review. 255 of my new books were young adult books. 394 of my 2011 arrivals are still on my TBR mountain. 59 of the books that arrived this year have already been donated to my High School Media Center. Six others have found a new home on the Teacher's Reading Shelf.

What I Read This Year

I used GoodReads and a Google Spreadsheet to keep track of what I read this year. According to GoodReads, I finished 246 books this year which leaves me 4 books short of my goal of 250 books. My spreadsheet says that I have read 243 books. Unfortunately, they don't agree and I don't feel the urge to find out which book I forgot to add to one list or the other. In either case, that is a pretty impressive number for someone who had eye surgery in January. I didn't get glasses that really corrected my vision until May. Of course the vision thing affected my distance vision much more than my close vision. I had a few months when I couldn't drive; I only had a day or two when I couldn't read.

Here is what my reading year looked like:

The categories aren't mutually exclusive. A book could be a Debut YA, a romance, and an E-Book which is why totaling the columns leads to a much larger number than 243. The columns do correspond to challenges that I signed up for this year. I think I read enough to complete each of the challenges but I was very bad about going back and linking up reviews. I started strong and then tapered off or completely quit updating by mid-year. I am bad at following through with challenges.

Since I have decided to only sign up for a couple of TBR challenges next year, my columns will reflect the genre of the books I am reading. I have set up the spreadsheet and guessed at the genres I would need based on what is on my TBR stack.

I have also decided to lower my GoodReads goal for next year to 144. Twelve books a month should be very doable. I have also decided to limit myself to six review books a month - three on each of my blogs. I hope that will encourage me to really make a dent in my massive TBR stacks.

I would like to say that I intend to purchase fewer books this coming year but I know that is unlikely. I have no willpower when it comes to resisting a book that interests me. I already have 8 books pre-ordered from Amazon that will arrive in the new year.

So, how was your year? Are you making any big changes in your reading plans for next year?