April 2017 wrap-up

April was a very busy month, especially at Church, with Great Lent and Great Week. I also managed to be knocked out for 3 days by a nasty cold when even my reading energy was very low. So I didn’t read as much as I expected and this is my lowest month so far in 2017. Still, I read 8 books total, so that could have been worse. But I have not been very active on the blog recently.
I read some books to be in connection with some reading events on Goodreads or other blogs this month, but I didn’t manage to participate in the events themselves!

Here is what I read in April, actually a lot of diversity:

8  books:
7 in print
=  with 1,706 pages, that is: 56 pages/day
+ 1 audiobook
=  with 8H27, that is: 16 mn/day

1 in nonfiction:

1. To Open One’s Heart, by Michel Evdokimov

1 in mystery:

1. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle – audiobook

1 in graphice-novel:

1. The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, by Neil Gaiman

1 in children’s book:

1. Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White

2 in historical fiction:

1. The Sun King Conspiracy, by Yves Jégo
2. Beyond the Wild River, by Sarah Maine – ebook

2 in science-fiction:

1. Waking Gods, by Sylvain Neuvel – ebook
2. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

My favorites in April

    

 Reading Challenges recap

Classics Club: 22/50 (until end of 2018)
Back to the Classics Challenge: 5/12
Mount TBR: 12/48
Where Are You Reading?: 21/50 – to be finished in ??

Total of books read in 2017 = 39/100

Number of books added to my TBR in April= 12

Blog recap in April

• For those part of The Classics Club: Classics Spin #15 was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? for me. I read it and will post my review on May 3

• With for Travel the World in Books Reading Challenge, I read a novel by a famous Moroccan author. They have a Twitter party coming up on April 6 (#TTWIB). Alas the twitter party was postponed and the new date ended up when I was too sick to have even the energy to open my computer.

• I was planning to read My Cousin Rachel, with the Goodreads TuesBookTalk Read-Alongs = started, not finished.
  Tender is the Night, with the Goodreads Classic Book a Mont Club = didn’t have time
  and Charlotte’s Web for Classics Children’s Lit Event 5.= LOVED IT SO SO MUCH, the only book I had energy to read when I was sick, but I have not yet posted my review, so was not able to join the event.

• I organized 1 giveaway. The one for May at France Book Tours is now available.

• About books, though outside the blog, I went to a local independent books store this past Saturday on Independent Bookstore Day. It was not bad, but I was shocked to find a category labelled as Renaissnace [sic], and to find 2 shelves of ARCs, priced $3 each. I remember how bloggers got so furious against a fellow blogger who did that after BEA last year, so I was really quite enraged to see that even an independent book store would do that! Seriously?! But I managed to actually keep my mouth shut. Have you ever found a bookstore doing that?? I had seen some ARCs for sale in some type of second hand shops, but never before in an indie store!

Most popular book review in April

click on the cover to access my review,
back in 2012

Most popular post last month
– non book review –

The top 11 books to read in April

Book blog that brought me
most traffic this past month

Book Reviewer Yellow Pages

please go visit

Top commenters of the month

Inspired by Becca at I’m Lost in Books!
and her Blogger Shout-Outs feature

= 1 point per month for the top 3.
The one who has the most points at the end of the year will receive a gift!
NB: just congratulating winners of giveaways does not count as a real comment 😉

4: Karen at Booker Talk

4: Lucy at The Fictional 100 

4: Kristyn at Reading to Unwind

Blog milestones

1,602 posts
over 4,110 subscribers
over 133,900 hits

Plans for May

• Hopefully Bout of Books 19 and Armchair BEA!

• Still persevering with and enjoying thoroughly The Complete of Sherlock Holmes on audio, with Simon Prebble as the narrator

• Read-along on The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society with Book Addict – on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/114817-lit-collective-an-online-reading-retreat

Come back tomorrow
to see all the books I plan to read in May!

How was YOUR month of  April?

Kathryn at The Book Date
has created a Month In Review meme
I’ll now be linking my monthly recap posts
Thanks Kathryn, great idea!

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After the list of my 2015 favorites, here are my statistics.
Then you can see the fun I had with the titles I read in 2015

Year of reading 2015
Part 2

2015 was another fantastic reading year, with 88 books reads (93 in 2014), and 21 listened to (14 in 2014) = 109, which is an average of 9.08/month
= 2 more than last year

Books read in 2015:
88 [93 in 2014; 86 in 2013]. That’s an average of 7.3/month
Total of 23,075 pages (27,073 in 2014; 25,038 pages in 2013), which is an average of 63.2 pages/day.
Not counting the 4 books I translated into French.
That’s an average of 262 pages/book, (291 in 2014 and 2013)

Books listened to in 2015:
21 [14 in 2014; 18 in 2013]. This is an average of 1.75/month.
Total of 12,899 mn (8,522 min in 2014; 12,253 min in 2013) with an average of 35 mn/day.
That’s an average of over 10 hours/audiobook.

In graphs, this is what it looks like:

The spike in March is due to being one of the IFFP shadow panel judges

The huge difference in August is due to a long road trip!

hmm, historical fiction is no longer the majority here!!

wow, my ebook percentage doubled from last year!

= nice balance!

less diversity than last year, but still happy

And introducing a new chart this year:

neat that I ended up translating and publishing 3% of what I read!

In translation: 28 [25 in 2013]:

• 16 from the French
• 3 from the German
• 2 from the Swedish
• 2 from the Italian
• 2 from the Japanese
• 1 from the Spanish, Greek, and Russian

4 in original language: French
4 translated by me from English-French

Books by the same author: 31 [16 in 2014]:
= 5 by Louise Penny;
4 by Alaux & Balen, Tanya Anne Crosby, Brent Levasseur;
and 2 each by R. Akutagawa, Adria J. Cimino,  Ian Doescher, Gay Hendricks, Andrea Japp, Patrick Modiano, Mark Pryor

Re-Reads:
Bonjour Tristesse, by Françoise Sagan
Five on a Treasure Island, by Enid Blyton (originally read in French)
The Homilies, by Saint Gregory Palamas

Oldest: The Showings, by Julian of Norwich (1393).
Technically, Gregory Palamas is about 50 years before her, but I don’t think the whole group of his homilies were published together at the time, so I counted them under the English translation and publication!

Newest: The Lady Agnes Mystery vol 2, by Andrea Japp (01/12/2016)

thanks publishers and authors!!

 

3 new American States these books led me to: South Carolina, Louisiana, Ohio

24 other countries these books led me to (14 last year) : Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Colombia, Egypt, England, Equatorial Guinea, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Peru, Russia, Scotland, Sweden, Syria, Tibet, Turkey, on Mars, and somewhere in other galaxies

Shortest book: Rashomon, by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa – 10 pages (Japanese short story)

Longest book: The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins – 672 pages.

Longest audio: Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn – 19:11 hours

Funniest: Look Who’s Back, by Timur Vermes

Most depressing: Stoner, by John Williams

Disappointing: Crocodile on the Sandbank, by Elizabeth Peters

Creepy: Floats the Dark Shadow, by Yves Fey

Eye-opener: The Dead Lake, by Hamid Ismailov

Best reading companion: The Fictional 100, by Lucy Pollard-Gott

Very useful: How to Blog a Book, by Nina Amir

Gorgeous pictures: Bridges of Paris, by James St Michael

Favorite characters of the year: Alice (The Lake House), Katie (The Keys of the Watchmen), Klas (The Ravens), Etta (Etta and Otto and Russell and James), Agnès (Lady Agnès Mystery)

Classics I finally got to read:
The Princess and the Goblin, by George MacDonald
In a Grove, by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins
The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
Stoner, by John Williams
La prisonnière, by Marcel Proust
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, by Arthur Conan Doyle

Books present for a while on my TBR that I finally got to read (other than the classics just mentioned):
Crocodile on the Sandbank, by Elizabeth Peters
The Art Forger, by Barbara Shapiro

Which authors new to me in 2015 that I now want to read the entire works of?
Kathleen C. Perrin, Hamid Ismailov, Tomas Bannerhed, Andrea Japp

New Series I want to pursue:
by Andrea Japp

Best title: Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman

Longest book title:
Fiction: So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood, by Patrick Modiano
Nonfiction: The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, by Alan Jacobs

Shortest book title: F, by Daniel Kehlmann

MORE FUN RECAP TOMORROW!

#amonthoffaves

All December,
Estella’s Revenge, Girlxoxo, and Traveling with T
will be sharing their fave bookish
experiences from throughout the year.
Click on the logo above to check the schedule
and join the fun!

Reading Outside My Comfort Zone

Dec 14 is for
Reading Outside My Comfort Zone – Surprise Find(s) This Year

 

Out of the over 100 books I read this year, 4 were outside my comfort zone, but I really enjoyed them:

1. Look Who’s Back, by Timur Vernes.
   This is pure satire and very funny on a very painful topic. Usually I hate that type of thing, but this was so well written, it really worked for me
2. Floats the Dark Shadow, by Yves Fey.
   This is a historical mystery, a favorite category of mine, BUT this one is VERY dark, noir, and creepy. Usually I give up when it’s too much for me, but I could not escape that one!
3. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman.
   I usually do not read Fantasy, BUT when you have such a gifted author AND narrator, why not?
4. The Martian, by Andy Weir.
   I do enjoy science-fiction, from time to time, but this one had a lot of technical details, which I’m usually not too fond of. It works here though combined with the other elemenst.

WHAT BOOK DID YOU READ THIS YEAR
OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE?