2014 Year in Review

2014 has come to an end. Let’s see what happened on The Book Vixen this year:

• WORAT was created in February and there have been 159 participants to date.
• I cleaned out and purged my ‘read’ bookcase, my ‘TBR’ bookcase, and my ebooks (as well as shared some before and after stats).
• I started my own TBR Jar Project. (It was on hiatus while I was catching up on review commitments but I think I’ll start it back up again in the new year.)
• TBV turned 5!
• TBV welcomed 5 new reviewers: Babs (joined in April), Emily, Laura, and Monica (joined in June), and Crissy (joined in October).

 

Here’s a look at my reading stats for 2014:

READ:

• Books read: 46
• Pages read: 10,218
• Books reviewed: 47
• Books re-read: 0 (Can you tell I’m not much of a re-reader?)

My reading goal for 2014 was to read 85 books, which I missed by almost half (39 books).

Books I Read by Genre:

Of the 40 Contemporary Romance books, 12 of those were MC Romance (my current book crack), 4 were New Adult, and 1 was M/M Romance. After glomming Romantic Suspense the previous 2 years, I think I’m burned out because I hardly touched it this year. At the start of the year, I had thought I would broaden my reading tastes, maybe even start reading paranormal romance again, but clearly that didn’t happen.

Books I Read by Rating:

I’m pretty selective with which books I pick to read, so majority of them I really enjoyed reading (for the ones I read all the way through). I certainly do not have any qualms about not finishing a book if it isn’t catching/holding my attention.

Books I Read by Format:

No surprise that I mainly read ebooks. Though I do have a lot of print books in my TBR pile…

Books I Read by Source:

More than half the books I read were review copies. I have a feeling that will change in 2015. I’m glad I read some of the Kindle freebies I’ve been hoarding.

Blog Stats – Top 3:

• Visiting Countries
  1. US
  2. CAN
  3. UK
• Keyword Searches
  1. the book vixen
  2. book vixen
  3. dicks (thanks to J9’s review LOL)
• Label Searches
  1. 5 frogs (A lot of you go straight for the crème de la crème!)
  2. M/M Romance
  3. Reviews by J9
• Viewed Pages
  1. Review/Promo policy
  2. WORAT info page
  3. Kindle deals & freebies
• Giveaways
  1. Shannon Stacey’s Birthday Extravaganza giveaway (she generously gave away an ereader!)
  2. 2014 Birthday Extravaganza kick off
  3. TBV’s 5th Blogoversary

Top source – Twitter (by a landslide)

 

What’s next for The Book Vixen in 2015

In 2015, I am going to aim to read 50 books (bringing my reading goal DOWN, yet again). If I reach that goal, I’ll be happy. As far as reading challenges go, I’m not planning on participating in any (even the ones I’m hosting; I want to relieve any sort of pressure from my reading). I also plan to track all the books I read in 2015 in the nifty spreadsheet created by All About Books, which will give me all sorts of awesome stats. Depending on how much (or little) I read, I may include some of these stats in my Month in Review posts or do a quarterly stats update. Either way, I will definitely share my reading stats at the end of the year.

I’m going try out a new Month in Review format, making it more personal. Another change on the blog – I have retired My Bookish Wants & Gots. I’ll be including books I get in my Month in Review posts but will no longer post books on my wishlist.

J9 has some discussion posts lined up. She and Crissy will be bringing you monthly M/M romance recommendations. And there will another monthly discussion post as well that we’ll be working on as well.

I’m hosting the Outdo Yourself, Men in Uniform, Romantic Suspense, Contemporary Romance, and Read Your Freebies reading challenges again for 2015. (The Nicholas Sparks reading challenge will be on hiatus.) And there will be a review link-up post for each reading challenge.

And I think that’s it.

Happy New Year!