Hello, friends! My name is Sarah and today I'm here to share with you my December
reading wrap up. The month of December was a little bit crazy, just in terms of
life stuff in general, which is why I only made one video the entire month, but
I was also doing a lot of reading because I was really pushing hard to
complete my 100 books challenge and I had a fair amount of ground to cover in
the final month of the year but I am pleased to say that with my flurry of
reading and not making like...any videos, I did finish my 100 books and I am super
glad that December, 2016, that reading goal, all of those things are done.
And now let us jump into the statistics for the final reading month of 2016.
In the month of December I read a total of 11 books for a grand total of 4,734 pages,
with an average of 430 pages per book.
7 of those books where new reads and 4 of them were rereads.
4 of those books were part of a series and 7 of them were standalones.
In regard to the genre breakdown, 3 of books for fantasy, 1 was historical fiction,
1 was a clasic, 1 was literary fiction, 3 were faith or theology based, and 2 of them were contemporaries.
8 of those books were for an adult audience, 2 were for a young adult audience,
and 1 was for a children or middle grade audience.
Looking at the character diversity, 2 of the books did not have any diverse characters represented in them,
4 of the books had ethnic diversity represented in their characters,
2 of the books had multiple kinds of diversity represented, and 3 of the books were nonfiction,
and therefore did not have any characters represented in them.
Of those characters, looking specifically at the protagonists,
3 of the books had diverse protagonists, 5 of them did not, and, once again,
3 were nonfiction and therefore did not have a protagonist.
Moving onto the setting, 3 of the books were once again and nonfiction and
therefore did not have a setting, 1 of the books took place in a fantasy realm
2 of the books to place in the United States, 4 took place in the UK, and 1 took place in Germany.
Looking at the author gender, 4 of the books were written by men and 7 of them were written by women.
Moving onto the publication year, 1 of the books was published in or before the 1920s,
1 was published in the 1940s, 1 was published in the 1980s,
1 was published in 1990s, 3 were published in the 2000s,
2 were published between 2010 and 2015, and 2 were published in 2016.
And finally, moving onto the star ratings, I gave one book 2.5 stars, 1 book 3 stars,
1 book 3.5 stars, 2 books 4 stars, 1 book 4.5 stars, and 5 books 5 stars
for an average of 4.23 stars per book, but most of those 5 star books were rereads.
And now let us move onto the books.
Up first we have "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling.
by JK Rowling to have the prince is one
of those books that i have always
enjoyed it was never one of my favorites
in this series in a lot of respects it
felt like the middle book in a trilogy
to me because so often you get
middleburg syndrome where most of the
middle book is just set up for the big
finale and that's a lot of what happened
princess always felt like to me because
you spend so much time learning more and
more of the backstory of Voldemort and
that's what a lot of this book is
dedicated to and so on most of my
previous reads it has just felt a little
bit like a traditional Middle where it's
really just set up for the finale even
though the story didn't change something
about reading it for the fourth time I
just appreciate it so much more the
complexity of the story and even though
yes a lot of it is set up for all the
things that come to play in book seven
so many of the threads that JK Rowling
has been weaving from the very beginning
of the story really really start to come
together and I would just appreciate the
complexity of the story so much more and
definitely bought this one up in my
general opinion of it in this series as
a whole up next we have the girl grace
period all the way home by catherine and
valente the fifth and final book in
Fairyland series you guys heard me gush
about the series a fair amount now if
you have watched some of my previous
recent wrap-ups i love the series so
much is one of my favorite things that i
read at this entire year and this book
was the perfect conclusion to the series
i could not have imagined a better way
for everything to wrap up and while part
of me didn't want
read it because i didn't want the
adventures that September had and my
experience with this world and the
writing style all the wonderful things i
love about the series to end truly like
i said i could not have imagined a
better ending for it was absolutely
wonderful
I do intend to do a full series review
on the whole quintet in the coming weeks
so if you would like to hear more
specific thoughts on this book and the
series in general definitely keep an eye
out for that one but i can basically
just tell you right now that review can
pretty much be summed up in this series
is wonderful go read it right now
up next we have as sure as the dawn of
the third and final book in the market
the light trilogy by francine rivers so
similar to the first two books in the
series which I reread it back in
November this series is really hard for
me to talk about objectively because i
read it for the first time ten years ago
I absolutely fell in love with it was
very informative for me i did notice on
this reread that there are some things
that are potentially problematic looking
specifically at some of the
relationships between a few of the
characters and some of the attitudes
that certain characters have about
different things and I actually
intending to do a discussion video in
the near future about the situations
like that where relationships or
attitudes that certain characters have
about certain things are affected by
their historical setting and the culture
that they came out of and how to sort of
separate those two and recognize that
this attitude is problematic but it was
also representative of the culture time
and we'll get into all that later but i
love this series for a whole lot of
reasons but if you do decide to read it
for the first time just go into it
recognizing that that there are some
things that could potentially be
problematic and could maybe personal
things you take issue with but like i
said it's hard for me to talk about the
series objectively because I have such
an emotional and nostalgia click love
for it up next we have awesomely and
shannon hale semifinal TBR jar challenge
for the year 2016 it was to read a book
by an author with my initials certes
inhale this is the one that I picked up
it is basically like a chick flick in
book form is about this woman named Jane
who is sort of obsessed with pride
prejudice and mr. Darcy and the her
obsession has had a negative impact on
her actual relationships with real
people and real men and the like and so
her old
and dies and leaves her a trip to this
place in England where you basically act
like you live in the Regency era for the
entire time you're there so she goes on
this vacation thinking that this is
going to be like her final hurrah her
the thing that she needs to do to like
get the Darcy thing out of her system
and you know it's it's a chick flicky
contemporary thing and so you know
romantic things happen and all that job
and in general the book was fine it was
a quick read it was an easy there wasn't
anything particularly amazing about it
was just kind of there
I guess is the best way to put it i mean
if you're looking for just don't like
super fluffy contemporary chick flicky
type thing that this would probably fit
the bill quite splendidly but unless
you're looking for that I wouldn't
necessarily recommend checking it up
next we have a desiring god and my john
piper so this is the book that I
probably have on my shelf unready for
the longest i got it i think my software
your high school maybe my junior is also
like 2004-2005 ish timeframe and it's 20
knows 2016 and I finally read it i
started and stopped it
goodness knows how many times but i'm
really glad that I finally pushed her
and read it if you are in the Christian
circle and you are familiar with john
piper this book is pretty well-known
it's sort of like his quintessential
piece of theological literature and i
really love that i read it
he's verbose at times there were a lot
of moments particularly near the end as
couple specific chapters where I was
like okay we got it like we don't need
more examples of this thing to prove
your point
so there were definitely moments where I
thought could have been edited a little
more tightly but i did really appreciate
a lot of the insights that he has and it
gave me a lot of really great things to
talk about i'm going through the book
with my mentor right now so i'll be
continuing to process of those things in
the coming months but if you have sort
of had your eye on this and just never
actually picked it up I would definitely
recommend to hear
up next we have the greatest gift by in
boston this is an added additional that
i picked up for the first time in 2014
as with most devotional you read one
thing a day this one starts on server
first and goes through summer 25th
I love involved his writing style i read
her book 1000 gifts a couple of years
ago and fell in love with it and this is
the third year that i've read this
Advent devotional because it is there's
something very calming about it
christmas is obviously a really crazy
busy season and something about just
taking five or ten minutes a day to read
a few pages and just to sit and think
about some of those things which is very
calming and relaxing in if you are
looking for a devotional in 2017 and
you've never read this one I would
definitely recommend checking it out
up next we have did you ever have a
family bible plug first heard about this
booklet 2015 when Max from waldenbooks
read and loved it and then sorry for my
name is minus also read and loved it and
I am super super glad that i picked it
up because it was absolutely beautiful
basically this is a literary fiction
standalone novel that follows a woman
named June and on the night before her
daughter's wedding
Jim's daughter her daughter's fiancé
her boyfriend and then her ex-husband
all died in a house fire and June is the
only survivor and this book basically
chronicles her processing of the grief
but also all the people that are in the
different communities that are somehow
connected to those four people died so
you get perspective of the fiance's
parents and some people that knew him
when he was little and judes boyfriend's
mother and other people within that
community so it helps around from
character to character but they're all
very well-developed they all have their
unique voices and this story was I mean
it's beautiful it's hard to read as you
might imagine it deals with a lot of
really tough and topics and so it's not
necessarily book you can just like sit
down and speed through but bill clubs
writing style is absolutely beautiful he
can set a mood like so few writers I've
never I don't know that I've ever really
encountered a writer that can set the
mood as quickly as masterfully as he
does in this story and there were just
so many wonderful things that I really
really loved about this book and if you
are a fan of literary fiction if you're
a fan of those slower stories that i
would definitely recommend checking this
one out because it's just it's exquisite
up next we have Richard pretty by Ramon
along this is my one
my book of the month pics from last year
i think i picked it up in july or august
i remember exactly when and it was super
interesting when I picked it up it's
basically the story of two best friends
have been best friends since they were
like 11 years old and one of them is
getting married now and so it's sort of
about female friendship and how that
changes and how when you've had a friend
that you've been friends with for that
long how the different dynamics of it
coming to play some of it is just sort
of like habits and nostalgia but then
there is a genuine like love that you
have for that person and how those
friendships change when you move into
different life stages one of you is
married with children and the other one
still single and all this stuff and I
loved the idea of this pockets how did
super fascinating which is why i decided
to pick it up but so many elements of it
just fell flat I didn't find the right
to be particularly great the characters
weren't unlikable necessarily they just
weren't that captivating the story was
fine but there just wasn't anything
particularly grabbing about it I about
two-thirds of the way through i was
pretty much speed reading and skim
reading just to get through the rest of
the story i did read it in one day so it
doesn't read pretty fast but overall
just a lot of elements of it fall flat
and it really just wasn't a great read
for me unfortunately
up next we have miracles by CS lewis so
a couple of years ago my parents got me
the main theological books in CS lewis
wrote and this is the final one that had
to be so i have now read all of my
ceaseless books that i have on myself
and this one make sure that her like a
lot of losses books this one though it
starts really kind of complicated and
there were a lot of things in the early
chapters where I was just I was like I
don't even want to talk about dude but
the morning progressed into the book and
later in the book when he gets past sort
of like a theoretical discussion of what
miracles could be how could they be
possible all that job and actually get
some discussion about specific miracles
mentioned in Scripture it made a lot
more sense and it was a lot easier to
follow and read too early man highly
recommend checking this one out
obviously it's one of the sort of
quintessential books just be prepared to
sort of slog through the beginning of it
a little bit that beginning part was
definitely difficult for me to read but
overall I did really really enjoyed this
book particularly the latter half so
again if you're loose fan i would
recommend checking it out but if you've
never been Lewis before I would
definitely start with some of his other
books before you pick this one up next
we have Middlemarch by george eliot so i
started this book back in the month
november and i went back and forth about
whether I was going to actually try to
finish it before the end of the year I
debated just waiting until 2017 but I
pushed through i'm glad that i did and
overall I did wind up enjoying this
it is basically about a town called
middle Archer an area of no called
Middlemarch and it's about the people
that live in that area and about all of
their interweaving lives and you just
sort of pop around from character to
character and see the different families
and how they interact with each other
and who gets married to whom and there's
no marriages and wills and jobs and
crazy things that happen and you know
all sorts of fun stuff that you have to
come across in a classic literature I'll
probably read this is sometime in the
future largely because I was trying
really hard to finish it before the end
of the year so I wanted breathing like
half of it in one day which is like a
900-page book sorry 450 pages of this
book in one day and I was definitely
skip reading at points and I know that
there are things that i missed because
something happened and I would be like
what was going on here i'm pretty sure i
miss something so i will answer at some
point go back and really really pay for
attention and read it but overall I did
really enjoy it and if you're feeling of
a classic look and haven't picked this
one up
definitely do so and finally my final
book up 2016 was a harry potter and the
deathly hallows a by JK Rowling if you
watch my videos from master you know the
deathly hallows is my favorite book in
harry potter series i adored with every
fiber of my being it is one of my
all-time favorite endings to a series
ever i love the way that JK Rowling
wrapped everything up at how she pulled
all of these threads that she'd been
weaving together and just tight and me
this beautiful picture and there's so
many things that happen in this book
that I just as a writer I'm so
fascinated by how complex the world was
and how all these things are sort of fit
together and you together finally and
the final battle between here in
Baltimore is one of
all-time favorite scenes in the entire
series i also just really love the
character arcs some of them that really
just come full circle Neville in
particular I don't want to get super
spoilery by talking about some of the
connections that have been in earlier
books in the light but the role he plays
in the battle of hogwarts and how that
brings character full circle
particularly in light of a lot of the
stuff that we learn in some of the books
like order of the phoenix and the like i
just i love it i love so many things
about this book the series it has my
heart in so many ways and it was the
perfect way to end out 2016 and I 100
books challenge
well there you have it friends and that
is my final reading wrap-up for the year
2016 if you have read any of these books
i would love to hear your thoughts so
please let me know in the comments below
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thank you so much for watching I hope
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December little bit to share with you my
own Murdock
remember December lot and little off
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