Hello! 

Merry Christmas and happy holidays, everyone! I am in a holiday-sized bubble of Christmas cosy at the moment. Harvey’s visiting for the holidays, I’m at home with my family, we’re all shrouded in soft pyjamas and old cartoons and more Christmas food than anyone should ever eat. It’s great. 

As we’re reaching the end of 2018, I’ve taken a look at my Goodreads 2018 reading challenge, and I figured I’d make a post about that next week, as we’re rearing closer to the end of the year. For now, though, I wanted to revisit my 2013 reading challenge, to see how it went five years ago!

I’ve always loved reading and I’ve always loved books. Ever since I was a kid I just couldn’t get enough. 2013 however, at the age of 17, was when I proper started recording what and how much I read. It was my first year of using Goodreads as a way to keep track of my books, and it was when I started setting myself reading challenges to complete.

First of all, my goal for 2013 was 40 books, and I managed to read 38. I’ve decided to sort these books into three lists, the ones I remember reading, the ones I have no recollection of, and the ones I’m pretty sure I didn’t read and might have added just to up my number on the challenge. Embarrassing, but hey, it’s years ago.

Total of books: 38

Books I read and remember to this day: 28

-Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
-An Abundance of Katherine’s – John Green 
-Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls – David Sedaris
-The Fault in Our Stars – John Green 
-Looking for Alaska – John Green 
-Paper Towns – John Green
-The Time Keeper – Mitch Albom 
-A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I learnt while editing my life – Donald Miller
-Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs 
-The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Stephen Chbosky
-The Island – Victoria Hislop
-Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist – David Levithan
-Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares – David Levithan
-Naomi and Eli’s No Kiss List – David Levithan
-Eighty Days Blue – Vina Jackson
-Eighty Days Yellow – Vina Jackson
-A Street Cat Named Bob – James Bowen
-The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom
-One Hundred Names – Cecelia Ahern
-Me Before You – Jojo Moyes
-The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
-To Kill a Mocking Bird – Harper Lee
-City of Bones -Casandra Clare
-Dear John – Nicholas Sparks
–Every You Every Me – David Levithan
-The Lovers Dictionary – David Levithan
-Noughts and Crosses – Malorie Blackman
-Søskenkjærlighet – Katarina von Bredow

Safe to say it was the year of John Green and Young Adult fiction, but it was also the year I found my favourite author, David Levithan, and my  all time favourite book, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, and realised that I didn’t just have to stick to the YA romances. 2013 was also my first time dipping my toes in the classics and the advent of buying books online; i.e, asking the cashier in the bookstore to order books that you could never get in my little Norwegian town, otherwise. 

It’s also interesting to look at what you read at a certain point, because I feel like it can show what you were thinking about at that point in time. Your taste in books can’t really define you, but it absolutely shows what you care about, and offers pointers at what was important to you. 

Books I have no recollection of reading: 3

Boy meets Boy – David Levithan 
I’m so sure I’ve never read this, but I can remember starting it so many times. Not sure why I never got through it, maybe it was just the one Levithan book I couldn’t get into?

The Book of Tomorrow – Cecelia Ahern
I cannot for the life of me remember this one! All I can remember is the fact that I bought it on my first ever trip to a Waterstones and read it on the plane back from my second time ever in London. 

I Don’t Know How She Does it – Allison Pearson
So, I added this book to the list twice, but I’ve no clue what it’s about. I just know that I read it on a beach in Mallorca, and eventually forgot it at the hotel room. 

Books I’m 100% sure I didn’t read and just kind of pretended to have finished: 6

Evig søndag – Linnea Myre
This book was a Christmas present if I can recall, but I have not read this. I think I wanted to be cool and say I’ve read it though, because it was kind of “the book” of my year in school that year. 

Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Yeah, I remember actively putting this book away after the opening pages. This was one of those books that really weren’t what I was expecting, even though I knew nothing about the book before starting it, and it just didn’t sit well with me. I’ve wanted to pick it up again so many times, but just never get around to it. It felt like a very “grown-up” book, though, and I wanted to be able to say that I’d read and loved it, I remember..

The Reader – Bernard Schlink 
Same situation, I have never read this book. It was very adult-y, and historical and quite gritty, though, so saying I’d read it felt impressive. Goodness me, sixteen-year-old me was a mess.

Will Grayson Will Grayson – John Green
I remember my sister loved this book, but I just couldn’t get into it! It also didn’t help that I didn’t get that the two Will Graysons are two different people, either, but to be fair, that’s my bad. Maybe I should give this a go again, 5 years later.

James Potter and the Hall of Elder’s Crossing – G. Norman Lippert
Okay, I’ve done my googling. What is this book? Not that I’ve got anything against fanfiction at all, but I’m very certain that it’s never been in my bookshelf, and I’ve no clue why I’d put it on my “read-shelf”.

Thirteen Reasons Why – Jay Asher
I never finished this, I didn’t get along with the narrator’s voice, I think. 

As I’m back at my parents’ for Christmas, I had a little look around for how many of these books I actually still own. We all know I’m a bit of a book hoarder, but I was surprised to find that 36 of these are still on my shelves (and the other two I can remember borrowing from a friend) which basically means that I’ve never been very good at throwing books away, huh…

But I figured it could be a bit fun to have a look at some of the ones I’ve still got!

2013 was the year I felt desperately and irrevocably in love with David Levithan’s writing, a love affair that to this day is still churning in the pit of my stomach. I remember ordering these at the bookstore, as online shopping wasn’t really as easy an option as it is today, at that time in my town. Well, it all began in 2013, but to this day, I still have all of David Levithan’s books on my shelf, he’s got his own one as he has quite a lot of books published. His stories embody the feeling of home, safety and comfort even in the sadder tales, a warm cup of cocoa written in between the covers.

This copy of The Great Gatsby was the first classic I ever properly read because I wanted to, and also the first time I realised I could make notes and highlight in my own books. After this, I finished To Kill a Mockingbird, and to this day those are the two only classics I’ve ever really gotten through on my own. 

The beginning of a long and true love story; Mitch Albom, my designated November reads. 

The year of all the John Green books in both Norwegian and English, and a rather large school assignment based on (among many others) John Green’s books and his characters. “The Manic Pixie Dream Girl, could she exist?” I think it was called. 

This copy of Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses has been read to absolute pieces, and surprisingly enough it also showed up on my uni set list for a Children’s fiction module, in 2017! 

This post got a bit list-y, but it was fun to have a look through. Like I said, I hope to make a little walk through my 2018 reading challenge, plus I want to write a post about New Year’s resolutions and a bit more about 2018 and its lessons learned. I want to update the blog more and have got some fun ideas I’d love to work on more in the new year. 

So, do you do Goodreads reading challenges? Did you read any of these when you were a teenager or a young adult? And have any of these been, or are some of these maybe still, a favourite? 

Hope you have a wonderful day, 

-Andrea