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It’s hard to believe that another year has come and gone, but here we are in January 2019!  Before I get started on a new year of book and beverage posts, I wanted to take a look back at my 2018 WordPress experience.  Since my blog has a bit of a split personality between book and beer reviews, I’m going to do this in two parts. Today we’re looking at my year in books.

Honestly I feel like I had a pretty solid year on this front.  I put more effort into being a “book blog” this past year and am happy with the results.  While I didn’t read as many books as I would have liked (and really, who does?), I don’t feel like I squandered any opportunities to do more.  I did the best I could in the time I had and I’m happy with that. I read some excellent books this past year and had a lot of fun doing so.

I didn’t set any personal reading goals, but easily my proudest moment as a reader this past year was seeing my love of books passed on to my son.  He’s two and a half now and very much into being read to. Not only will he ask people to read books to him, but if they’re too slow to do so he will grab the book himself and push the issue.  It’s adorable and impossible to resist, especially now that he has a very clear idea of what he wants. Warming the heart even more, his favorite book by random chance happens to also have been mine when I was his age – Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go!

As for the site, you can probably tell by my end of year awards that I certainly lucked out I my selections.  I also mixed up my reading list a bit more than I had last year, both in terms of not reading only within a series as much and by selecting from a more diverse list of authors.

I’ll close this post by looking at my top five most viewed book reviews last year:

  • Communion – A True Story, by Whitley Strieber:  The “true” story of the author’s attempts to confront and explain his thoughts and feelings surrounding a series of alien abductions that took place in the mid-1980s.  Honestly, I am actually kind of surprised that this was my most viewed book review. I originally posted it in October 2017 and it didn’t really get a lot of traction at the time.  I feel like it’s also pretty obscure as well, so I don’t really know what to make of this.
  • Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72, by Hunter S. Thompson: I expected/hoped that this post would do well in an election year.  It’s actually kind of sad how relevant this book still is and I certainly didn’t pull any punches (towards either side) in the quotes I selected back when I reviewed in October 2016.
  • Men without Women, by Haruki Murakami: I suppose this one makes a bit more sense since Murakami is a pretty popular author who had a new release this year.  Originally posted in August 2017, this post sees some pretty regular traffic despite this not exactly being my favorite Murakami work to have reviewed.
  • The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi: Again, this one makes a lot of sense to me since the sequel had a very successful release in late 2018.  Initially posted in mid-2017, this is another review that seems to get regular attention.
  • Radio Free Boston – The Rise and Fall of WBCN, by Carter Alan: Rounding out my top five, I was happy to see a post from this year make the list!  WBCN was the radio station I listened to during my middle and high school years and I had a lot of fun reminiscing about those times while learning a bit about the station’s history.

So there you have it, my 2018 year in books.  Join me on Friday as I indulge in a similar exercise for my year in beer!

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