End of Year Books Survey 2012: Iphigene Edition

Personally, 2012 was a tough year for me in terms of reading and blogging. I didn’t read or posted as much as I wished. Yet, I could say 2012 still was a good year of reading. I read some of the most enlightening books of my lifetime. While I wasn’t able to read the books I wished I could have read like Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84, despite its presence in my shelf, I felt I read a lot of books that captured what my soul needed as nourishment  this year.

In continuation to Myra‘s and Fats‘ post, here are my answers to the 2012 Reading Survey. I picked up the questions that I could answer and left out some of the questions that I couldn’t personally answer.

Best Book You Read In 2012? (You can break it down by genre if you want)

Fats and Myra have answered this already, but I just wanted to create my own list. I have to say my best reads are as follows:

• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
• Please Look After Mother by Kyung-Sook Shin
• Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
• Lost and Found and other Essays by Rica Bolipata-Santos
• It’s a Mens World by Bebang Siy
• When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron

The reason is personal more than ever. This list encapsulates books that spoke to me and captured every nuance of my thoughts and emotions at the time I read them.

Book Blogging/Reading Life in 2012

1. New favorite book blog you discovered in 2012? 

I haven’t shared this with the other members of GatheringBooks, as I found it fairly recently and maybe it’s the wit of the blogger or the incredible love for books that just made me keep track of her writing. Favorite book blog discovery would be GeekyBookSnob.

2. Favorite review that you wrote in 2012? 

There are three people behind Gathering Books and compared to the other two (Fats and Myra) I’ve written very few this past year, but if I had to choose one it would be Mothers are People too. I think in many ways I really did put more effort into writing this review and in putting forth what I thought the author and her novel were saying.

3. Best discussion you had on your blog?

I’m sure there were many, but I think its on our Feature of Hunger Games wherein we focused on Katniss. I liked that there was contention in some of the comments as much as there were agreements. I think when someone presents an opposing thought to our post it offers great discussion and allows people to exchange ideas openly and with candor. I’ve always loved having someone disagree with me and present it in a logical manner.

4. Best moment of book blogging in 2012?

I think it would be the Asian Festival of Children’s Content held in Singapore. While this was mostly Myra’s participation, it was something that sort of opened up Gathering Books to new authors, illustrators and book bloggers.

I think its also getting an unexpected number of participants to our Award Winning Books Reading Challenge 2012. It was our first year to host that challenge and the response has been wonderful.

5. Most Popular Post This Year On Your Blog (whether it be by comments or views)?
Our most popular for this year is a post by Fats called Glimpses of Everyday Life in Cynthia Rylant’s If God went to Beauty School. It got 4032 views this year.

6. Post You Wished Got A Little More Love?

With the amount of posts we produce each week, this is hard to answer, but of all my posts I think I wish my review of The Night Circus got more love. It was something I also felt I immersed in as I wrote the review. Also, it was one of those books I never thought I’d like.

7. Did you complete any reading challenges or goals that you had set for yourself at the beginning of this year?

We completed quite a number of challenges. I didn’t even realize it was this much. But let me list everything:

• Picture Book Challenge 2012 124 of 120
• Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge 2012  31 of 12 (Thanks to our Non-fiction Monday participation)
• POC Reading Challenge 2012   31 of 25 (Being Asian this is one challenge that resonates and fits perfectly into our Asian Festival theme last May/June 2012)
• Reading the World 2012   7 of 7 (Hosted by the lovely ladies of Paper Tigers, ever since we started blogging we’ve enjoyed joining this challenge)
• Immigrant Stories Challenge 2012 16 of 6 (We read quite a few that fell under the category)
• Caldecott Challenge 2012   24 of 24
• Novel-in-Verse Challenge  10  of 10 (this was not easy as finding novels in verse is tough especially in the Philippines, but we did it and we love our poetry/verse)
• Newberry Medal Reading Challenge 12 of 12 (this was tough to finish for us, but we made it by the deadline.)
• 365 Books Reading Challenge- this is a self-imposed challenge that we made for ourselves.  We were able to collectively read 365 books, however, I wished I could have read 100 books. I’ve only read 67 this year. Sigh.
  
  

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Before I end today’s post. I’d like to announce the winner for December 2012’s AWB Reading Challenge:

Congratulations Joyce Ray (Musing) for your review of Monsters by Walter Dean Meyers

Email us at gatheringbooks2009 (at) gmail (dot) com for your mailing address so we can send the book to you! You just won:

Check out our 2013 AWB Reading Challenge here.