Since 2014, I've been doing post series about my most-anticipated releases of the next year. I've steadily seen a decline in how much I've loved the books, though, so I decided to do a round-up post to chart this and talk about each year's picks.
2015
This was the only year I did one of my posts based on awesome covers, which I should know by now is a terrible indicator of a book's quality. I actually left these out of my average rating just because I didn't think they should count. Well, now I'm going to include them.
Out of the forty-five books featured, I removed six from my TBR list. That's less than 15%, so I'd say that isn't too bad.
Rating-wise...I had an average of 3.5. Before I included the books I picked just for their covers, my average rating was 3.7, so yeah, choosing books based on covers is a terrible idea, haha. Still, I found some of my favorite books in 2015, like...
2016
Lolololol, I did four posts this year, so get ready for a heck ton of books.
I removed eight from my TBR list this time, out of sixty-four books, which is about the same ratio from 2015.
However, my average rating was MUCH lower - only 3.1 stars, which is mostly due to how much more willing I was to DNF books (seven just from my Sixteen 2016 Reads, if you're wondering).
I didn't hate everything I read, though. My favorites included:
I still love all of those books dearly, but 2016 was a sad year for books, in my opinion.
2017
I removed a grand total of ten titles from my TBR list from my fifty-one Seventeen 2017 Reads picks, and DNFed four. (I've gotten more comfortable with removing books from my list altogether if I don't like the first couple of chapters.)
My average rating held at 3.2 stars.
Another thing I noticed was that a bunch of my picks got pushed back to 2018 release dates, which is one of the perils of doing these lists so early in the year. Goodreads may say one thing, but publishers say another. I wish there were people at different houses who could at least make sure the pub years are kept accurate. I don't mind if we can't know the exact month and date for a while, but years are key.
Anyways, highlights of 2017 include...
2018
This year isn't quite over, but I've read most of my Eighteen 2018 Reads. Once again, though, a BUNCH got pushed back to 2019 pub dates, which was very frustrating.
I removed twelve of the fifty-four titles from my to-read list, which is consistent with last year at least.
So far, I've DNFed only one of the books, which is probably due to my willingness to remove them from my TBR instead.
A grand total of ten got pushed back to (at least) 2019, as opposed to eight of 2017's picks. I'm definitely terrified at this point what happens to my Nineteen 2019 Reads. With my luck, half of them will be published in 2020 instead.
My favorites, as of writing this post, have been...
But interestingly, most of my actual favorites of 2018 haven't been my Eighteen 2018 Reads. Definitely surprising, since one of the main points of this post series is to identify the books I think will be my favorites.
I won't be giving an average rating for 2018, just because I still have some titles left to read, and I'd like it to be as accurate as possible.
I love doing most-anticipated lists, but they seem to be biting me in the butt most of the time. I can only do so many round-ups of my favorites, though, and talking about books I haven't read yet diversifies things.
Do you have any tips for how I might make better choices for my lists? Should I maybe only do one post a year? I'm officially down to two a year (starting with my Nineteen 2019 Reads) since the individual posts are getting so long, but I feel like it's still hurting me. :/
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