It’s a New Year…

…and you all know what that means – Statistics and Challenges.  Yup, that’s right, I’m going to be a geek and do a year in review for Literary Escapism.  Last year, the site really exploded (in my mind) since I had a ton of new authors stop by for a visit, gave away a ton of books (although I will not have that number) and just in general, got a lot more involved in the book blogging community.

So let’s just jump into the stats.  This past year, at Literary Escapism, I somehow managed to interview 7 different authors and had 42 make a guest appearance.  I don’t have exact numbers, but I would hazard a guess to say, of those 49 author visits, we gave away books during 40 of those visits, and that’s not counting in the various contests I’ve thrown up throughout the year.  I’m going to say it’s a safe bet to guess that I probably averaged around 50 contests last year.

While I was reading, I discovered 44 new authors within 121 novels.  That also means I’ve added 121 reviews to the site.  In 2008, I read 134 novels, so last year was a little slow for me, but with Ian getting older and wanting to be more active, that’s to be expected.  With that thought, I’m expecting a lower number this year as well, but I’ll give my reasoning for that at a later date.

During 2009, I took part in six different challenges, here’s how I did:

1. New Authors – Hosted by Literary Escapism (Jan 1st – Dec 31st). I didn’t quite get 50 new authors, but I did come close with 44.  Considering the year before I found over 50 new authors, I don’t think I did too badly this year.  I had some fluctuations in my reading levels, what with Ian being older and wanting to be outside more, but I found a lot of new great authors that I am going to continue reading and can’t wait to find some of their older books as well as their new ones coming out this year.
2. R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril IV Challenge – Hosted by Stainless Steel Droppings – (Sept 1st – Oct 31st). As is always the case, I didn’t stick to the original list of novels I was going to read, but I did get some goods ones included. Something I didn’t realize was that I finished this one with a couple of weeks to spare, but that just means I get to continue adding to the list. ;) I will admit that one of my books was a children’s story that I came across at Barnes & Noble. Seriously, Goodnight Goon by Michael Rex is a great novel and a must have for anyone who reads Goodnight Moon to their kids.
3. Support Your Local Library – Hosted by J. Kaye’s Book Blog (Jan 1st – Dec 31st). So I originally thought I was going to be able to participate in this challenge at the third level – 50 books – but that didn’t happen. Towards the end of summer, I decided to start trying to clear through my TBR stack, so I haven’t made as many trips to the library as I thought I would.  However, if I can count Ian’s books, my son has been getting at least 2-3 books (if not more) from the library at every visit. So while they are not MY books, I have probably borrowed 50 books from the library over the course of the year.
4. 1st in a Series – J. Kaye’s Book Blog (Jan 1st – Dec 31st). I’ve completed a challenge! At first I didn’t think I would get to finish it, but then once I got rid of the series I was expecting to read and actually inserted the ones I had read, I came up with 12 different series. This actually makes me really happy as I was afraid I wasn’t going to finish any challenges this year. On the plus side, all of these series are by new-to-me authors!
5. 2nds Challenge – J. Kaye’s Book Blog (Jan 1st – Dec 31st). This was another one that I was surprised I had finished.  It seems like I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately, but mainly with authors I already know, so the fact that I did manage to get a second novel in by some new authors was a great shock. And you’ll notice not all of them were mentioned in the 1st Series challenge, so I actually tried more series than I had originally thought.
6. Paranormal 999 Challenge – Hosted by LibraryThing with a Yahoo Group (Jan 1st – Sept 9th). I so totally forgot this one ended in September, which means I didn’t get it finished. However, I did manage to read more novels than I originally thought. As previously stated, I wasn’t going to do 81 books for one challenge, but I did manage to read 23 out of the 27 I originally agreed to. We were able to chose our own categories, which made it a little easier in finding books, but out of all of mine, there was only one I didn’t get to, so I’m pretty impressed with myself.

If you want to see the lists of novels I read for each challenge, check out my 2009 Challenge page.

Of course, I have every intention of joining challenges again this year.  Of all the challenges I’ve done, there are four that I’ll be doing again this year.

1. I’m hosting the New Authors Challenge again this year, so of course I’m going to be participating.  I’m not the best of Challenge Host, but I’m going to try and make up for it a little this year.  I’m not sure how, but I will.  :)
2. Updated (I found the posts):  This year, J. Kaye’s Book Blog will not be hosting two of my favorite challenges.  Instead, Royal Reviews has taken over the 1st in a Series and 2nds Challenge.  Since Royal Reviews has taken it over, they did change it up a little.  Instead of having a straight number of novels to be read during the time period (Jan 1st – Dec 31st), you can actually choose which level of participation you want to do.  So, since I’m going to use this as my acknowledgement post, I’m going to stick with what I’ve done the last two years and do 12 novels for each category, which happens to be the addicted level.  I’m not going to plan them ahead of time since I mainly use the challenges as a guide instead of telling me what to read, but I have no doubt I could end up doing the Obsessed level (which is 20 novels each).  We’ll have to see, but regardless of the level, both of these go with my own New Authors challenge beautifully since they are designed to involve the first novel in a new series and to give an author a second chance (respectively).  So since I’m giving myself a goal of 50 new authors, maybe I’ll get 50 new series as well.
3. And of course I’ll be joining Stainless Steel Droppings in his fifth year of doing the R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril Challenge which takes place during the two months prior to Halloween.

I’m going to be joining two new challenges this year.  One is the Year of the Historical Challenge hosted by Lurv a la Mode (Jan 1st – Dec 31st). The idea of this challenge is to get back into reading Historicals. I grew up on those trashy Historical Romance novels and I love them. Lately, I haven’t been reading them as much and this is giving me the perfect opportunity to get back into it. Plus, it gives me the perfect excuse to go looking for more paranormal historical romance novels (i.e. the Gardella Vampires by Colleen Gleason).  There’s not a set number you have to read, but I’m going to try for 12 (1 a month).  I figure that’s a pretty good goal.  I’ve already found a couple of good paranormal historicals to start me off, but if you know of any others, let me know. These are the ones I’ve found already:

• Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan (Onxy Court #1)
• In Ashes Lie by Marie Brennan (Onxy Court #2)
• An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon (Outlander #7)
• Moonshie by Alaya Johnson
• Wolfbreed by SA Swann
• Wolf’s Cross by SA Swann

The last challenge I’m joining this year is the The Anita Blake Challenge hosted by Book Chick City (Jan 1st – Dec 31st). The idea of this one is to read all 19 of the Anita Blake novels by Laurell K Hamilton.  I’ve been thinking about re-reading this series for awhile now and this gives me the perfect excuse.  I have a tendency to get in the mood for an Anita novel and will randomly pick one up.  Now I’ll get to do at least one a month.

So that was 2009 for Literary Escapism.   Okay, so it wasn’t the most exciting year in review, but I never said it was going to be.  However, I will leave you with these two reminders….LE is currently having two contests, one for a copy of Carrie Lofty’s Scoundrel’s Kiss (ends Jan 8th) and Nancy Holzner’s Deadtown (ends Jan 12th).

And for those who have managed to get to the end, I’ll give you a little tease.  I ended up with two ARCs of Jeanine Frost’s upcoming novel, First Drop of Crimson.  Of course I’m going to keep one, but I have no need for two, not when I’m planning on buying the novel too.  So keep your eyes on LE, I’ll be having a contest for First Drop of Crimson probably sometime next week.