2017 on Goodreads

2017 on Goodreads by Various
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018


Here we are again, my third annual Reading Wrap-Up and Book Awards! Last we saw each other I had just finished up the most stressful year of my life. What first comes to my mind is, “Ha! You had no idea what you had coming, past Elizabeth! This year has been even worse!!!”, but that’s only actually partially true. In this context we can assume that I’m talking about “worse” with regards to the amount of stress, which is wrong. This year was slightly more chill. However, with regards to the entire year, it was worse indeed. But we’ll get to that at the end of the wrap-up.



This year I knew I was going to be busy because of finishing high school and starting university, so instead of the goal to read 75 books like the last couple years, I lowered it to a more modest 50. Well, as we can see, I barely even managed that! Fantastic. For the first time I can remember I had a whole month where I didn’t read a single book. But with the power of manga I still kept pretty busy with reading this year.

Last year I made my first banner for my review of Kiss Him, Not Me and what I didn’t know is that I had opened some enormous floodgates. After that I made it a rule to make banners for every single first volume of a manga I have ever and will ever read, and wow it’s been a lot. Normally I feel like I’m not really good at designing things, nor do I like designing, but making that first banner was so fun and looked so nice atop my review that I just had to keep doing it. The banner you see there isn’t even the original one that started it all, I ended up remastering it and adding the background and red shadows to make it look more polished, because by then I had learned some more about making and designing banners. I ended up making over 25 banners this year, click here to see a gallery of them all! I also made some sped-up process videos of me making two of my banners because I like watching myself make things in fast motion. Here’s one I made for Vanguard of Archer, and here’s one for Tejina-senpai.

Here are some of my favourite banners I made this year: (Click any banner to be taken to its corresponding review)






I also read my first light novels this year (though all of them have been of short stories) and a decent amount of one-shots. I also got into the scene of more obscure and unknown manga, and I like the thought of my review being the first one for those series, and possibly influencing other people on whether they should pick those manga up or not. I even ended up having this kind of pseudo-series of my own going on with my reviews of the Fairy Tail manga. I would be kind of pretending I’ve got readers on the edge of their seat waiting for the next installment of my thoughts on the train wreck that is that series.

This year I was planning on doing a full re-read of the Gone series (my favourite series) because the first book of the spin-off came out this year, but sadly I only got through the first book and for some reason never got around to continuing. The first book of the spin-off of The Lorien Legacies also came out this year, and although I own it, that’s a continuation of another of my favourite series that I sadly haven’t gotten around to reading this year. I also ended up having manga burnout so I’m actually behind on a lot of those series too. I am the worst.


My 2017 Reading Stats:


Novels: 4 (Including one nonfiction)
Comics: 2
Manga / Manhwa: 33
Short Stories / Anthologies / Plays: 8
Audiobooks: 8

Wow, this is shocking to me. First of all: Wow, I only read two comics this year. Second: I knew that I didn’t really read all that many novels this year, but only four is shocking. All of the audiobooks I listened to would have been under the “Novel” category had I read them physically, so the real number is more like 12, but still. Even that number is lower than last years’ 15 (and that’s not even including audiobooks), and I thought that last years’ reading was an oversaturated with manga mess. I was hoping that sometime during this year it would eventually get better, and that I would start reading more novels again, but it didn’t really pan out. I kind of began getting better at the end here, seeing as the last seven books I read this year were all novels (ahem, audiobooks), but it was too late.

I think I’ve just been in a pretty bad place mentally for a lot of this year, what with the stress of finishing high school and starting university and all, that even if I want to do the things I love--making art, reading, learning, writing, fashion--I just end up doing nothing during my free time anyway. I’ve even had to start forcing myself to write my reviews and it makes me sad because writing them is supposed to be fun, not a chore. It’s the same feeling with everything I “want” to do, really. Well, here’s to a hopefully better year next year, but this has been something I’ve said every year for the past few years and it hasn’t really been panning out.



To keep with the great mood we’ve established here in this review, my average rating is also lower than the past couple years, which has consistently been 3.8. Great!!!

Click here to see my full Goodreads year in books.



(Click on a book cover to go to the book's Goodreads page, and click on the name of the book to be taken to my review of it. Book cover links do not open in a new tab, whereas every other link in this review does.)

Best Manga:
All You Need is Kill was an absolute delight! The art was jaw-droppingly gorgeous and everything else was great about it too! Honestly just read my review for it because there’s too much to say! (Click on the name of the manga beside the book cover.)

Honorable mention:
Juliet of Boarding School. This is a super fun manga with an interesting and cute premise that also has great art and is insanely funny. The true full package. Except for it's also got some annoying stuff about it, whoops. And that's why I couldn't put this as the winner of this category, because I have some problems with this series whereas for All You Need is Kill I don't.

❀ ❀ ❀

Worst Manga:
Black Torch Vol. 1 literally makes my blood boil every time I think of it. It’s literally just another rehash of the story and tropes we’ve already seen thousands of times before, and it annoys me so much that there are people out there who rated it anything higher than two stars. The number one thing that makes me the most angry about this though is how fricken gorgeous the art is!! I wish this was good so badly just so I could keep looking at the art without wanting to kill myself for having to also read the shitty clichéd story.

Honorable mentions:
Tejina-senpai
and
Gal Gohan
I didn't make it past chapter one of either of these series so it's not fair for either of them to win this category, but by god were those two first chapters absolutely terrible. So much so that I wrote entire reviews for each of them.

❀ ❀ ❀

Most Disappointing Manga:
Put on your big-boy pants for this one, because I’ve got a few.

Onepunch-Man Vol. 1 crushed my dreams. The anime is the second best ever created, and when I read the source material it’s just not up to snuff. The main thing is that the anime had way better pacing.

Honorable mentions:
Black Torch Vol. 1
and
Dr. Stone Vol. 1 Another incredibly mediocre new edition to Shonen Jump’s lineup that I was hoping to like but which didn’t follow through.

❀ ❀ ❀

Best Young Adult Novel:
Gone by Michael Grant was one of the few novels that got a five star rating from me this year. It was a re-read but it still blew most other books out of the water.

❀ ❀ ❀

Most Surprising Novel:
The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness got a lot of mediocre reception back when it first came out because everyone had just gotten off the high that was his previous novel and were expecting no less from his next one. Well needless to say pretty much all those people were disappointed. So I went into this book not expecting much, just some middle-of-the-road lit to waste some time, but it actually really surprised me how good it actually is!

Honorable mention:
Dairy Queen #1 by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. I was expecting a book about football and maybe cows that I wouldn’t really care about, but ended up getting completely engrossed in the story and characters.

❀ ❀ ❀

Most Disappointing Novel:
I hope you’ve still got those pants on because here we go again.

The Gunslinger by Stephen King was probably the biggest disappointment of the year. Here’s this super long series that King has been working on for the past few decades that’s becoming a movie and that has a super invested fanbase, and when I read it it’s one of the most boring things I ever remember having to trudge through in all my days. A true shock and a huge let down.

Honorable mentions:
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. Here’s a book I thought would be right up my alley, but darn, no cigar.
and
The Off Season by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. A really uninteresting and boring middle book to what is otherwise a fantastically fun trilogy.

❀ ❀ ❀

Best Book of 2017:
It by Stephen King. There’s really nothing better than a book that traumatizes you. This is a gigantic book, but reading it was a great decision (except for that one part at the end, fuck that part it’s the one that traumatized me). Truly fantastic. I often question King’s sanity when I read his books but it’s all definitely worth it because this is not only the best book I read this year, but the best book ever written. Boom.

❀ ❀ ❀

Worst Book of 2017:
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin. Honestly fuck this book. I try really hard not to swear in my reviews, but while writing the one for this book I quickly realized I had to let myself go run wild. This is the dumbest book ever and I hate it for ruining the car ride to my winter break vacation destination.

Honorable mention:
Princess Princess by Katie O’Neill. Fuck this book too. It was only 30-some pages but reading it was still a complete and utter waste of time. It was a useless book that should never have been published, it should have stayed on the internet and rot there. O’Neill tries to do some important things with this book but fails miserably.

❀ ❀ ❀

Best Audiobook:
Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock had nothing overtly in-your-face impressive about it, but listening to it was the most intimate experience I’ve ever had with an audiobook. Listening to this series was the first and only time where I ever actually felt like I was the main character. I forget the actual term for this, but it’s like how teen boys watch harem anime so they can imagine they’re the main character. I never understood how that even works because I always consume my media from an outside perspective, but this book sucked me right in and I felt one with the main character. The voice actress also had a very sweet and subtle accent that fit the character which made her feel real and part of the world. The music at the start and end of every book in this series was also very nice and made it feel well produced, and like I didn’t just listen to a book but actually just finished an experience.

Honorable mention:
This production of Odysseus by Full Cast Audio felt much more like listening to a movie than a book. With a full cast (duh) of voice actors and music, it was one of the best produced audiobooks I’ve listened to.

❀ ❀ ❀

Favourite Cover(s):
Come on, you know I can never pick just one! (The pictures are links!)


View all my reviews