It’s that time of year again – where we look back on the year that has passed. 2015 was a fantastic year for us here at Tea in the Treetops, for both the blog and the podcast!
I’m also going to take a look at my personal reading stats for the year, similar to last year’s post.
On the Blog
This year on Tea in the Treetops we reviewed 81 books and gave away six, plus a mug and tickets to a masked ball!
We participated in several blogging community events plus regularly joined in with Top Ten Tuesday. Philippa and I also attended lots of bookish events in person this year, including the Sydney Writer’s Festival, Brisbane Writer’s Festival, Harper Teen Between the Covers and Penguin Teen Australia events, plus Supanova Brisbane. It was amazing to meet so many book lovers and authors, and we hope to do it all again in 2016!
Tea in the Treetops Podcast has grown this year with nineteen episodes published! We interviewed four authors (Paula Weston, Kate Forsyth, Sarah J Maas and Isobelle Carmody) and our other most popular episodes were the Game of Thrones discussion prior to series 5 (episode 23) and our special episode from the Sydney Writer’s Festival (episode 26). There will be plenty more to come in 2016 so please stay tuned.
As usual you can see the reviews for all our favourite reads of the year under our “favourites” tag!
Click to zoom in – (top left) with Sarah J Maas, Chelsea, Jocie and Brittany, (middle top) Paula Weston, (top right) John Marsden, (bottom left) Holly Black and Cassandra Clare, (bottom middle) Isobelle Carmody, (bottom right) Bloggers at the Brisbane Writers Festival LoveYA event.
Angelya’s personal stats
The Sproutlings love to read!
During 2015 I worked four days a week, which gave me a good hour and a half each day of uninterrupted reading time during my train commute. The other days, I was at home or out and about with the little ones, which equals pretty much no reading time.
As at Dec 27th, I had managed to read a total of 101 books this year, with a total of just over 38000 pages. This count includes nine graphic novels and three novellas. On average I tend to read about 104 pages a day, with more on work days where I commute and less on the weekends.
I re-read ten books this year, to be ready for series enders – The Rephaim, The Lunar Chronicles, Throne of Glass series (for fun), and just the sixth book in the Obernewtyn Chronicles. Re-reading is quite a luxury for professional reviewers but I loved it and I’m so glad I did.
I’ve also had an awesome time this year discovering the world of Bookstagram! You can find me posting photos of books (mostly) at anni.treetops.
Having listed all those counts, I am rather behind with reviews at this point. I must make time to catch up in the new year.
Longest book: I read quite a few very long books this year, but the longest ended up being A Dance With Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire #5) by George R.R. Martin at 1125 pages, only just beating The Red Queen (Obernewtyn Chronicles #7) by Isobelle Carmody with 1108 pages! The average length of the books I read this year was just under 400 pages.
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Australian Authors: There has been a huge push here in Aussie blogging circles to read and promote more Aussie books, and especially in the YA market. While I’ve always been a huge supporter of Aussie Fantasy, this year apparently I only read 21 books by Aussie authors! I think I’m going to have to try to do better next year :-/
Source: This graph really reflects the fact that I have moved away from Netgalley and Edelweiss, but also that I re-read a lot of books that I already owned. I also bought more books this year than I usually would, and that’s mostly because I went to author events and bought books to be signed! Sadly the Bookworld reviewer program ended when they were bought by Angus & Robertson. Still, I am so pleased to be able to help Aussie publishers promote books.
If you made it all the way to the end of this post then well done! How did your reading go in 2015?
Thanks so much for your support, and I hope you have a fantastic 2016!
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Anni
Anni lives in Brisbane, Australia with her young family. She loves everything fantasy and science fiction and believes sleep is really very underrated.
Brittany @ Nice Girls Read Books
Happy new year, guys! <3 Was great to meet both of you and share in our Sarah J. Maas adventure! Hopefully 2016 brings us together in more awesomeness again!
Angelya
Thanks Britt 😀 Was lovely to meet you too. Happy new year!
Tracy Cornelius
It is really interesting to see the stats of your literary 2015 laid out like that. I may have to go play around with the My Stats function on Goodreads to see what mine look like.
I did more reading this year than ever before. Probably read about 80-85 books and far surpassed my goal of reading 60 in 2015. I attribute this to really pumping up my audio book listening. Not just in my commute but also on my phone when getting ready in the morning or getting down with domesticity at home.
Looking over some of my favorite books from the year, it seems like a TON of series put out the final book this year or in late 2014 so it was a bit of closure for a lot of tales. The Lunar Chronicles, Bloody Jack, Bloodlines, and Starbound. Read a bit of non-fiction and graphic novels which are typically pushed aside for YA books.
And this year marks the year I found Tea in the Treetops! Which has actually contributed immensely to and enriched my reading life more than I can say. I’ve found a few other YA centric blogs and/or podcasts but none of them hold a candle to yours. Not only have I received great recommendations for books but also have people to get all (virtually) crazy about nerdy book stuff with (hello Sarah J. Maas fan club!) since I don’t personally know a lot of people who are quite into the same reading I am. So thank you for that and keep doing an awesome job!
Angelya
Aw thanks Tracy, we love you <3 Glad we've been able to recommend you some books! You're welcome to get crazy with us any time you like xD
If you're really interested in looking at your reading stats, you can export your GR library to a csv file - it's not the most intuitive to find it on GR but "Import/export" is near the bottom of the left column on the My Books page. If you order the export file by "Date Read" you can select out just the 2015 books. I hope that made sense, hehe.
*SJM Fanclub high 5*
Tracy Cornelius
That did make sense. I mean, it does as I’m reading it right now. Practical application and attempt of this might prove differently… But thanks for the suggestion!