What I Read In 2016: Part Four — All the graphic novels, comics, and manga!

A 2016 Wrap-Up Post!

Check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3!

First of all — Happy New Year! 2016 was kind of a terrible year, but there were a few good things that happened.

Like… I read a ton of graphic novels, comics, and manga in 2016! Like, so many! Enjoy the last part of my 2016 reading wrap-up posts! Without further ado, here are the books. (Click on a title to read my review. I didn’t review every book, though.)

What I Read In 2016: Part Three — Odds n’ Ends (Nonfiction and a random Will Shakespeare’s Star Wars)

A 2016 Wrap-Up Post!

I did Part 1 and Part 2 of the novels I read in 2016. Check those out, because I’m sure you’ll find those posts much more interesting than this one. Anyway, here are the nonfiction books I read this year. Well, except for William Shakespeare’s Star Wars, but I lumped it in this category because it’s not exactly a novel.

Click on a title to read my review! Books aren’t listed in any particular order; there’s only 8 of them, after all.

The Novels I Read In 2016: Part Two — My Top 10 List! (The Hits & Favorites)

A 2016 Wrap-Up Post!

So here are the awesome novels I read this year! (Check out Part 1, where I talk about the mehs and disappointments of 2016 in terms of novels.)

I’m not ordering these great books in a numbered list because no one book stood out that much more than all the others. All the books in this post were great reads that I highly recommend, and I’ll talk more about them below. (I also just noticed I have a nice mix of genres, too: fantasy, sci-fi, historical, thriller, contemporary, and romance! Wow, that’s awesome!)

Click on a title to read my review!

The Novels I Read In 2016: Part One — 3 and 2 Star Reads! (Mehs & Disappointments)

A 2016 Wrap-Up Post!

As of writing this post, I have read 70 books in 2016 — which is woefully little for me, actually. 2016 was a terrible reading year. Many of the books I read were actually graphic novels, comics, and manga — many of which were excellent — but I did read a number of novels, though not nearly as many as I’d hoped. 2016 might have been slow, but I did read some good books, which you’ll see in future countdown posts! I also might finish reading a few more books before the end of the month (currently reading Splintered by A.G. Howard and liking it), but I don’t want to leave my wrap-up posts until the last minute, so here’s the first one.

As the title says, here is part one of the novels I read this year: 3 and 2-star reads. I’m amazed that I didn’t read a single 1-star novel! (Although there is one book that’s in that murky 1.5 rating territory…) I didn’t viscerally hate any novel I read, though, so I guess that’s good!

Click on a title to read my review. Books are listed in no particular order.

Series I’ve decided to drop/quit/abandon (because who has time to finish every single series they’ve started anyway?)

So it’s a new year. It’s time to revamp my reading life — and my TBR pile, mainly. There are a ton of series I’ve started and am currently invested in. Only problem is that I don’t have time to finish them all. There are many series I’m more excited about than others, and so I decided to clean out my Goodreads shelves and diminish by massive TBR pile by a little bit. This post is coming to you in three parts: Part 1 – series I long ago decided weren’t worth finishing because I mainly disliked the first books in their respective series. Part 2 – series I’ve decided to drop now that I am organizing my reading life because it’s 2016. And Part 3 – series I’m on the fence about continuing or not (this will probably be the section you find most interesting/controversial, ha!).

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The Annual End of Year Book Survey: 2015 Edition!

Jamie from The Perpetual Page-Turner runs The Annual End of Year Book Survey. Last year I participated in this gigantic end of the year tag, and this year I’m going to do it again!

I am not answering every single question since there are a few that I really don’t have answers to (such as, “favorite quote” — because I’m just not a quote person). I am answering 98% of the questions, though. Also, I am including books I read that weren’t released in 2015, for obvious reasons. And I’m going to try to spread the love around. (You may remember that last year I basically only talked about the same two books, The Scorpio Races and Midwinterblood, ha.) Also, click on titles to read my reviews — I reviewed all but four of the books I read this year!

Here’s my year in books! (Be warned, this is a super long post! I hope you’ve got a snack with you.)

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The Studio Ghibli Appreciation Series — Part 2: My Countdown of All 22 Studio Ghibli Anime Films

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Check out Part 1 of the series if you missed it — I talk about all of Hayao Miyazaki’s films in detail.

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In this post, I’ll be counting down all 22 of Studio Ghibli’s films, but I’ll talk only briefly about Miyazaki’s films because I don’t want to repeat myself — there are 12 more films I have to discuss, peeps! Otherwise we’d be here all day.

Studio Ghibli was active from 1985 to 2014. The first film officially created through the Studio was Castle in the Sky and their last film was When Marnie Was There. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was actually not produced by Ghibli; it was released in 1984 and was the project that led to the legendary studio’s creation due to how successful it was. Nausicaa is considered canon, though, so it’s almost always lumped with the rest of the Ghibli films.

Gah, ranking is so terribly hard! I’ve been ordering and re-ordering all the films FOREVER and it’s just so hard to pick favorites. *Cries.* Most of them are so good that it’s actually heartbreaking seeing some towards the bottom of the list… While Miyazaki dominates the top half of the list, there are a few films not directed by him that are ranked highly that I absolutely love.

Ready? Let’s begin the countdown! (Don’t worry, this is all spoiler free!)

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The Studio Ghibli Appreciation Series — Part 1: A Countdown of Miyazaki’s 11 Anime Masterpieces

Hayao Miyazaki is arguably one of the most famous Japanese anime directors of all time, definitely at an international scale, but also in Japan. His films are true works of art and tell deep, complex stories for a wide array of audiences. He doesn’t shy away from important, serious topics and many of his films are about the natural world and are anti-war. His obsession with flight, airplanes, and other aircraft can be found in almost every single one of his films (all except for Princess Mononoke, that is!). He is a living genius and I sincerely hope he doesn’t completely stop directing and creating wonderful and wondrous films. (He’s apparently directing a short film for the Studio Ghibli museum, a project called Boro the Caterpillar that, fun fact, he long ago was considering making into a feature-length film instead of his fantasy epic Princess Mononoke. In a way, thank goodness he made Princess Mononoke, but it’s also sad he never made Boro the Caterpillar in a full-length film.)

This fall I did a Studio Ghibli marathon, watching all 22 of the practically legendary studio’s anime films, and today I am going to talk about the 9 films Hayao Miyazaki directed, plus his two other feature-length films, The Castle of Cagliostro and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, that he directed pre-Ghibli. (Yes, guys, Nausicaa was pre-Ghibli, even though it’s considered canon nowadays.) This is my countdown of his films, where I get to explain why I love them and what makes them so good. So your opinion may differ from mine — and that’s totally awesome. Just a disclaimer so y’all don’t start yelling at me in the comments about why — SPOILER for the countdown! —  *cough* Spirited Away isn’t #1. (Don’t leave! Don’t leave! I’ll explain!)

So without further ado, let’s begin the countdown!

P.S. I’ve watched only the English dubs of all these movies. Someday I’ll watch them in their original Japanese.

P.P.S. I’m keeping this post spoiler-free for those of you who haven’t seen all these movies. I’ll try to be vague in the “Did I Cry?” sections, but don’t read them as a precaution if you haven’t watched those movies because there are some minor spoilers to be found there, since I mention why and where I cried.

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Recommendations — 10 Under 10k (Ratings on Goodreads) | #3

Bringing this feature back! I was going through an old notebook and found a list I’d made containing books with under 10,000 ratings on Goodreads, a list I had made for future reference. So I decided it was a message from the universe to do another post where I recommend some hidden gems I’ve read. The following books are a mixture of Young Adult and Middle Grade. I highly recommend them all!

Click on a title to view the book on Goodreads. Books are listed from fewest number of ratings to most, at the time I am writing this post.

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My Favorite Authors

Cait over at Paper Fury recently wrote a post about how her heroes are authors. She inspired me to make my own post talking about authors who inspire me or who were/are very influential to my reading life. Basically, I’m spreading some love to these fabulous writers. It’s Valentine’s Day, after all! Hugs for everyone!

Here they all are, in alphabetical order. Be prepared for some serious fangirling!

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