2017 has come to its end, and with that, I’m wrapping up things on the blog, and moving on from the last year, into a new year. The reading challenges I participated in this year were a lot of fun, but I wish I would’ve had the time to participate more. With my current schedule, I could only update the challenges once a month, but I didn’t really find the time to visit the challenges pages, or communicate with other people participating in this challenge, as I would’ve liked.

Anyway, time to look over my progress. As usual, I participated in the Goodreads Reading Challenge. My goal was to read 180 books this year and I succeeded, as I ended up reading 189 books in 2017. That’s a lot less than I read last year, but this number is more doable for me with my current time frame, combining work and writing, and I actually prefer it.

For the Netgalley Reading Challenge, I aimed for Silver level – 25 books. I ended up only reading 15 books from Netgalley, so I didn’t win this challenge. However (and this might just be me) but Netgalley started offering less and less books… at least in the categories I like, so I ended up not requesting that many books either.

The next challenge I participated in was the Beat The Backlist Challenge. I aimed to read at least 20 books from my backlist this year… but only managed to read 16 books from the backlist. Still some progress, but not as impressive as I had hoped.

For the Flights of Fantasy Reading Challenge, I wanted to read 40 fantasy books last year – which I already admitted beforehand, was a pretty ambitious goal. Well, guess what? I made it! Not only that, but I read a whopping 54 fantasy books in 2017.

I also participated in the Dystopian Reading Challenge, but that was a total bust. I tried to read more dystopian, but I couldn’t even find more dystopian books. Is dystopian dead? I hope not, and that I’ve just been looking in all the wrong places. I had aimed to read 6-10 dystopian books, but ended up reading only a meager 3 dystopian books. Pretty sure I won’t be signing up for this challenge next year.

For the New Release Reading Challenge, my goal was to read 61-100 new books this year… And I ended up reading more! 125 of the books I read this year were new releases. Go me!

Last but not least, I participated in the Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge, for reading mystery books. I aimed for third level, reading 26-35 thrillers, and ended up reading 37 thrillers. Another success!

So all in all, in terms of reading challenges, 2017 was a bit of a mixed bag. I won some challenges, failed some others. Ultimately, I had a lot of fun reading, and that’s the main reason why I’m doing this, right? On to 2018!