Yes, it is true. We are counting down the days until the end of 2017. Don’t ask me how it got here so fast. I thought I would use this post to share two highlights from my 2017.
HIGHLIGHT #1
Back in 2004, I started asking the Lord for a word for the coming year. It has become a wonderful part of my spiritual journey, although I wasn’t real keen on the year my word was “persevere.” <g> Later, this practice became part of our annual writers retreat in northern Idaho.
In 2017, I decided to Bible art journal (one of my favorite pastimes) the words the Lord gave each member of our retreat group. My word was “ponder,” and part of my pondering on all that God has done and was and is doing in my life included recognizing and pondering what He has done and was and is doing in the lives of some of my closest friends.
Of all the pages that I journaled throughout 2017, these eleven pages are my favorites.
HIGHLIGHT #2
I had a great reading year. I read 54 books (a total of over 14,000 pages, according to Goodreads). I gave twenty-three of those 54 books a Five Star rating, and another fourteen earned a Four Star rating. My average rating for 2017 was 3.9.
The longest book I read was The One Year Chronological Bible (NLT) with 1668 pages. I also have this Bible on audiobook. Sometimes I read the print version. Sometimes I listened to the audiobook. (Actually, I won’t finish reading this version of the Bible until the 31st but I marked it as read so I could get my statistics for this post.) The shortest book was 25 pages and was very disappointing.
The most popular book that I read was The Call of the Wild by Jack London. Can’t believe I’d never read it before. I read so many dog books and horse books when I was a kid.
My first review of the year was for Dandi Daley Mackall’s With Love, Wherever You Are. It’s a novel based on the author’s parents’ WWII love story. My last official review of the year will be for The One Year Chronological Bible.
Four of the books I read in the last few months of the year were advance copies of books that won’t release until 2018. You’ll be hearing more about them. They were all so good.
If you don’t participate in the Goodreads Reading Challenge, you should consider it. It helps me track the books I read, and it’s always fun to see the final report at year’s end. The screen shot below is only the very beginning of the report.
IN CLOSING
I want to tell you how much I appreciate every one of our readers here on Inspired by Life and Fiction, both readers of this blog and of our books. Thank you for being part of our inspiration.
Happy New Year.
~robin
Robin Lee Hatcher
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Happy New Year, Robin. I love Goodreads.
Wow, what a record! Sometimes when I read authors’ blogs about reading books, my first reaction is: “Why aren’t you WRITING?” Selfish, for sure! Actually, reading is very important to me, but enough time to read for my own satisfaction is a problem. And, why do people think because you are reading, that means it is their duty to distract you, like you’re only doing it because you need something else to do? Drives me crazy!
Anyway, I digress. I have never tried Goodreads, don’t really know anything about it and the tracking of books read is a bit daunting to me. I’m glad you get so much satisfaction out of it. Is it inspiring for you, for plotting future books, at all?
Have a Happy New Year! Thank you for your wonderful stories!