Summer Reading Thing - COMPLETED!

I joined this challenge on July 25 (here's my original post) and it ended on September 21. Here is a list of my goals and the results:

• I finished the Irresistible Review Challenge (albeit a bit late).
  
• I finished the Historical Fiction Challenge! I finished this one early so I got the cool badge on my left sidebar.
  
• I read/reviewed the following books for authors and publishers:
  
• Matrimony, by Joshua Henkin - given to me by the author
  
• Live Your Road Trip Dream, by Phil & Carol White - from Online Publicist
  
• Maggie Again, by John Husband - from the publisher
  
• Castaway Kid, by Rob Mitchell - from the publisher (this one never arrived, so I dropped it and substituted the following book: Genuine Men, by Nancy Bruno - from the publisher)

What I DIDN'T finish ...

I was also supposed to read Why the Wind Blows, by Matthys Levy (from Online Publicist) but I didn't finish it. I meant to bring it to the beach with me over the weekend ... unfortunately I left it at work. Oh well.

In the end, I only missed my goal by a half of a very short book. DOH! In total I completed 10.5 books for the Summer Reading Thing. My goal was 11 specific books. However I also read about 15 other books this summer so I'm quite pleased with myself!


OFFICIAL WRAP-UP

Challenge host Inkspasher asks that we include our answers to the following questions in our wrap-up post:

Tell us which book you liked best (and why), which you liked least (and why), any new authors you tried and if you'll read more by them, and what (if anything) you learned from participating in this challenge.

Best: This is a hard one, but I'm going to say Dracula by Bram Stoker. I'm choosing this one because I never expected to like it much, let alone to love it. But once I was into the story I couldn't put it down!

Least: Easy ... that would be Matrimony by Joshua Henkin. It just wasn't my kind of book. I was bored through most of it.

New Authors?: All of them, actually. Oh, except for John Steinbeck - I'd read a few of his books in the past. I've said before that I don't really follow particular authors; I read whatever comes to my attention, regardless of who wrote it. So I may read more by these authors but not because I go out of my way to find their books.

What I Learned: I learned a few things from this challenge ...

1. I learned that this is the kind of challenge I like to participate in. I get to choose how many books I want to read and there are no rules on which books I can choose. Other challenges are great for introducing me to new books but I already have a huge backlog and this type of challenge gets me to read those books rather than committing to new ones.
2. I learned never to include that I want to complete other challenges as part of my Summer Reading Thing goal. I listed several challenges that I wanted to complete as part of my Summer Reading Things goals - I should have just listed the books I wanted to read. I was too confusing for me, and if I didn't complete those challenges then I would have failed this one as well.
3. Don't forget about Mr. Linky! I forgot to post my reviews throughout the challenge so they all went up on the same day.
   

Thanks Inksplasher for this wonderful challenge! I'm sure I'll be back for the Winter session.