New books: What have I learnt and what was the best?

I've managed to read a near even amount of fiction and non-fiction books for the challenge. I’ve read autobiographies, American classics, a children’s book and a text book among others.

With the American classics such as The Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye I felt that if I read them when I was younger I would have liked them, but reading them now meant I was too old to appreciate them in some ways.

I read a number of autobiographies and a number of these were sportsmen and women. One of the books was about a sportsman who I didn't like. For a long time I hated Kevin Pieterson but reading his autobiography made me do a complete 180 and change my view on him and now I respect him, something I never thought I’d say.

The two books I enjoyed reading the most were ones about challenges. So Reading Promise and Eat, sleep, cycle fall into this theme. They were really interesting and completely different challenges to each other; one spanning a few months, the other spanning years and years. It was really interesting to see how they kept going on their challenges.

For two of the books; Eat, Sleep, Cycle and Us I met the authors themselves and asked them both questions. They both took the time to answer my questions which was great and very worthwhile.

There are still quite a few books on my bookshelves waiting to be read. Ones that I borrowed or bought for the challenge, but never got round to reading. Or started and haven’t yet finished. There’s a Virginia Wolff novel, Cloud Atlas, a short Cecelia Ahern story and plenty of my favourite type of books autobiographies to get through.

So what have I learnt from the books I've read: I've learnt traditions on being happy in different cultures, how one moment can change your life and how to pick yourself up when you get knocked down. Lastly I've learnt surprisingly age does matter when it comes to reading books, read one too early and you might not appreciate it but read one too late and you can’t connect to characters you thought you could. So I guess if someone recommends a book to you, read it now and not later.