2022 Big Book Summer Wrap-Up

The 2022 Big Book Summer Challenge officially wrapped up on September 5, ending its 10th year! I host this challenge every summer and always enjoy participating in it myself. You can read all the details at the challenge page linked above, but the basic idea is to read books of 400 pages or longer during the summer - just one or a few or as many as you want! What I really love about this challenge is that it gives me the extra incentive I need to finally tackle some of the longer books I've put off reading. I always end up reading some really amazing books, and I make a (small) dent in my overflowing TBR bookcase, too.

My Big Book Summer 

I'll start with my own Big Book Summer, and then I'll wrap up the whole challenge below You can also watch my video, Big Book Summer Wrap-Up, where I briefly discuss each of the books I read. As usual, I picked out a stack of Big Books from my shelves back in May, which you can see at the link. I read every book except one in my stack this summer, plus a bunch of Big Book audios! 

Here's a full list of the Big Books I finished this summer--I think, perhaps, my best year ever! My reviews are at the links:

• Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly (433 pages)
• A Lite Too Bright by Samuel Miller (480 pages) - audio
  
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (511 pages)
• Gone by Michael Grant (576 pages) - audio
  
• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (476 pages)
• Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane (432 pages) - audio
  
• Lucky Turtle by Bill Roorbach (404 pages)
• The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd (400 pages) - audio
  
• The Overstory by Richard Powers (502 pages) - left over from Big Book Summer 2021
• Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian (432 pages) - audio
  
• Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King (522 pages)
• The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny (448 pages) - audio
  
• Sycamore Row by John Grisham (447 pages) - - left over from Big Book Summer 2021

So, that's 13 Big Books in all (which just might be a record for me). I did not get to the biggest book in my stack this summer, but I did read the two I didn't get to last year.

Participants in the Big Book Summer Challenge

That was my Big Book Summer, but lots of other people participated in the challenge, too! We had a total of 49 participants. Of those, 17 people participated through their blogs and YouTube channels, and 32 readers participated through the Goodreads group, though everyone enjoyed the book discussions on Goodreads! You can still visit the group to see what everyone else read for their Big Book Summers.

Since this was the 10th anniversary of the Big Book Summer Challenge, I drew two names for the giveaways.

The winners of the annual Big Book Summer Giveaway are ...

Laurie of Bay State Reader's Advisory blog

and

Donna, who participated through the Goodreads group.

They will both be receiving a gift certificate from Bookshop.org, a great website where you can buy books conveniently online while supporting indie bookstores.

Congratulations, Laurie and Donna!!

And a Big Book Congratulations to everyone who participated in the challenge this year! Whether your goal was to read one Big Book or as many as possible, I hope you had fun reading and sharing your reading adventures through the challenge. If you missed it this year, you can sign up for Big Book Summer 2023 next May!