2020 Big Book Summer Wrap-Up

Book By Book

It’s now September, which means the start of fall (yay!) and the end of another Big Book Summer Challenge! 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. You can go back to my starting post for My 2020 Big Book Summer in May to see what books I hoped to get to this season. The challenge had record participation this summer; I think everyone was looking for a little something fun to brighten up this difficult year!

First, my own challenge wrap-up:

I read a total of 9 Big Books this summer: 6 in print and 3 on audio (yes, they count, too!).

Pictured are the Big Books I read in print (minus one I lent to a friend and one included that I listened to on audio). 

In print, I read:

• Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King (436 pages)
• Faithful Place by Tana French (400 pages) 
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (453 pages) – a hold-over from 2019 Big Book Summer!
• Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty (517 pages)
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (626 BIG pages)
• Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (592 pages)

 On audio, I listened to these Big Books:

• American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins (400 pages)
• A Beginning at the End by Mike Chen (400 pages)
• The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins (528 pages)

 (my reviews at the links)

So, that was my summer, but lots of other people enjoyed a wonderful Big Book Summer, too!

A record total of 54 people joined the challenge this year!! That’s more than double last year’s participants.

26 bloggers joined by linking up on the challenge page and another 28 readers joined through the Goodreads group. I enjoyed hearing what everyone was reading this summer, reading all your reviews of Big Books, and we had some great discussions in the Goodreads group! You can check that out, as well as links to other people’s reviews and wrap-up posts on the challenge page.

And now, it’s time for the 2020 Big Book Summer Giveaway! I’m giving away a $15 Amazon gift card to one lucky participant. I used a random number generator, and the winner of this year’s giveaway is: