I am full of food and permanently a bit hungover. It must be holiday season. Only a few days left of the eating/drinking marathon to go. And then I’ll go for a three minute run and feel like I’ve earned a pizza again.

But until then, curl up close, light the fireplace, and take a trip down memory lane with me. Yes, it’s time for the third annual GBRYIR (that’s "Gav’s Book Reviews Year in Review", because we continue to love acronyms).

Consider it my very long winded way of saying ‘thanks for reading, please come again.’

Best “first”: At the grand old age of 3, there remain few genuine ‘firsts’ for GBR left, unless we want to get extreme about it (‘first review written whilst wrestling lions’, and such like). We did however squeeze a few in. There was the first interview with a family member (which is just as fraught with danger as lion wrestling). There was the first #TheTimeLastYear feature, which I’ve persisted with, to your undoubted joy. There was the first post on the all new site - sayonara blogspot, bonjour .com. But, rather sentimentally, my personal favourite was the first guest review. Brother GBR turned his hand to a bit of online judging of other people’s work, and it was a cracker.

Most read review: I remain pleasantly surprised at the fact this site gets read at all. Well, not really. Truth be told, I’ve turned into a bit of a monster. Your attention has given me delusions beyond my humble bedroom-blogger status. You should see my rider nowadays – if I don’t get a review copy alongside three tubes of salt n vinegar Pringles and a tub and a half of Marmite, I go mental. So aware am I of your readership levels, I didn’t even need to check which review has been most clicked on this year. I know it from memory. It was The Merman. Which is actually quite pleasing, as it was a fairly low profile book, and I dare say not one many of you would have stumbled upon otherwise. I'm also pretty proud of the review itself; one of my better attempts, if I may be so bold, albiet full of potty-mouth. More of that chap later.

Most read other post: There were a few non-review posts this year. A couple of interviews, the #ThisTimeLastYear feature, and a rant or two on some specific topics. But, taking the landing pages out of the equation of course, the most read non-review post was the Tom Reynolds interview. It may or may not have helped that a world famous podcaster tweeted the link a couple of times. I guess we’ll never know.

Best book: Previous GBRYIRs have seen shoe ins for this category. Not this year. It’s been an unseasonably good reading year, attested to by the bulging Hall of Fame (which I know Brother GBR will enjoy, being such a fan of 10 GBRs and all). We saw a first maximum for a non-fiction book. Steinbeck got a long overdue 10 GBR, and I managed to concur with the rest of the literary world with the gooey eyes I made at Stoner, the ignored classic. My book of the year, though, is the 10 GBR which surprised me most. An unheralded book, but one which caught my imagination like no other. The Merman takes this year’s biscuit, in its second appearance in the 2013 GBRYIR. I won’t go on about why; it’s all laid out here in the review.

Worst book: Despite the over-fed Hall of Fame, there were a few duds in 2013. The Beginner’s Goodbye huffed and puffed its way to 5 GBR, suffering in comparison to some of its genre peers. A Box of Birds scored even lower with 3 GBR. But this year’s wooden spoon goes to Dead Man’s Time. It plummeted to 2 GBR, all the worse because I was expecting to at least be entertained by this crime thriller. I was not. Not one bit.

Best stat: One of the benefits of the .com site is that I now track you guys with Google Analytics. This means I don’t need to follow you at a discreet distance anymore. I get Google to do my stalking for me. It gives me a bunch of stats. For example, I know you guys spend an average of two and a half minutes on the site each go. I know Sunday Nov 24^th was the busiest day on the site all year. But my favourite stat is that 60.21% of visits this year were from first time visitors, clearly tempted by the prettier site. A fair amount of you must have stuck around as well, otherwise I’d have given up with this lark a while ago. Thanks. No, really. Thanks.

That’s that. Year three of GBR in the history books. For those of you I know personally, please do keep telling me what you’ve been reading and speaking with me about books. I may look bored, but that’s just my face, I promise.

And for those of you who don’t know me personally, feel free to drop me a line at gavsbookreviews@hotmail.co.uk - I know some of you do already, but more please. My ego won’t feed itself.

Have a great New Year now, ya hear!