Tag / summing up

by Sharlene

How I read in 2020

I’ve done these year-end summaries for a few years now, you can check out what I was up to in 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.

2020 total: 207

2019 total: 244

2018 total: 226
2017’s total: 216
2016’s total: 234
2015’s total: 286
2014’s total: 217
2013’s total: 223
2012’s total: 227
2011’s total: 171 

My reading has taken me to many countries:

Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, the UK, Vietnam, to many made up lands, outer space, and more!

I ended up DNF-ing 8 books. No regrets there.

Last year I read about an equal number of writers who are new-to-me and writers whose books I’ve previously read.

I read fewer physical books compared to 2019 (7% only – last year it was 44%). And pretty much all of these have been borrowed from the library. The reduction in physical books read is due to the closing of the libraries because of the virus. The library has been offering no-contact pickups for a few months now but I have been using that more for kids books.

I seem to have continued to read more diversely, with a slightly larger difference than in 2019, when 46% of the books I read were by minority writers.

Genre

I used to do a genre pie-chart but realised that quite a few of the books I read don’t really fall into just one genre. So here is a more general overview of the different genres/media I read.

19 books of non-fiction,

84 comics (some of which are non-fiction actually),

4 short story collections

22 books that belong in children’s/Middle-grade/YA sections

20 works of speculative fiction

14 romance novels

5 crime/mystery novels

5 horror novels

3 classics

1 play

2 books of poems

And the rest I guess I’m just labelling as generally “fiction” but may include stuff like literary fiction, contemporary fiction and all those other xx fiction categories.

Books in Translation

I did have a mini goal last year of reading at least one book in translation a month. And I surpassed that by reading a total of 26 translated works. These books were translated into English from:

Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French, Japanese, Korean, Persian, and Spanish

Publication Date

The oldest book I read (by publication date) was The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, first published in 1859. Coming in a close second was Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, first published in 1866. These were both audiobooks.

I read 5 books published in the 1900s

2000-2009: 23 books

2010-2014: 15 books

2015: 1 book

2016: 10 books

2017: 22 books

2018: 18 books

2019: 60 books

2020: 49 books

How did you read in 2020?

by Sharlene

Summing up 2016

Happy new year!

I’ve done these year-end summaries for a few years now, you can check out what I was up to in 2015, 2014, and 2013

Total books read: 234

2015’s total: 286
2014’s total: 217
2013’s total: 223
2012’s total: 227
2011’s total: 171 

gender

That looks about right. It tends to be somewhat evenly split between men and women writers. I want to work on reading more books by women this year.

 

genre

About half of my reads are graphic novels and comics, which is how I manage to read more than 200 books every year.

This year I want to work on more classics, more short stories.

 

source

I’m a big fan of the library but I really ought to read more books from my own library!!

types

This was the first year that audiobooks made some inroads in my reading life. Not very much but I hope to steadily grow that number as the years go by, as for me audiobooks means going on regular walks.

 

diverse

I hope to read more consciously and get the percentage of diverse reads up to 50!

translation

I didn’t do so well with translated books this year, a slight drop from last year which was 14%.

year

Specifically, I read 46 books published in 2016. The oldest book I read was published in 1901.

Page length

The longest book I read was City on Fire at 944 pages (luckily it was an e-book). The shortest was Faith #0 at 32 pages.

Here’s to a wonderful reading year ahead! Despite everything else that happens, we will always have books.

by Sharlene

2015 in books

 

So here in California, it is still the last day of the year. For the past couple of years, I’ve been doing my own version of a year-end reading round up and it’s geeky and full of pie charts, but it is a fun way to look at how I’ve been reading. Also, happy new year to you! May 2016 be full of wonderful reads!

Here’s my previous posts in 2014 and 2013.

Total books read: 286 (according to Goodreads – but that’s because of a lot of comics issues)

2014’s total: 217
2013’s total: 223
2012’s total: 227
2011’s total: 171 

Gender

By both, I mean that both men and women worked on the book, and usually these are comics, where I included both the writers and illustrators.

 

genre

This was really a comics and graphic novels year for me, with 49% of the books read being comics and graphic novels. To be fair, this percentage is derived from my Google Drive spreadsheet, in which I may have combined various issues of comics together under one entry (for convenience), although I read them as separate issues. So this percentage may actually be higher! I did also attempt to be more specific in my defining of genres. Last year, I filed a lot of books under ‘fiction’ but this time, I’ve attempted to add ‘horror’ and ‘historical fiction’.

cenury

 

More specifically, I read 40 books published in 2015.

 

ebooks

And the number of e-books I read just keeps growing and growing. It is all down to convenience. I do love print books – and I still buy print books – but I love being able to access ebooks from my devices. Also, this was the year I tried out Scribd and read lots of comics and graphic novels on it.

library

Erm ok, so I really have a problem of not reading my own books. Good thing I don’t often buy books then – thankfully library sales (and Book Outlet sales) only happen several times a year. I am a big fan of the library, borrowing mostly e-books from Overdrive (that I download to the Kindle or read on the Overdrive app). And this is not counting the hundreds of books I borrow for my two kids each year (this year was around 300!)

newtome

This is one statistic that really surprised me. I never expected to read more new-to-me authors than already-read authors. I think this may be because of the number of new comic series that I started this year.

translated

Languages translated from: Chinese, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Swedish

 

The first book I finished in 2015 was Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See (ok so I started that in 2014) and the last book I finished in 2015 was Kent Haruf’s Our Souls at Night. 

I’m looking forward to 2016!

 

by Sharlene

Read in April 2011

Just realised that I never managed to put up a post on the books I read in April. It was wee reader‘s first month, and as newbie parents we were panicky and worried and concerned and sleepless and loving every moment of it. As a result, just 8 books were read this month!

Fiction (6)
Dead Until Dark – Charlaine Harris
The Austere Academy – Lemony Snicket
The Old Man and Me – Elaine Dundy
The Dream of Ding Village – Yan Lianke
The wind-up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
Hunger – Knut Hamsun

Graphic Novel
Goodbye, Chunky Rice – Craig Thompson

Non-fiction
Born to Run – Christopher McDougall