The Whole Enchilada: My Reading Stats For 2009
It's already midafternoon on December 31 here, so I'm just going to go ahead and announce that I had a fantastic reading year -- 104 books! This beats last year's record of 100 books and it's my all-time personal best. It's also a far cry from 1999 (graduate school daze) when I read just 23 books.
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I'd like to thank the Seoul Metro for providing me with hours and hours on the subway. I'd also like to thank Erewhon University for providing me with a well, if quirkily stocked library. Finally, I'd like to thank my 3 book groups, BOOKLEAVES, Talya's Book Group and Cracked Spinz for always suggesting reads that are outside either my comfort or awareness zones.
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Here's what my stats look like:
Pages read: 29,480 (I thought this would be higher for some reason)
Average # of pages per book: 283
Fiction: 56 (Hmmm...same as last year)
Nonfiction: 48 (my nonfiction reading list for 2009 kicks ass. As always, I'm sorry that there wasn't an even split. I did this once, back in 2000 -- 17 fiction and 17 nonfiction)
Audiobooks: 1
Graphic Novels: 8 (I love Rick Geary's work and I'm pleased he's from Kansas City, Missouri.)
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Shortest Book: The Paper Bag Princess - Robert Munsch (24 pages)
Longest Book: Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry (945 pages)
Newest Book: Burnt Shadows - Kamila Shamsie (2009)
Oldest Book: The Old Curiosity Shop - Charles Dickens (1841)
Rereads: 2
Chunky Monkeys (books with more than 500 pages) : 8
Skinny Minnies (books with fewer than 100 pages) : 8
Funniest Book: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith
Saddest Book: Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead - Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Give Me Back My Time! (books I finished but didn't really care for) : 6
Shanghai Baby - Wei Hui
Go Down, Moses - William Faulkner (with apologies to my friend and coworker Faulkner Guy)
The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
Girlfriend In A Coma - Douglas Coupland
Clay - Suzanne Staubach
Divisadero - Michael Ondaatje
Countries: 13
USA: 69 (sigh...this number is always too high)
Canada: 13
England: 10
Korea: 2
Scotland: 1
South Africa: 1
Australia: 1
New Zealand: 1
China: 1
Japan: 1
Russia: 1
India: 1
Iran: 1
Male authors: 65
Female authors: 39
Books written 1800-1899: 5 (an improvement over last year's 3, but my Tough & Cool Inner Bookworm is keening to beat the band. Cheer up, Tuffi -- I've got a surprise for you in 2010...I just hope it doesn't kill me...)
Books written 1900-1950: 17 (this is the time frame that I aspire to most strongly, so Tuffi and I are destined to be at loggerheads forever.)
Books written 1951-1999: 35
Books written 2000-2009: 47
Pulitzer prizewinners: 3 (I've built a pretty good shelf of these and I need to get back to it.)
Happy discoveries: Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Dashiell Hammett, Aravind Adiga, Linda Sue Park and Peter D. Sieruta's excellent blog Collecting Children's Books
2009 Challenges completed: The Well-Seasoned Reader Challenge, The Canadian Book Challenge, The Support Your Local Library Challenge, The 100+ Reading Challenge
Flushed with success and on vacation until March 1, I've got grand (grandiose?) plans and resolutions for 2010, which I'll elaborate on in an upcoming blog post.
Best of luck to Jessica at Both Eyes, as she strives for her goal of 500 books. She explained quite lucidly in a recent post how she does it, but I still don't know how she does it. My mind boggles to think of what she could accomplish if she had access to a subway.
Happy Book Year! See you in 2010!
18 comments:
Ok, my goal this year is to turn my blog back into a reading blog. :-)
Amazing. I was a little behind you with 101.
Congratulations on such a great year of reading. Happy New Year!
Congrats on a great year. I'm a stats nut so I really enjoyed all the detail you included in your list. Cool stuff.
Now we all start at zero again. Here's to another great year...Happy New Year (since you get a head start). :-)
Super job on your reading. I love how organized this post is! Great information.
YAY!! I knew you could go way over your planned 101 so proud of you and so jealous... I should get my acts together and get on with keeping up my blog and reading ;) you always inspire me.. though I do lack the perseverance.. but nonetheless you always inspire me. Thank you, Susan!!! Love ya and Happy Book Year to you too!
Congratulations on having such a good reading year! I hope you have a great 2010.
GREAT stats! Tuffi really shouldn't be complaining.
Hope you have a WONDERFUL new year. :)
Those are some sexy stats. Well done!
I also discovered Adiga - although only The White Tiger.
Out of curiosity - what was the Aussie book?
You're the funniest blogger ever Susan! :) That 'I'd like to thank' paragraph is awesome! And congrats on setting a new record. Enjoy your vacation!!!
I don't even have any real goals for this year other than to stick with my 100+ books a year I started in 2009.
I want to read more classics and chunksters though so we'll see.
Happy New Year!
Congratulations on your 104-book-year!
It's great fun to read through your year-end list; I like the categories you listed.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh -- ain't she grand?
You had a great reading year! Happy 2010!
--Anna
Diary of an Eccentric
Congrats on setting a new record for books read! I love your posts and look forward to more of your books thoughts throughout Twenty-Ten. Are you really on vacay for TWO months?! fun.
oh, and I wanted to cheer on that quirckily-stocked library.
Great stats! I love that you read 8 chunky monkeys :) Hope you also have a wonderful reading year in 2010!
Happy New Year!
I think you did really well in 2009 :-) I'm amazed at the amount of non-fiction you read! I could never do this.
Excellent stats, fun reading, and mostly - you read so many books!!! Lovely stats, aren't they, really satisfying to do up at the end of the year. I didn't do as well as you, but I still did excellent for me! Have to go read about the blogger who wants to read 500 books a year. Sheesh. Getting to 100 is challenging enough! Happy 2010 and reading, book-twin! Can hardly wait on your post about goals!! lol
Girlfriend, you are so sweet! I really like how you've categorized your reading - I wouldn't have thought of some of those categories, but now I will.
Bummer about Girlfriend in a Coma - that was one of my favorite books ever! Alas.
Nice stats! That's a seriously impressive number of nf books!
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