Personal reading index, 2006
I’ve been keeping an online reading list for several years now. Here’s my annual summary, inspired by Jessamyn West’s annual end-of-year reading indexes.
number of books read in 2006: 103
number of books read in 2005: 103
number of books read in 2004: 80
number of books read in 2003: 100
number of books read in 2002: 103
number of books read in 2001: 124
average read per month: 8.6
average read per week: 1.98
number read in worst month: 4 (November)
number read in best month: 13 (October)
percentage by male authors: 78%
percentage by female authors: 22%
fiction as percentage of total: 41%
non-fiction as percentage of total: 59%
percentage of total disliked: 8%
percentage of total ambivalent or sorta-liked: 43%
percentage of total actively enjoyed: 49%
Some of the fiction I enjoyed this year includes existential mysteries (Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy and Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book), Kim Stanley Robinson’s Three Californias and Mars trilogies, and two depressing graphic novels (Jimmy Corrigan, Smartest Kid on Earth and Fun Home).
On the nonfiction side, I particularly enjoyed reading a number of books dealing with cities, design, sustainability, and the environment (WorldChanging, Design Like You Give a Damn, Get On The Bus, An Inconvenient Truth, Cities, Bombay, Meri Jaan, and Stories Care Forgot).
[Now reading Elvis, Raja: Stories by M.G. Vassanji]
Comments
Do you use any tools to keep reading list? Like librarything?
Posted by: Sharif | January 2, 2007 11:03 AM
Happy New Year, Anirvan! Just blogged you an official thanks for a hot book recommendation:
http://blurberatiblog.com/index.php/2007/01/02/books-the-gifts-that-keep-on-giving/
Really enjoying Close to the Machine -- good call. Hope the return to work isn't too harrowing ...
best,
al
Posted by: Alison | January 2, 2007 1:29 PM
Hi Sharif. I've been using a hand-rolled reading list system for about a dozen years now -- but if I were doing it all over again, I'd absolutely use LibraryThing as my primary reading list manager of choice. I've investigated several alternatives from friends, and LT's head and shoulders above the rest -- particularly for those of us who don't restrict our reading only to in-print editions of US books.
Posted by: Anirvan Chatterjee | January 5, 2007 2:51 AM