This is the first year I’ve managed to reliably log the books I’ve read. When I started this blog a year ago, I had the good intention of actually posting at least a brief review of each and every book, but that plan fell by the wayside about the middle of the year. However, thanks to the magic of LibraryThing and Excel, I can at least tally what I read and roughly when I read it.
So good-bye, 2007, you were a very good reading year:
- 48 books read
- 24 fiction, 24 nonfiction. I would have guessed that I read a lot more nonfiction than fiction.
- 17 books or editions published in 2007 (or later; I read one advance reading copy of a book scheduled for 2008); all but two of these (Jamestown and The Reincarnationist) were nonfiction.
- April was my best reading month (8); August, when I did nothing but work, my worst (1).
Favorites? I find it impossible to say. If I really don’t like a book, I stop reading it and it doesn’t get logged. Jamestown was certainly a standout in many ways this year. Favorite authors were Philip Roth and Cormac McCarthy. Greg Bottoms was a new discovery for me, and I hope to read more of his work in the coming year. Blogging about The Great Gatsby and No Country for Old Men probably drew the greatest number of hits, thanks to high school English term papers and Hollywood.
Filed under: authors, blogging, books, reading | Tagged: 2007 reading, Cormac McCarthy, Greg Bottoms, Jamestown, LibraryThing, No Country for Old Men, Philip Roth, The Great Gatsby, The Reincarnationist
I am impressed with the number of books you read in 2007. You have inspired me to dig deeper and spend more time reading.
LibraryThing is awesome. I have never heard of it before – so cool. I was just browsing through my bookcase this morning and thought to myself that I should somehow catalog my collection. You have provided me with the answer.
Thanks, Tom! It’s pretty satisfying to be able to look back and see how much I read this year. I was surprised to find I had read nearly a book a week, considering how busy I was the second half of the year.
The Jefferson-Madison Regional Library is again having THE BIG READ. During March/April 2008 all readers are encouraged to read: To Kill a Mockingbird. The Paramount will show the movie on May 1 and the Library will constantly be adding programs to the website.
I’ll be reading TKaM, and I know my son will — it’s assigned for his English class.
Don’t forget about all those works in progress you read in 2007!
Hey, that’s right — I have a jump on 2008 and maybe 2009!
Well, between three classes, two book groups, and plenty of outside reading, I managed 124!
From Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South to The Little Mexican Donkey Boy, it was a very full year.
124?? I think that’s too many.
I was suprised too. Guess I’ll resolve to read less this year
I came in at 59, assuming that audio books count…
Were you using LibraryThing to track, R?
And I’ve already finished 3 this year…
[...] people never read fiction; others read almost nothing else. I read about equal parts fiction and nonfiction. As a writer I particularly enjoyed an anecdote in the introduction to Apollo’s Fire about [...]
[...] 2008 was a pretty good reading year. I read forty-five books, of which twenty-two were fiction and twenty-three nonfiction. This is pretty similar to my tally for 2007, which you can read about here. [...]