I like to keep track of what I read from year to year, both to challenge myself to read more, and so I can look back at previous years and see what I was reading at the time. In 2008 I read 39 books with a total of 12447 pages. In 2009 I raised the bar to 65 books and 19455 pages. In 2010 I read slightly fewer books—56 total—but they were longer on average, so my page count stayed around the same: 19190.
In 2011 I read 94 books totalling 38920 pages, for an average length of 414 pages per book. This is an insanely high number. I ascribe this to two things. 1) I started running in mid-2010, and really increased my running pace all through 2011. I listen to a lot of audiobooks while running. 2) I read some really long books—four of the five books in A Song of Ice and Fire, Michener’s Hawaii, Connie Willis, Patrick Rothfuss, and Stephen King—which helped my page count a lot.
Of the 94 books I read last year, only four were bad enough to earn a one star rating. Nine earned a full five stars. I am pretty stingy about handing out five star ratings. To earn it, a book has to be so good that I would heartily recommend it to friends, without regard for genre or subject matter. The nine books I liked that much in 2011:
- Born to Run, Christopher McDougall
- Emergence, Steven Johnson
- A Clash of Kings, George R. R. Martin
- A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
- A Dance with Dragons, George R. R. Martin
- Matterhorn, Karl Marlantes
- In the Plex, Steven Levy
- The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean
- The Warrior’s Apprentice, Lois McMaster Bujold
One third are fantasy. Four of nine are non-fiction. One science fiction. This is a weird list, given that most of what I read is fiction, and most of that is science fiction. Maybe I am more critical of science fiction works.
Non-fiction books made up only 24 of the 94 spots on my list. Of those, most were history or science. I only read four books related to my work this year—far fewer than in previous years.
I read 29 books in 2011 that I classified as new releases. I have a pretty flexible definition of a new release—I counted books for this category if they were released within about two years of when I read them.
I read a lot of science fiction—42 books total. One of my New Year’s resolutions from last year was to read 20 Hugo-winning novels, which is part of the reason this total was so high. I also tried to read all the Hugo nominees for the year. Although it felt like I read a lot of fantasy too, I somehow only finished 13 fantasy books. Maybe it felt like more because fantasy books are all so long. Those 13 fantasy books had 8465 pages in them. For comparison, the 42 science fiction books I read had only twice as many pages as those 13 fantasy books.
I mentioned that my reading total went up because I listened to audiobooks while running. I also listen to audiobooks while driving, and I commute between Miami and Orlando (an eight hour round trip) pretty frequently. I listened to 49 audiobooks in 2011, which makes it my preferred medium, I guess. I read 10 books in hardcover, 13 paperbacks, and 22 on my Kindle.
I think my total, both books and pages, will go down in 2012. That’s fine with me. My 2012 goal is going to be to read some more “hard” books, by which I mean serious literature. I’m also planning to read the remaining 20 Hugo winners, plus whatever gets nominated for this year’s Hugo.
