Skip to main content

The annual reading report for 2010, part 1 (finally)

2010 was a little above average for me considering the number of books I read per year in the last 5 years, or quite a bit higher if I count separately all the little Edward Gorey books collected together in the three Gorey anthologies I read. If they are counted as three volumes, I read 173 books, but if they are counted as separate books, I read 221 books. This makes a weekly average of 3,3 or 4,25 books, respectively.

If I continue with two numbers I‘ll have to come up with two sets of most of the numbers, so for the calculations below I have used the lower number.

I have no particular plans in terms of either the total number of books or the total number of pages I plan to read in 2011. I have several short novels on my TBR list which could push up the number of books read, but I also have some monster books I plan to read, so it will probably even out.

I don‘t remember any unfinished books in 2010, only books put on hold to be finished later.

Breakdown:
Fiction: 155 (89,6%), up by 18,7% since 2009.
Non-fiction: 18 (10,4%) down by the same percentage since 2009.

My non-fiction percentage is down from 2009, showing a definite preference for fiction in 2010. I would like to read more non-fiction in 2011, at least 20% of all the books read.

Total no. of pages read: 50092, compared with 49672 in 2009.
Average number of pages per book: 290. This is 37 pages more pages per book than in 2010.
Number of books 300+ pages long: 63 (36,4%). This percentage was 29% in 2009 and 51% in 2008, and accounts for the higher number of pages read in fewer books.
Number of books of 100 pages or less: 8 (or 55 if you count the Goreys separately)

Re-reads: 8 (4,6%). This is twice as many as in 2009, but still not a lot. I find I rarely grab a book to reread it any more because I feel compelled to, but rather I do it because I have made a conscious decision to do so.
Library and loan books: 48 (27,75%). This is 10 fewer than in 2009, but the difference in percentages is only just under 2%.
E-books: 11 (6,35%). This item has more than doubled, both in number and percentages.
Audio books: 0. I listened to parts of several audio books, but finished none in 2010.
Translated books: 10 (5,8%). This is slightly fewer than in 2009, but not by much.

Books published before 1900: 3, including one from the B.C. era. I have definitely been focusing on modern literature.
Books published after 2000 (that year not included): 57, or 33%, compared with 26% in 2009.

The year I read the most books from was 2007.
I read a total of 3 books published in 2010.

Average rating per book (out of a possible 5+): Still 3+. In 2009 the actual average was 3,6 stars, but in 2010 it went down to 3,35 stars, so the average rating is ever so slightly down.
Most common rating (out of a possible 5+): As in 2009 the most common rating is 3,5 stars (representing 29 books, or 16,75%).


In 2010, no book got a score of 1, but 11 got a score of 2.
10 books got 5 stars versus 12 in 2009, and 5 got 5+ stars, which is the same number as in 2009.

Languages: I read 160 books in English in 2010, which is more than in 2009, both in numbers and percentages. The percentage in 2009 was 75,5% of the total but in 2010 it was 92,5%.
I read 13 books in Icelandic in 2010, out of which 3 were translations from 2 foreign languages. This makes a total of 7,5%, which is a lot less than in 2009, but that was an exceptional year for Icelandic books due to my book-a-week Icleandic literature challenge.

Continued tomorrow.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went and

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove