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2008 reading report mistake

I just discovered an error in my reading report for last year. I have been collecting all the statistically interesting information from my handwritten reading journal in an Excel file that allows me to make the statistical analysis I have published here at the end of each year. From the beginning of my journal-keeping I have written in the name of the publisher, but for some reason I never entered that information into the Excel file.

Having nothing better to do this afternoon, I decided to add the publisher information for this year and the last, so I got out the journal, opened last year’s spreadsheet, sorted the information by date and started entering the information. I soon discovered that I had somehow missed a couple of pages when entering the information for 2008, amounting to 4 books. The outcome is that instead of 153 books and 44691 pages I actually read 157 books and 45212 pages in 2008. It hardly affects any of the other stats, so I haven’t bothered recalculating them.

For those interested, this is how the publisher stats came out:

Jove: 14
Avon: 10
Dell: 7
Piatkus, Penguin, Harper (incl. H.Collins, H. Torch, H. Paperbacks, H. Business), Berkeley, Bantam: 5
St. Martin's Press, Pan, Mira, Headline, Doubleday: 4
Victor Gollancz, Pocket Books, Love Spell Books, Fontana, Fawcett Crest (incl. Fawcett Books), Arrow, Coronet: 3
11 others: 2 each
20 others: 1 each

This doesn’t quite tally with the book count because in some cases I didn’t write down the publisher for some reason.

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