It seems procrastination has been my recent mantra. I’m just now getting around to posting about my reading last year — not to mention the variety of other posts that are sitting in some form on my computer or on paper. And, surprisingly, I actually read nearly two dozen less books than in 2014 and 6,300 fewer pages. I think part of that is explained by the fact my lack of focus stretches into my reading. I put down more books unfinished this year than I can ever recall. In the month of December alone I’m guessing there were at least a dozen. Maybe I’m developing old fart ADD but nothing holds hold my interest for long, even though I was 100 pages or more into a couple when I bailed.
There’s a couple other notable items. My fiction reading dropped, with the boost in nonfiction dominated by a history binge I seem to be on. The number of translated books increased nearly 50 percent, accounting for 28 percent of what I read this year. The boost in nonfiction was dominated by the history binge I’m on. Here’s how every shakes out for 2015. The statistics don’t include books I didn’t finish, graphic novels (I read a handful) or audiobooks.
Books Read: 116
Pages Read: 35,921
- Average Pages per Book: 309.66
- Average Pages per Day: 96.6
- Average Number of Days per Book: 3.21
- Longest Book: 992 pages (Goebbels: A Biography by Peter Longerich)
- Shortest Book: 96 pages (So Long a Letter, Mariama Ba)
Fiction: 52 (44.8 percent)
- Translated Works: 32 (20 fiction and 11 nonfiction)
- Languages: French (8), German (8), Norwegian (3), Arabic (2), Spanish (2), Swedish (2), Chinese (1), Greek (1), Italian (1), Korean (1), Russian (1), Serbian (1) and Swedish (1)
- Science Fiction: 13
Non-fiction: 64 (55.2 percent)
- Autobiography/Memoirs: 17
- Biography: 8
- History: 19 (29.7 percent of nonfiction)
Ebooks Read: 86 (74.1 percent)
Library materials: 9 (only 7.8 percent)
I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.
Anne Tyler
