Happy New Year! Let’s hope we move forward positively and to a brighter, better future for everyone!
Instead of a review of something I have read or watched or listened to, I am going to make this my annual review of some metrics on the books I did read in 2020. I use the Goodreads.com Reading Challenge to keep track of how many and what books I read in 2020. I started a few years ago, with a target of reading 25 books. I kept that goal for a few years because I missed it every year. Once I got my reading going, my strategy was that every year I made my goal, I would add one to it for the next year. This year, my goal was 29 books. I made it with two to spare. If you look at my Goodreads stats, it will say I read 33 books, but three of those were essentially short stories in the same universe, so for my personal count, I lumped those three together as one book read. So, that put me at 31 books read. Next year, I get to add one and set my goal at 30. I suspect that one of these years, I will hit a top number that I will not be able to surpass. It will be interesting to see what that might be. Anyway, on to some numbers and other statistics:
I read a total of 10, 320 pages, which breaks down to 31 books. The shortest was 39 pages; the longest 801.
The most popular was “Where the Crawdads Sing” which was a selection for our family book club. The least popular was “Wiped Out”, which was an independently published book written by a friend.
As for genres and categories (and note that the total here is not 31, mainly because some books might fall into several categories, especially in things like Short Stories which might also be SF or F):
Mystery: 3
Fantasy: 10
SciFi: 9
Steampunk: 2
Thriller: 1
Short Stories: 4
Non-fiction: 5
Memoir/Biography/Autobiography: 2
Well, unsurprising that SciFi and Fantasy were the top numbers. They are, after all, my preferred genres. In the past, the Fantasy books have outnumbered the SciFi by more, so I guess I am spreading things out? I have also been trying to add more non-fiction in, and I did that this year with 5.
I did pretty well this past year, I think, especially with all that was going on out there in the world to wreak havoc on our mental and emotional states. I have already begun putting together a list of some of the books I want to read in 2021. There will always be additions and substitutions, but at least it gives me something to fall back on.
I hope you had a good reading year, and wish you much lovely reading time in the coming one!
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And So On... 