Sunday 6 January 2019

2018 - MY READING YEAR

More for my own amusement than any expectation that this holds any interest to anyone else....


I surpassed my annual target of 120 books for the year, totalling 137 for 2018.
Books is a somewhat loose term, insofar as I'll count anything available to source on its own as a book.

The vast majority of my reading was "crime fiction" though I have no idea on the number of books in the various sub-genres - PIs, police procedurals, Noir, Cosies, mysteries, thrillers, hard-boiled, who-dunits .......





QUALITY - subjective obviously - but overall no stinker books encountered, which if I approach my reading on the basis of selecting what I think I will enjoy isn't a surprise.

More of the same needed in 2019, I reckon.

11 - 5 STAR READS
55 - 4.5 STARS
51 - 4 STARS
6   - 3.5 STARS
13 - 3 STARS
1   - 2.5 STARS

AGEING - I think I've called myself out on my oft-repeated claim that I enjoy books from the 60s, 70s and 80s in a pre-tech age. Yeah man - you enjoy them, but you don't read them!

I'll see if I can get double digits for 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s this year.

1 from the 1930/40s - a collection of pieces previously released singly
1 from the 1940s
1 from the 1950s
2 from the 1960s
0 from the 1970s
1 from the 1980s
4 from the 1990s
10 from the 2000s
74 from the 2010s
43 from 2018




FACT v FICTION - I used to target myself with one non-fiction book a month.
That's gone for a Burton then!

Try and read more in 2019, which shouldn't be too challenging.

134 fiction
3 non-fiction




READING FORMAT
The kindle wins - hopefully in 2019 I'll read more physical books

81.5 Kindle
28 paperback
10 Epub file on laptop
8   PDF
5   hardback
3   audible
1   magazine
.5  iPhone

LENGTH
Does size matter?

14  <50 pages
16  51-100 pages
33  101-200 pages
44  201-300 pages
24  301-400 pages
6    400+ pages

My longest read was 640 pages - The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker
My shortest was 13 pages - Breaking Spirits by Glenn McGoldrick

DIFFERENT AUTHORS
103 in total, plus 4 anthologies which had multiple authors.
One author was read under two different published names - Jack Strange/Jack D. McLean

NEW-TO-ME AUTHORS
59 in the year

POPULAR AUTHORS
15 authors were read more than once

12 times Lawrence Block
each by Nick Kolakowski, Graham Smith, Robert Parker, Glenn McGoldrick
10 authors twice








GENDER ANALYSIS
77 male authors (with 105 books)
26 female authors (with 28 books)










AUTHOR NATIONALITY
14 different countries represented, not too much from Europe overall and nothing Scandinavian - Don't Cry For Me Nordic Crime.

46 USA
27 ENGLAND
8 SCOTLAND
3 CANADA, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND
2 IRELAND, NORTHERN IRELAND
1 SOUTH AFRICA, MALAYA, BELGIUM, SWITZERLAND, ZIMBABWE, GERMANY, GREAT BRITAIN (unable to ascertain whether from England, Scotland or Wales)
with a couple UNKNOWN




SOURCE
I'll try and read more pre-owned books in 2019

55 pre-owned
25 publishers
19 Kindle Unlimited trial
15 authors
10 Net Galley
8  publicists
5  Edelweiss

PAGES READ

Monthly - 2761 - 4170 - 2909 - 1022 - 533 - 1816 - 2966 - 1511 - 1890 - 4481 - 2667 - 1247

Total - 27973

Monthly average - 2331 pages
Average book length - 204 pages

FAVOURITE COVERS
















15 comments:

  1. I'll check it out in a bit, cheers

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  2. I'm glad you had a good reading year, Col, with a lot more 4.5 and even 5-star reads than real disappointments. And I like the way you break things down and really take a look at what you read. Here's to a lot of good books for 2019.

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    1. Thank you, Margot. Lots more to like than dislike, so a great year overall, with hopefully more of the same in 2019!

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  3. Nordic crime is not a favourite of mine either, but one exception is a Norwegian series by Hans Olav Lahlum, who sets his mysteries in the 60s/70s. Have you tried any by him? 5 of his books have been translated into English.

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    1. Kate, thanks for the tip-off. I remember seeing the Anthill book a year or two back, but never went any further than a cursory glance. I've had a look at Lahlum's canon and they do seem interesting. Onto the wishlist they go - for when I temporarily lift the embargo and add some more books to the pile in 2019!

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  4. Col – I will be on the opposite track from you this year as I catch up with the all the newly published books in a holding pattern on the Kindle. But I also have a stack of crime fiction from my favorite era – post WWII to early ’60s – waiting for me.

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    1. Elgin, I'll see how the plans work out. They have been known to get abandoned!

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  5. Well, you beat me for the number of items read this year, tho' none of the books I read were 13 pages long. (In fact, according to Goodreads's handy annual accumulator thingie, the average length of book I read in 2018 was 300pp.)

    You read 12 more Lawrence Blocks in the year than I did.

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    1. Yay, though with 13 page long books, it's a hollow victory!
      I think you ought to read something from the maestro this year, maybe not 12. (The 12 in themselves are a bit distorted and skewed, and help paint a false picture. A lot of them, not all mind you, were his Keller kindle single - weighing in from anything between 30 - 60 pages from memory)

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  6. I love reading your statistics, never stop doing it! A very good year for reading, even if not quite how you planned it.

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    1. Cheers, I probably could have read a book and a half (of a decent length) in the time taken to compile the post, but it keeps me amused!

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  7. What can I say, Col, except that your annual reading continues to inspire me. I have never seen anyone break down their reading the way you do. Great stuff!

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    1. Prashant, thanks. I'm sure the time could have been better spent doing something more useful, but what can I say...

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