How to use this Page

I started 91 books this year and finished 89. I’m now fully in the swing of reading at least 30 minutes before bed which has been great. Last year I had a lot of random low-level health issues which complicated matters a bit but I’m still pretty happy with how the Year in Reading turned out.

average read per month: 7.47
average read per week: 1.7
number read in worst month: 5 (Apr)
number read in best month: 11 (Aug)
number unfinished: 2
percentage by male authors: 59
percentage by female authors: 41
percentage of authors of color: 3
fiction as percentage of total: 73
non-fiction as percentage of total: 27
percentage of total liked: 90
percentage of total ambivalent: 7
percentage of total disliked: 3

The biggest issue this year was that I didn’t actively prioritize reading authors of color and so I just didn’t. No good. Must do better. Did okay with non-US authors but that’s not the same. I did a lot of social justice online reading and kept a bookshelf of worthwhile articles over at This.cm but I needed to translate more of this into book length reading and I did not. Digging into the Louise Penny series upped my percentage of female authors but I still need to work on that. I read a lot of books that I really enjoyed this past year including a history of spam and a photography book about large trees. I got a lot more suggestions from reading Library Journal than usual which was good and bad. I added a few books to my Best in Show shortlist. If you’ve made a reading list for last year, I’d love to read it. Happy New Year.

Previous librarian.net summaries: 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004. My always-updated booklist lives at jessamyn.info/booklist and it has its own RSS feed which is mostly not broken.

I skipped doing this last year because I was sort of embarrassed at the shortness of my list. I vowed to read more this year and I guess I did. Here are previous year end lists: 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004. As you probably know, my booklist lives in a separate blog and it has its own RSS feed. I’m not a voracious reader and I’ve been heavy into genre fiction this year, but here’s the wrap-up of what I read in 2009.

number of books read in 2009: 39
number of books read in 2008: 31
number of books read in 2007: 53
number of books read in 2005: 86
number of books read in 2004: 103
number of books read in 2003: 75
number of books read in 2002: 91
number of books read in 2001: 78

average read per month: 3.25
average read per week: .75
number read in worst month: 0 (November)
number read in best month: 7 (February)
percentage by male authors: 82
percentage by female authors: 18
fiction as percentage of total: 51
non-fiction as percentage of total: 49
percentage of total liked: 81
percentage of total ambivalent: 6
percentage of total disliked: 3

So… I’m still doing pretty poorly reading books by female authors though I’ve been balancing fiction and non-fiction pretty well. I loved a few books I read this year, specifically the book about the WPA writer’s project by Kurlansky and the fiction book by Howard Frank Mosher that was set in Vermont. Now that the bus to MA has wifi and I have an EVDO card for my laptop, I read less when I’m in transit. Now that I play scrabble most evenings with my boyfriend 9and also, that I have a boyfriend at all) I red less at night. I haven’t gone over to ebooks in any way though I bet I’m reading the same amount of words, but less of them are in book format.

I have a few books that I got mostly through in 2009 that I’m sure I’ll finish off in 2010. I also have a bedside table for books now that I didn’t have before. Wish me luck, and happy reading in 2010!