100 Books in a Year

Stack Of Books
Stack Of Books by Indi Samarajiva

Now, I’ve never read 100 books in a year.  Well, I probably have, but I don’t count the books I read to my kids in good reads, so only 96 in a year a few years back.  So, when I saw Aliza Weinberger’s article, What happened when I tried to read 100 books in a year, I was intrigued.

I would have liked to see more reviews in the article.  All her ratings where listed but nothing too much about what she thought of the books.  Just a few little sentences here and there.  To me it was more about her journey reading 100 books and less about what it meant to her or why she was doing it, other than just to do it.

She does later say:

…this project wasn’t really about the number of books I could read. It was about finding books that made me feel what reading had always done for me: that connection, that sheer joy of reading a book that both entertains and moves me.

That was nice to see in there.  The worst part was all the little gifs and advertisements that popped up while I was trying to read the article.  I can’t take Mashable articles seriously with all this junk popping up while I’m trying to read a article that genuinely interest me.  Good content is not going to keep me on the site, if it is observed by all this other stuff.

I was going to read another article that Weinberger linked to on Mashable, but I gave up after having so much trouble loading the first article.  I hope they clean that site up, thy have some good content.

I don’t think I will have as rough a time reading my hundred as Weinberger did.  I know what I want to read, I have a TBR shelf of hundreds of books.  Getting through them all will be the tough part.  Wish me luck!

Reading Shakespeare

Shakespeare the Complete Works

Shakespeare
Shakespeare

Below is a list of all the plays, at least the ones we know of that the Great Bard wrote.  I have a book with the complete works and this is the order it lists them.  I’m working very slowly through these.  I would like to finish all of these in 2016, but the chance of me completing these and the BBC 100 are low.

Progress: 9/46 or 20%

  1. Two Gentlemen of Verona
  2. The Taming of the Shrew
  3. 2 Henry VI – Part II
  4. 3 Henry VI – Part III
  5. 1 Henry VI – Part I
  6. Titus Andronicus
  7. Richard III
  8. Venus and Adonis
  9. The Rape of Lucrece
  10. Edward III
  11. The Comedy of Errors – August 10, 2014
  12. Love’s Labour’s Lost
  13. Love’s Labour’s Won
  14. Richard II
  15. Romeo and Juliet – January, 1998
  16. A Midsummer Night’s Dream – July 7, 2014
  17. King John
  18. The Merchant of Venice – July 30, 2014
  19. 1 Henry IV – Part I
  20. The Merry Wives of Windsor
  21. 2 Henry IV – Part II
  22. Much Ado About Nothing – August 28, 2014
  23. Henry V
  24. Julius Caesar – June 20, 2015
  25. As You Like It
  26. Hamlet – January 2013
  27. Twelfth Night
  28. Troilus and Cressida
  29. Sonnets and ‘A Lover’s Complaint’
  30. Poems
  31. Measure for Measure
  32. Othello
  33. King Lear
  34. The Life of Timon of Athens
  35. Macbeth – August 19, 2011
  36. Antony and Cleopatra
  37. All’s Well That Ends Well
  38. Pericles, Prince of Tyre
  39. Coriolanus
  40. The Winter’s Tale
  41. King Lear
  42. Cymbeline, King of Brition
  43. The Tempest – August 20, 2014
  44. Cardenio
  45. All is True
  46. The Two Nobile Kinsmen

Print Book Sales are Up!

Book Sales Up
Book Sales Up

Good news, according to Publisher’s Weekly the sales of print books are up.  Not dramatically, but still this is good news.  For the second year in a row sales are up.  2.8% over last year and the year before that it was up 2.4%.  Thats the right direction!

So, whats driving the growth? Independent and chain bookstores, as well as Amazon lead the growth with an increase of 5.4%, which offset a drop of 8.8% from mass retailers like Walmart.  Looks like people are turing away from buying their books at Target and increasingly buying at Amazon.

US Book Sales by Channel
US Book Sales by Channel

I have to say I love getting a view of these numbers.  As a reader and someone who wants to promote reading, this is great news.  The article at Publisher’s Weekly had some analysis and tables, but I think seeing these numbers graphed helps tell the story better.

Below is the sales broken out by Category.  We can see the fall in 2014 in Adult nonfiction and the increase again in 2015, although not quite to the point it was in 2013.  Thats a shame, I love nonfiction.  Fantastic to see Juvenile non fiction grow like this year over year.  A 11.7% increase year-over-year!

Books Sales by Category
Books Sales by Category

One more graph and then I’m done, promise.  I read all formats of books, print, audio, ebook, etc.  But here is the sales for the last 3 years broken out for your perusal.

US Print Book Sales by Format
US Print Book Sales by Format

I’m very happy to see hardcover sales up, this means, to me at least, that people are purchasing copies to keep and re-read.  They are building their libraries, hopefully, not just for themselves but for everyone in their family to enjoy.  Board books are up the most at 14.5% year-over-year.  This is very encouraging.  This means to me, that people are buying books to read to their very small children.  Start them young on a hobby (nay life choice) that will forever change them for the better!

Lucy the Reader

I ran across this, I forget how, but tell me how cute is she?  I think it is the accent!  I just love watching her videos!  I’ll be stuck watching these for the rest of the week now!

You can find her on youtube and her blog.

What’s This?!

What's This?
What’s This?

This is my new blog to post about the books that I am reading.  I’ve been thinking of doing something like this for years and now finally here it is.  I’ll be writing about the books I’m reading and writing reviews for those that I finish.  More detail is on my about page.  I read a lot so hopefully there will be lots of content on here.  I read 87 books last year, let’s hope I can hit 100 in 2016!

Goodreads Stats
Goodreads Stats – Number of books read each year

I’ve been trying to hit 100 for years.  I almost got there in 2011 and I’m very excited to write about all the books I experience this year!

The Best Books I Read in 2015

Book Lust
Book Lust. Sums 2015 up well.

Just as in previous years I’m writing a post about the books I read in 2015. I read 87 books in total, below is the breakdown. This year I’m adding a few metrics which I think will be interesting. Like, how much I saved by borrowing books from the library ($807.40) and what percentage of the authors I read were men (67%).

Fiction was the majority of my reading at 60%. Fantasy (20%) and Science Fiction (21%) being the largest portion of all genres. Read a few series this year, meaning I read 8 books by Holly Black (Spiderwick Chronicles), 3 from C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia), 2 from Timothy Zahn (The Thrawn Trilogy) and 2 Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson). Paperback was the least popular binding at on 17% of my reads.

Most of my books came from the library (37%). Longest audio book I listened to was Capital at 1,503 minutes (25 hours), shortest was The Hamburger: A History at 180 minutes (3 hours). Total audio listening was 11,751 minutes (196 hours, 8.2 days).

Longest book I read was Hadoop in Practice (536 pages), which was for a class and I didn’t read every page. Next was All the Light We Cannot See at (530 pages). Shortest was 30 pages, a short story called Percy Jackson and the Singer of Apollo. In all I read 14,560 pages.

The longest it took me to get through a book was Capital (195 days), Michelle and I listened to it in the car. Shorts books included a lot of the Spiderwick Chronicles, in all I finished 12 books the same day I started them.

I finished the most books in July (20). The most popular book (according to goodreads) I read was The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The least was Valkyrie.

So how does this year compare to previous years? Well, I read the most I have in the past 3 years, but still not as much as 2011, when I read 96 books. That big 100 is still just out of reach. Maybe this year…

Some of my favorite books of the year were:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Dracula

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Falling Up

Tuck Everlasting

The Nixie’s Song

How Reading Changed My Life

The Wrath of Mulgarath

Siddhartha

The Field Guide

Departure

Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason

The Read-Aloud Handbook

Dark Force Rising

The Last Olympian