Every year, GoodReads does a nice job of summarizing my reading (I wish they hadn’t been bought out by Amazon.)
This year suggests I’ve read 330 books or 84, 433 pages (that’s just 20 pages below my all-time record–if only I’d known).
(I also washed the kitchen floor three times in one day, because it was the only day I washed it.)
The numbers alone might seem impressive until one glances at my TBR shelf there, which sits at 9, 021 books.
Which is ridiculous, but my high-school guidance counsellor always talked about the importance of setting goals.
And, yes, those 9, 021 books do influence 2021’s readolutions, but I’m more focussed on my own shelves and I don’t own 9, 021 books.
So, first, 2020’s Memorable Reading Experiences.
PHOTO CREDIT: Daniel Schludi via Unsplash
NOTE: If you’re viewing these widgets via email, the numbers won’t budge and toggled trios won’t load – best in browser!
2019 = 317 books
In 2019, 19% of the books I read were off my own shelves; thanks to COVID-19 protections, that increased to 24%
In 2019, 27% of the books and stories I read were written by writers of colour; in 2020, this increased to 30%
Shortest = 32
Longest = 1488
You write in order to change the world…if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.
James Baldwin
There were some revolutions in my reading in 2020. And, while revisiting my log and reconsidering the pages I turned last year, during last week, there was an insurrection at the American seat of governance in Washington DC, January 6th, 2021.
My Here and Elsewhere reading project took me to both Mexico City in Mexico and to Havana in Cuba in 2020. One outstanding read was Paco Ignacio Taibo II’s ’69: The Mexican Autumn of the Tlatelolco Massacre (1991, Trans. Donald Nicholson Smith, 2019). Poetic and powerful, this slim volume describes the scene leading up to a peaceful protest of some two hundred thousand students and how they were attacked and silenced. And Margarita Engel‘s books offered a glimpse into the resistance of indigenous and enslaved individuals caught in the Spanish colonial web in Cuba.
Near the end of 2020, I read Paul Ortiz’s An African American and Latinx History of the United States (2018); I wish I’d studied a book like this in school but I’m grateful to fill in the gaps in my understanding now.
Not only did my new reading projects take me to some interesting places (the ocean! bonobo habitat!) but various reading events and celebrations also took me to different reading locales. In a year when physical travelling was curtailed, while a virus and its variants have been travelling wide and far and leaving devastation in their wake, those of us who have been free to journey into literature have been fortunate indeed.
I travelled to Daphne DuMaurier’s Jamaica Inn (and reread Rebecca), inspired by HeavenAli’s Daphne Du Maurier Reading Week, stopped in Ireland for Iris Murdoch’s The Flight from the Enchanter for Club1956 (hosted by Kaggsy and Simon, although I would have liked to have read it for Liz’s Murdoch-a-long, and I was late for the Club event too), and Caradog Prichard’s One Moonlit Light (1961; Trans. Philip Mitchell, 2015) was the reading selection for Paula’s Dewithon in 2020 and I also thoroughly enjoyed several of Ali Smith’s novels later in the year.
The past few years, I’ve been actively trying to read more backlisted books. In fact, what that means is that I’ve read some backlisted books, because writing book reviews and essays requires some familiarity with recent and current publications.
So, even with my readolution in mind, about a third of my 2020 reading (more than a hundred books) was published in 2019 and 2020. Imagine if I hadn’t made that resolution for the past few years; the new books would simply eclipse all other reading!
But it’s impossible to read all the new books that catch your reader’s eye in a given year, right? Of course there are going to be books of interest that are overlooked or neglected? So if one doesn’t continue to make a space for backlisted books, that space will be filled by shiny, new arrivals.
Nonetheless, in 2020 I’m not going to specifically prioritize backlisted books. Here’s hoping that “focusing” on them for the past few years will ensure that I continue to more naturally incorporate them into the stacks. And, if not, maybe I’ll shape 2022 differently.
Quietest months – May and June (2019, Nov&Dec)
Busiest months – November and December (2019, Mar&May)
Translation – 37
Countries Visited – 31
Female – 67%
Literary – 37%
Canadian – 33%
Non-fiction – 30% (from 22%!)
Writers of colour – 30%
TBR increased to 9, 021 (from 8557!)
And the reason that I wait until the year is completely over before summarizing was perfectly illustrated for me as the final days of 2020 contained Linda Hogan’s The Radiant Lives of Animals (2020), just as it contained a perfect set of illustrations by James Blackburn (wood-cut style).
The essays and poems are a pleasure to read, creating an intimacy out of ordinary events. How, for instance, she comes to live in a building that she preserved on the page as a dwelling place for one of her characters in Solar Storms (a book that I loved in 2019). The unexpected connection she experienced with a horse who needed a home (and she, apparently, was in need of that horse, although she didn’t recognise that need until later). The frustrations and joys associated with preserving a balance between the various creatures who inhabit the land around her home. Her gradual and ongoing recovery from an accident which caused substantial and traumatic brain damage several years ago.
What will make it a valuable reread in the future is the simple way in which she expresses vitally important and complex ideas that are absolutely essential for us to understand immediately and wholly. Here, in “This Land I Live”, for instance:
When I think of change, I consider the re-minding of ourselves and I mean that it is time to consider other kinds of intelligence and ways of being, to stretch our synapses to take in new ways of thought. As an indigenous woman, I look toward our Native knowledge systems, the times when our relationships with the earth wasn’t the disjointed connection most of us have learned from our Euro-American education systems. I am one human animal who wants to take back original meanings and understandings in ways that are possible and are necessary.
It’s not often that ‘wisdom’ appears to be the exact word to describe one’s reading; that’s true, for me, with this collection. And, yet, simultaneously, ‘searching’ is another word that would also fit, because I also have the feeling that Linda Hogan isn’t saying that she has all the answers, only that she is equally invested in searching for the right questions to ask, too. Something that all of us who have some hope for the future must actively engage in, fervently and relentlessly.
Toggle in each category to reveal titles…
I am so glad to have rediscovered your blog. I have been following your reading journey on Goodreads, but it didn’t occur to me that I can find the link to your website on your Goodreads profile, and it took a while for me to arrive here. It’s inspiring to know that you read 330 books in 2020, and how diverse your reading has been. Now that I have found your blog again, I look forward to reading your posts, and regularly engaging with them. Thank you. May 2021 too be a great year reading-wise. 🙂
D! I’m so glad to know that you have started a new blog (or resurrected another one), as I’ve missed your bookish commentary and curiosity. You’re right: it’s like waving on GR, not chatting, and I’m looking forward to more chats as well. (Although I do love the pics of your sweet dog on my weekly – sometimes monthly – visits to IG.) My reading for 2021 will be reduced in numbers but I’ve got some new projects underway and am really enjoying the reading year so far.
And here I was, despairing about the number of books on my list!
Then again, if we compare the length of the reading lists with the numbers of books read it comes to almost the same thing.. There are approximately 2100 books on mine, but it´s not a real number of books I want to read – there´s more on different sticky notes, screenshots and then there´s a thing that I don´t always register all the books I want to read by the same author. For example, there are only three of Iris Murdoch´s novels on the list but I own and want to read more than just those three.
I only read 63 titles during the last year (aimed for 80). Quite disappointing. Have been fantasizing about having a year off – no work of any kind, just a comfortable sofa and books.
The Radiant Lives of Animals sounds like something I would love to read! I´ve never heard of Linda Hogan before but I´m getting that must-read-everything vibes.
Don’t despair! One summer, a few years ago, I used every moment of spare time to log all the sticky notes and fragments with books TBR on them, including one entire notebook when I had, at some previous point, gotten more organized about it (only a few of the books were no longer interesting to me-I guess I stay curious). So my list on GR is fairly complete, but I did stop selecting all books by an author I hadn’t read yet, even if a trusted reading friend had recommended that author, intending to read at least one myself, before adding a chunk more. So you could be right, that with those differences factored in, the length of our lists would be more similar. Part of that could be because we’ve both spent time researching other countries’ literatures, which inevitably leads to a lot of new titles and authors on the TBR! Do try the Hogan: it’s beautiful and cautiously hopeful.
I just cannot conceive of reading 330 books in a year. That’s nearly one a day. Just not possible. I’m so impressed you can do that!
Enjoyed your stats as usual.I like your gender ratio! And, I think I’ve already commented in another post on my 2020 reading year. The less said the better. Let’s see how 2021 pans out though with my centenarian father becoming frailer by the day, January has not got off to a good start. Still … I have kept reading …
I know! The math does work out that way, but because I usually have so many different books in my stack at a given time (because I’m a moody reader), and read small sections of several in a sitting, I don’t often think about how often I finish books. I frequently go more than a week without finishing m/any, and then several are done all at once, with new ones in the wings. (But for reviews, I read in larger chunks, in fewer sittings.)
hugs Thinking back, I don’t think you often read poetry? Or maybe you do, but you don’t write about it often? I wonder if these times might lend themselves to that for you, still offering the comfort of a book in hand, without requiring sustained focus, only for a page or two. 🙂 Margaret Atwood’s new collection, Dearly, has some funny lines and many poems that are just lovely, but there are also some zingers about grieving and times of transition too.
Wowowowow 300 books. I think you are probably the person in my life (virtual and physical) that reads the most. People are always so shocked that I can read just over 100 books in a year, and whenever they express surprise I tell them I know someone who reads more than double that each year, and I am referring to you! I tip my hat to you, and you’ve given me something to strive for. I probably won’t reach that until my kids get a little more independent but we will see…
A lot of hours spent in the company of a printed page: and, over the past year, I played only half as many board games and watched half as many series, so there was even more reading time (December might have been my most-reading-evahr month). This year I’m going to do a little more of both of those things again. Even when the kids were just a little older than yours are now, I ended up reading quite a bit, because we have a pretty small space and reading was something I could do and still be quiet, but, certainly, with every year as they grew, my page count grew!
Enjoyed your musings! The only ones I have read are the Betsy-Tacy book and the Flambards series, but I have read these so many times I nearly know them by heart and they continue to be just as satisfying as the first time I read them. In fact, one of my 2020 ambitions that I did not meet was to write K.M. Peyton a fan letter while she is still around to read it. I am pleased she is still writing and I usually order them although nothing is as good as the Flambards or Pennington books. The Betsy-Tacy group is going to read some non MHL books this year and I should have offered to lead a discussion of Flambards instead of They Loved to Laugh, now that I think of it.
I am looking forward to Nancy Pearl’s book too.
Thanks for stopping by: I don’t often meet readers who know and love both K.M. Peyton’s stories and Maud Hart Lovelace’s. Others that come to mind are the Lucy Boston Green Knowe books, Susan Coolidge’s Katy stories, the Sidney Taylor books, the Beverly Cleary Ramona Quimby stories and her books for teens, Carolyn Haywood’s Betsy stories, Norma Johnston’s Keeping Days books, Edgar Eager’s Magic books, and the Madeleine L’Engle Austin family chronicles. Every summer I try to reread (sometimes finish, because I didn’t always read/have the final books in a series, when I was a kid) one of these and revisiting Flambards was particularly amazing. I hadn’t remembered some of the tragic elements of the series (or how much they all grow up). Also, I found the parts about early aviation much more interesting as an adult than I did as a kid (as a girl I loved his model airplanes more!). They would definitely make for good discussions I think!
I am not sure the Flambards books are currently in print but I have encouraged a lot of my friends to get it from the library (which, in turn, should help keep it on the shelves!). Gordon Cooper’s books are hard to find in the US although one of them is set in Canada.
Did you also read some of my other English favorites – Barbara Willard’s Mantlemass books, Charlotte Sometimes, Streatfeild, and Elfrida Vipont? It probably will get canceled now but I had been planning (and saving for) a month long seminar in London this coming July. I am supposed to come up with a research project (so many possibilities! so few definite ideas!) and was thinking about children’s books involving mysterious houses in the country like A Traveler in Time; The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe; and Tom’s Midnight Garden. Oh well, we’ll see what happens in the next few months.
They are hard to find, now, I believe; even in a city with 100 library branches and a couple that specialize in Children’s Lit, including the Osborne Collection, there are only two copies of most of Peyton’s novels, one for circulation and one in the Osborne.
The Mantlemass books, I don’t recognize at all. I think the closest thing I’d’ve been reading that compares looslely are the Joan Aiken (alt)historical books. The Vipont I don’t recognize by name but the story summaries sound familiar; I think I might have read them from a county library when I was quite young and now want to see about finding copies to see if that’s true. And you’ve also reminded me of another AllTimeFave, the Monica Dickens World’s End series (their country house isn’t mysterious but it’s wonderful). I think there was a Penelope Fitzgerald house-in-the-country story? Is Green Knowe country enough? That would be SUCH a fun theme!
What a wonderful reading year! I think that’s great that you were also able to focus on books from the past. I think it’s easy of course to get all excited about the new books while there may be some gems we’ve missed. I have been focusing on my shelves a lot more since the pandemic started and plan to continue to do so. Granted, I am still buying books. What can you do. Ha. Wishing you a fabulous reading year and can’t wait to hear more about your short story project.
We have to support the indie shops and publishers as much as we can, right? So what choice do you have, but to continue lining your personal bookshelves while supporting the industry you love? innocent look
Here’s to many good reads and interesting authors for both of us in 2021. 🙂
Wow! Well done – an amazing year of reading! And thank you – you have no idea how much better I feel since hearing the number of books on our TBR!!
I was so grateful that the public library opened up mid-year, so I could access a lot more current and unusual reading in the second half of 2020. Do you have a written list/count somewhere? Or do you just k-n-o-w that the quantities are similar?
I sort of keep a list of incomings which is pretty scary. And there are the books which I’ve had unread before I started that list. The incomings list is just under 1700 over several years, but I have read a good few of them. So I’ve no real idea, but I know it’s big, but just not as big as yours TBR figure…. ;D
OIC, so I am, in this instance, the cautionary tale. The kind of unreasonable and unfetteredness that makes you feel better about being you. Okay, fine. 😀
😀 Soz……
Hahahaha…I looked that up! So now I KNOW you’re not REALLY sorry.
Well, besides reading 200+ more books than I did, you also washed your floor three times more than me. (Although, I think, child #3 washed it once…) My house is almost certainly dirtier and I still can’t read as much! Huh… will have to ponder this… snort
I love all your stats – they make me want to know what mine are… I have been wondering if I will even get to that this year. But chances are I will (even if it’s not until March), if only for my own records.
31 countries visited is impressive! And The Radiant Lives of Animals sounds so good!
LOL If it’s any consolation, it’s reeealllllly dirty now.
I usually eyeball my stat’s at least a couple of times during a reading year, and I didn’t even sort a single column until last week, so I understand how hard it is to make time for it this year. (At the same time, if I’d had to guess where some things fell, I’d’ve been way off, so I do think it’s useful if you want to see if the ideas you have about your reading match the reality of your reading habits.
Linda Hogan is now on my MRE (MustReadEverything) list. Her earlier novel, Power, is really good, and one I think you’d like, but perhaps harder to find now than her newer ones?
I looked her up at the library and was disappointed to see that I can only get a couple of her books and only through ILL. Oh well, maybe that’s just as well. 😉
Have you read Solar Storms?
I wish she was as well known as Louise Erdrich, but if you can get Solar Storms, that’s really good too.
I have only one resolution, and it’s not even a resolution really, it’s just what I do. And that is to read as often as I can. Even so I wouldn’t get to 300. The best I managed was during the mining boom when we drove every waking minute, with an audiobook on 90% of the time and I still only got to about 280. And of them I reviewed fewer than 100.
So I guess it’s your standing resolution then! Me too, and I haven’t driven since we moved to Toronto, so I used to have all that commuting time as reading time too (and now only walk daily, thanks to COVID). How fortunate that the audiobook business has improved by leaps and bounds in recent decades; I remember listening to certain books-on-tape specifically as sleep aids, because quality-of-narration just wasn’t a concern.
I want to know what the 1488-pager was! You did read a lot of nonfiction this year — I remember at one point you were thinking you hadn’t. You chose slightly longer books overall, as your page count is higher than mine though my book total was slightly higher; must be all my novellas. Can you think why your quietest and busiest months were almost reversed from the previous year? I think November generally looks like my best month because the novellas push the total up. If “reading from my own shelves” includes review books from publishers, I was to nearly 64% this year. With your fantastic Toronto libraries, I know you’re able to rely on loans more than I am. I didn’t do the stats on backlist vs. recent or on my Goodreads TBR, which hovers at a slightly more sensible (ha ha!) 6,000. I regularly prune it if, while doing any random search, I come across a title I don’t recognize or hadn’t labelled with useful shelves.
You’ll remember when I mention it: Stephen King’s It! (A book on my 20something list, because I was too chicken to finish it when I was younger.) Yes, I felt like I was reading only fiction for the first half of the year, and I didn’t check my stat’s all year, so I found it hard to imagine how things were going. (Interesting, then, to find that so many stat’s were similar to past years, even so.) You are consistently just a few books ahead of me each year, if memory serves, and I’m surprised my page average is higher, because I do include graphic novels and even occasionally an illustrated children’s book (if I have spent an inordinate amount of time with it or particularly want to remember it). I’ll blame the movies/shows/boardgames for my underachieving. LOL Well, I didn’t count ARCs as “home” because I’m more curious how I’m reading my longtime shelf-sitters, but even if I did, it wouldn’t have been that high for me. But I’m guessing you’re also keeping more uptodate than I am, so you’d have more ARCs (especially digitally) too. Yeah, I prune my GR list too. winces It just doesn’t look like I do. shakes head And lately I’ve gotten lazy with shelving, while adding them on my phone (it’s clunkier to do it there), so I’ll have to be more attentive going forward. It’s beyond unwieldly.
Thank you so much for the Dewithon mention, Marcie.
Thanks for hosting, Paula!
Goodness your stats are amazing! I can’t imagine reading quite that much. I love your here and elsewhere project, I have slowly been trying to increase the amount of translated fiction I read because it so often has a similar effect of taking me away from the here and now. So glad you have found such solace in essays and poetry, I stuck almost completely to fiction in 2020 reading only about 8 non fiction books and one collection of poetry. I wish you more great reading in 2021 and would love you to join in the Daphne du Maurier reading week again.
For the first half of the year, I felt like I was reading almost exclusively fiction; I think it seemed to hold more comfort while adjusting to a new reality. If I hadn’t had specific reviews/essays to pull me into other reading directions, I might have kept on that track myself. I’d love to read more works of translation this year too: we’ll see! I’ve definitely still got some unread DuMauriers–I must remember to jot down the dates!
Still reeling from the first paragraph of your post, Marcie! I enjoyed your Here and Elsewhere series of posts.A nice slice of virtual, literary travel in a year when I’ve rarely set foot outside my own town let alone country.
I read my face off in December–one advantage of a quieter holiday was having many more quiet afternoons, with good reading (and good boardgames) for company. I’m glad you enjoyed those–there’ll be more books about place this year for sure.