Tag: books

An End to 2017 – Books Read

Books Read 2017
Bookbarn International, Somerset, England. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

I  don’t know any other way to put this than that I failed in 2017 when it came to reading. In the ten years, I’ve been keeping this list I’ve always got into the twenties. I used to get more than double that! I don’t know of any one thing I can point to in 2017 that kept me away from reading. I do know that no longer taking the train back and forth from work has had an impact. That 30 to 40 minutes every day, not including time spent at the stations was almost always dedicated to reading. And, I don’t have that time anymore. Another contributing factor might have been the size of some of the books I decided to read last year. I’m still only halfway through a dense 600+ page tome that I started in early 2017.

This year I’m going to try and set aside some time every day to read. Hopefully, that will translate into better numbers when this year comes to an end.

Click through to see the little that I did manage to read in 2017.

Continue reading “An End to 2017 – Books Read”

Books Read – Wrapping up 2016

Books read 2016

In 2016 I managed to beat 2015’s all-time-low but it came in at more than ten books less than the next closest year. 2016 was not as rough a year as 2015 but it remained a difficult one personally and professionally. Despite not getting much reading in I’ve continued to purchase books and my to-read list is becoming unwieldy. I’m hoping to knock off a significant number of titles in 2017. I don’t usually set goals but I’m going to try and read ten more than I did last year with my total somewhere in the 40s by end of year. I hope you’ll reach your reading goals this year as well.

For more lists of books read see: Books Read in 2015, Books Read in 2014, and Books Read in 2013.

Click through to see 2016’s list!

Continue reading “Books Read – Wrapping up 2016”

Books Read – Wrapping up 2015

Books read

I’ve been keeping track of the books I’ve read since 2010 and this last year was by far the worst year so far. I’ve averaged about 50 books a year for the past five years, this year’s total comes in at a measly 23. There were a number of extenuating circumstances this past year (separation, new job, divorce, etc.) that took up not only time but mental space that I usually set aside for personal and professional reading. I’m hopeful that in 2016 things will trend back towards the mean.

With that here is the list of books I read in 2015: Continue reading “Books Read – Wrapping up 2015”

Falling Behind: My Reading Backlog

I was recently looking at my Amazon wishlist, it has quite a few books on it, and wondering when, if ever, I’d get around to purchasing and reading them. See, I made a deal with myself, and I’ve mostly kept it, that I won’t buy anymore new books until I finish all the ones I already have on my shelves. But, it doesn’t seem to matter how many of the books I take off the shelf and read there are always unread ones sitting on the shelves waiting for their turn. If reading wasn’t so enjoyable the task might be Sisyphean…

So, I decided to sit down and see just how many books I have to read before I can get to those new ones… It took awhile but here it is:

171 books

Roughly, I didn’t count a lot of the genre fiction collections I have lying around (Dune, Stross, Stevenson, Weeks, etc…) If you want to get a glimpse at what I’m interested in go ahead and click through to the spreadsheet, I didn’t list authors but some simple googling should lead you to these books.

Anyone have any suggestions on whittling this down to something manageable?

 

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