Experiments in Life Because Sometimes Science Screws Up!

Doing my part to offset the decline

It is rather fitting that The Long Decline of Reading came across in Twitter today. I decided at the beginning of the year that I was going to track all of the books that I completed this year. Since today is the end of the year and I just finished reading my last book of the year, I thought it was a good time to go ahead and report on what I finished up. I tracked the date that I completed each book, along with the number of pages, in a spreadsheet. That allowed me to calculate some basic stats that I have included after the list.

All of the books listed in italics are rereads. Yes, I reread books periodically.

1. "On Writing" by Stephen King
2. "Dead Beat" by Jim Butcher
3. "Proven Guilty" by Jim Butcher
4. "Managing Humans" by Michael Lopp
5. "Requiem for the Sun" by Elizabeth Haydon
6. "Elegy for a Lost Star" by Elizabeth Haydon
7. "The Assassin King" by Elizabeth Haydon
8. "A Song for Lya" by George R. R. Martin
9. "White Night" by Jim Butcher
10. "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin
11. "World War Z" by Max Brooks
12. "Daughter of the Blood" by Anne Bishop
13. "Heir to the Shadows" by Anne Bishop
14. "Queen of the Darkness" by Anne Bishop
15. "Dreams Made Flesh" by Anne Bishop
16. "Tangled Webs" by Anne Bishop
17. "A Necessary Evil" by Garry Willis
18. "The Last Unicorn" by Peter S. Beagle
19. "King Rat" by China Mieville
20. "The Born Queen" by Greg Keyes
21. "Sinner" by Sara Douglass
22. "Pilgram" by Sara Douglass
23. "Crusader" by Sara Douglass
24. "Small Favor" by Jim Butcher
25. "Beautiful Code" by Andy Oram and Greg Wilson
26. "Looking for Jake" by China Mieville
27. "Analog Circuit Design" by Jim Williams
28. "Song for Susannah" by Stephen King
29. "Ready for Anything" by David Allen
30. "The Dark Tower" by Stephen King
31. "No Ordinary Time" by Doris Kearns Goodwin
32. "Fireclown" by Michael Moorcock
33. "Ruled Britannia" by Harry Turtledove
34. "Slaughterhouse Five" by Kurt Vonnegot
35. "The Total Money Makeover" by Dave Ramsey
36. "The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Jester
37. "The Terror" by Dan Simmons
38. "Days of Infamy" by Harry Turtledove
39. "Eye of the World" by Robert Jordan
40. "The Great Hunt" by Robert Jordan
41. "The Dragon Reborn" by Robert Jordan
42. "Never Eat Alone" by Keith Ferrazzi
43. "Made to Stick" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
44. "The Do-It Yourself Business Book" by Gustav Berle
45. "I'm Finally in Business for Myself... Now What?" by Mike Sandy
46. "The Shadow Rising" by Robert Jordan
47. "Fires of Heaven" by Robert Jordan

That comes out to be around 1 book every 7.77 days. I read somewhere around 21,400 pages which sounds really impressive until I break it down per day (around 58.5 pages a day). When I started tracking all of this, I wanted to average around a book a week and I got really close to that. I was a little disappointed at the 58.5 pages a day, though. On average, I tend to read about a page a minute, so that says that I only managed to read for an average of 1 hour a day. On the other hand, none of this counts the two books that I skimmed for work, nor does it count the couple of books that I started and did not finish. So, I have really read more than that; I am not counting them because I did not finish them.

So far, I think that the book tracking experiment was worthwhile. I feel like I have gotten some value out of it and I plan on keeping it up for the coming year. However, I think I may tweak things a little. Instead of just a straight list of books read, I think I want to have some method of rating the book, but I am not sure what will be best. Perhaps a star system? Maybe just a few sentences on each book? Possibly a combination of the two would be best.