This was supposed to be the year I didn’t read as much because I dropped my Audible account. Clearly it didn’t make the difference it was supposed to. I read 28 books this year, possibly 29 if I take a few minutes to finish on my own the one that we started as a family and then never got back to. I only committed to reading twenty books this year, so that’s nearly a 50% over-shot.
Once again my interests wandered a bit. I read more religious books this year, and explored a few local authors. I revisited a few books I’ve read before. I even managed to listen to a couple audio books–one because it was free, and the other because I already owned it and needed something to listen to on a long car trip–and then had to finish it on my own.
After several years now of “close-but-not-quite” reading from Michaelbrent Collings he finally wrote one I enjoyed without reservation. He’s got a second book out in that series, so I’ll probably get to it next year. Michael J. Sullivan and John Flanagan were the two I read most, though there are more Brandon Sanderson books on my list than I expected, and Brandon Mull managed to get some attention, too. But for the most part I read a wide variety of writers this year.
I think one reason why I still managed to read so much this year is because I read more shorter books; memoirs, religious commentaries, children and YA books, etc–and listened to “The Way of Kings”. Goodreads claims I read over 10,000 pages this year, but over 10% of that was a single audiobook. My shortest book was 144 pages, and the average page length of my reading selections was 380 pages. My average (and only, actually) rating was four stars (I like most everything I read, but I reserve five stars for books that really floor me, and I didn’t encounter any this year). That’s cool that Goodreads keeps track of such pointless-but-interesting factoids!
So what’s ahead for next year? I’m still only going to commit to reading 20 books in 2017. And I’m going to focus in on a few specifics, like reading (or re-reading) some series I’ve been meaning to get to. I’m probably not going to read much by new authors. I’m may go back and try some books I may have attempted at too young and age and never finished. In short, I probably don’t have any real plan, just to read whatever I decide I want to read. There are still a lot of Flanagan books my sons insist I need to read. So…we’ll see!
Reading is good.