So over the course of 365 days, how many books did I read, buy, borrow from the library? How much did I spend? How much of my life has been wasted on literary pursuits? Let’s see, shall we?
2010
Books Read: 239
Books Partially Read: 54
Books Bought: 82
Money Spent (approximately): $191
Books Borrowed: 230 (mostly from library)
Books Given: 58
Books Re-read: 24
(A new category Kris has intrigued me into adding. Mine is 9.9% of my total reading as opposed to Kris’s 45% of total reading. Interesting).
Other statistics:
Total Books In: 370
Total Books Read: 239
Which means I only completed 65% of the books I brought into my house last year. I need to be more sparing obviously. Though it’s 79% if you count the books I half-read. This still means I did not even start 77 books I brought into the house.
Spent approximately $2.33 a book. Not bad. Good thing I go to a lot of book sales.
Favorite books of 2010: D.U.F.F. by Kody Keplinger, Outwitting History by Aaron Lansky, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, Incarceron by Catherine Fisher, Scott Pilgrim 1-6 by Bryan Lee O’Malley, and Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor. Interestingly, I only own one of those books now and when I read each of these it was a borrow from the library or a friend.
Plans for 2011: Honestly, $200 spent over the course of an entire year on books doesn’t feel that bad to me. I’m not planning on letting loose in 2011 and spending extravagantly but I’m not going to deny myself more books either. Though it is a trifle disappointing that all my favorite books of 2010 were borrows and not buys. I liked a lot of other ones, of course. I just picked top tops. Probably there will be even more library borrowing in my future. Hmph. It’s better for my shelves this way. I can’t creatively stack any further. And obviously some of that money spent was wasted as at least a small percentage of purchased books were never read or finished.
Also, possibly I need to start keeping track of how much money I make from selling books in a year. Which I then admittedly almost always turn around and spend on more books but still. I’m pretty sure Powell trips in the last 1-2 years has netted me about $250-275. That’s not bad is all I’m saying.
Any other thoughts for what I could focus on in coming book review months? I welcome input!
Wait, I have more thoughts.
If I read 239 books in 365 days, that means I was reading 65% of the year.
Or, in other words, I read about 19 books every month. So basically I read a book every 1.5 days all year long.
Statistics are so awesome to my OCD brain!
Excellent post. I don’t think you were reading 65% of the year, though, unless it takes you 24 hours to read a book.
i see your point. and after more math, i discovered i read 10% of the year based on hours spent reading on average.
from FB:
And I *could* wear a stopwatch but I think it would make reading seem more like a chore than fun. But we can extrapolate. On average it takes me say 3.5 hours to read 1 book. Some less, some more, of course. But 239 x 3.5 = 836.5 and the 54 I started I probably spent average of 30 minutes on so 54 x 0.5 = 27. Then 27 + 836.5 = 863.5 hours in 2010 spent reading. Out of 8544 hours total in a year is 10%. In context, I spend about 32% of the year sleeping.