52 Books in 52 Weeks, 2009 Edition

It’s time for another “52 Books in 52 Weeks” recap.

The grand total was 66 books this year, well above last year’s total. I posted back in October when I met my yearly goal, so the last ten weeks of the year were pretty much gravy.

This year’s histogram:

By comparison, the same chart for last year:

My reading rate was more consistent this year, with two outliers. September was a busy month at work, which I suppose could explain why it was light on reading. June surprises me; you’d think the summer months would be more conducive to reading, but maybe not.

I really focused on continuing series this year. In addition to continuing to work through series by Jim Butcher, Lee Child, and Michael Connelly, I started reading Jasper Fforde, Charlie Huston, and Arthur Phillips.

Yes, I read the Twilight series. No, I’m not ashamed of it; now I know what all the fuss is about. I won’t go on about what I think is wrong with them; others have covered those issues better than I can, though perhaps not quite as humorously as in this comic. I’ll limit myself to saying that anyone who thinks that the Harry Potter series is bad for kids but Twilight isn’t has a misguided set of priorities, in my opinion.

Other quantitative facts:

• Books by authors whose blogs I read regularly: 4
• Books I own, signed by the author: 2
• Books made into movies: 4 (with at least 3 more likely to be in the future)
• Books that now I can’t remember having read: 2

That last one is probably an indication that I’m reading a little too much, at a rate above my retention level. One of the things I’m planning to do this year is capsule reviews after reading, which should at least give me something to refer back to.

Here’s the entire list for 2009, in reverse chronological order:

• Coupland, Douglas. Generation A.
• Fforde, Jasper. Lost In a Good Book.
• Butcher, Jim. Death Masks.
• Meyer, Stephenie. Breaking Dawn.
• Locke, Christopher. Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices.
• Philips, Arthur. The Egyptologist: A Novel.
• Posnanski, Joe. The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds.
• Eggers, Dave. Zeitoun.
• Niven, Larry and Lerner, Edward M. Destroyer of Worlds.
• See, Lisa. Shanghai Girls.
• Brown, Dan. The Lost Symbol.
• Joss, Morag. Half Broken Things.
• Milton, Giles. Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, or, The True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History.
• Almond, Steve. Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America.
• Silbert, Leslie. The Intelligencer.
• Stafford, Tom and Webb, Matt. Mind Hacks: Tips & Tools for Using Your Brain in the World.
• Larsson, Stieg. The Girl Who Played With Fire.
• Bernstein, Peter L. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk.
• Grossman, Austin. Soon I Will Become Invincible.
• Parker, T. Jefferson. Cold Pursuit.
• Child, Lee. Echo Burning.
• Hornfischer, James D. The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors.
• Fforde, Jasper. The Eyre Affair.
• Grann, David. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon.
• Huston, Charlie. No Dominion.
• Lewis, Michael. The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game.
• Petroski, Henry. Paperboy: Confessions of a Future Engineer.
• Connelly, Michael. The Last Coyote.
• Potter, Christopher. You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe.
• Meyer, Stephenie. Eclipse.
• Bonner, Kevin Jan. Furniture Restoration and Repair for Beginners.
• Butcher, Jim. Summer Knight.
• Schramm, Ken. The Compleat Meadmaker.
• Nissel, Angela. Mixed: My Life in Black and White.
• Meyer, Stephenie. New Moon.
• Joss, Morag. Fruitful Bodies.
• Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.
• Huston, Charlie. Already Dead.
• Safina, Carl. Voyage of the Turtle: In Pursuit of the Earth’s Last Dinosaur.
• Connelly, Michael. The Concrete Blonde.
• Schneier, Bruce. Beyond Fear.
• Philips, Arthur. Prague: A Novel.
• Fowler, Chrisopher. The Victoria Vanishes.
• Meyer, Stephenie. Twilight.
• Rowling, J.K. The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
• Roach, Mary. Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.
• Child, Lee. Running Blind.
• Petroski, Henry. The Evolution of Useful Things.
• Butcher, Jim. Grave Peril.
• Hodgman, John. More Information Than You Require.
• Sedaris, David. Holidays on Ice.
• Carlsen, Spike. A Splintered History of Wood: Belt Sander Races, Blind Woodworkers, and Baseball Bats.
• Vanderbilt, Tom. Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us).
• Baricco, Alessandro. Silk.
• Berenson, Alex. The Faithful Spy.
• Zoellner, Tom. The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire.
• Larsson, Stieg. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
• Schwarz, Christopher. Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use.
• Dublanica, Steve. Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip – Confessions of a Cynical Waiter.
• O’Connell, Carol. Dead Famous.
• Jay, Ricky. Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women.
• Sobel, Dava. Galileo’s Daughter.
• Pelecanos, George. The Turnaround.
• Hieronymus, Stan. Brew Like a Monk.
• Wright, Evan. Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War.
• Rucka, Greg. A Gentleman’s Game.

#52 is in the house.

So is #53. I don't know which of the two I'll finish first. And it's only the middle of October.

52 Books in 52 Weeks, 2008 Edition

It’s time for another “52 Books in 52 Weeks” recap.

The grand total was 49 books this year, three short of my goal. I recall around the beginning of December that I was running about 5 or 6 books off my pace, so apparently I made up a little ground at the end. Not enough, as it turns out.

I keep track of both the books I’ve read and my todo list on Backpack, as a checklist. Recently, they added the date an item was checked off to the list display, but it looks like they’ve been collecting it all along. As a result, I now have a record of when I finished each book, to within a day or two.

This lends itself to some more sophisticated statistics.

For instance, here’s a histogram of how many books I read in each month of 2008:

July was my best month, April my worst. April was when I fell behind, and I never recovered the pace, though I came close in July.

Other quantitative facts:

• Books by sportswriters: 3
• Books by children of former US Vice Presidents: 1
• Books made into movies: 3

The biggest disappointment of the year was, I think, The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold. Her first book, The Lovely Bones, remains one of my all-time favorite books, and I was excited to learn earlier today that it’s been made into a movie, by Peter Jackson no less. Compared to it, The Almost Moon was a letdown. No, that’s not entirely fair; it was a letdown even when not compared to The Lovely Bones.

Picking my favorite from this list is a lot harder. In fact, I’m not going to. Maybe I could come up with a top 10, but since that’s almost 20% of the total list, that doesn’t seem terribly useful.

Here’s the entire list for 2008, in reverse chronological order:

• Fatsis, Stefan. A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL.
• Sheehan, Michael A. Crush the Cell: How to Defeat Terrorism Without Terrorizing Ourselves.
• Phillips, Marie. Gods Behaving Badly.
• de Santis, Pablo. The Paris Enigma.
• Butcher, Jim. Fool Moon.
• Quinion, Michael. Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds: ingenious tales of words and their origins.
• Shepard, Jim. Project X.
• Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don’t.
• Pelecanos, George P. Hell to Pay.
• Niven, Larry and Lerner, Edward M. Juggler of Worlds.
• Posnanski, Joe. The Good Stuff.
• Petroski, Henry. Pushing the Limits: New Adventures in Engineering.
• Connelly, Michael. The Black Ice.
• Deford, Frank. I’m Just Getting Started.
• Huff, Tanya. Smoke and Shadows.
• Walsh, Peter. It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff.
• Gill, Michael Gates. How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else.
• Sedaris, David. When You Are Engulfed in Flames.
• Burrough, Bryan. Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34.
• Miller, John Ramsey. Upside Down.
• Coupland, Douglas. Girlfriend in a Coma.
• Spencer-Fleming, Julia. I Shall Not Want.
• Wells, Ken. Travels with Barley: A Journey Through Beer Culture in America.
• Winchester, Simon. The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom.
• Butcher, Jim. Storm Front.
• Couch, Dick. The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228.
• Johnson, Adam. Parasites Like Us.
• Sacks, Oliver. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.
• Child, Lee. Nothing to Lose.
• Helprin, Mark. The Pacific and Other Stories.
• Fuller, Alexandra. Scribbling the Cat.
• Joss, Morag. Fearful Symmetry.
• Mezrich, Ben. Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions.
• Prachett, Terry. Carpe Jugulum.
• Metzger, Robert A. Cusp.
• Connelly, Michael. The Overlook.
• Coupland, Douglas. The Gum Thief.
• Logan, Chuck. After the Rain.
• Mayle, Peter. A Good Year.
• Weisman, Alan. The World Without Us.
• Crile, George. Charlie Wilson’s War.
• Gore, Kristin. Sammy’s House.
• Clarke, Thurston. Searching for Crusoe: A Journey Among the Last Real Islands.
• Frey, Stephen. The Chairman.
• Niven, Larry and Lerner, Edward M. Fleet of Worlds.
• Curtis, Bryan. The Explainer.
• Sebold, Alice. The Almost Moon.
• Buford, Bill. Heat : an amateur’s adventures as kitchen slave, line cook, pasta maker, and apprentice to a Dante-quoting butcher in Tuscany.
• Grafton, Sue. T is for Trespass.