This post is my follow up to my 2018 reading and includes numbers and some commentary, along with a relook at my goals for the year.
I will revist goals in a while but I want to just get the numbers out there first. As to numbers, they are as accurate as possible within reason. There are also several issues as to why many of them may be more or less accurate. No doubt I am no more than a couple books off in any category though. I am happy with the various countings and additions.
Books Read in 2018 by the Numbers
- Finished 382
- Not finished 10
- On pause 5
- Gave up 6
Of those Finished:
- Fiction 288
- Nonfiction 79
- Both 3
- Non-categorized 13
- Graphic novel 257
- Manga 2
- GN Fiction 235
- GN NF 25
- Ebook 258
- Translation 35
- Together 1
- Re-read 24
Other numbers:
- Not counted 3
- Not in Goodreads 13
- Webcomics 5
Goodreads shows 371 books finished but there are also 13 not in Goodreads. I am not counting: 3 single-issue comics that I thought were larger collections rather than one issue, nor 5 webcomics, most of which were several hundreds of pages.
As for finished Fiction, 1 book was actually 3 novels and one was 5 but they are only counted as 1 each. Both were ebooks and re-reads. So my total ought truly be (at least) 6 higher.
The 10 Not finished books (means that I am currently reading them) are 9 nonfiction (1 ebook, 2 together) and 1 fiction which is also a graphic novel.
The 5 on pause books are all nonfiction.
The 6 I gave up on are 2 nonfiction (1 ebook) and 4 fiction (3 ebook, 2 graphic novels of which 1 was an ebook).
2018 Books and Reading Goals
“My overall book goal is 90 books for 2018. I have a list of potential books-to-be-read divided into categories but decided not to post it or hew to it either.
My main goal is to read more translations; total 12. Maybe without the goal of reviewing them too I can actually get close to 10-15% of the total being translations.
I think that is pretty much it. I will track a few categories and such but if I fail to do a good job then I intend and hope not to pressure myself into going back and getting the data straight. If I end up with a raw number of books read of 90 or more, of which 12 or more are translations then I will be satisfied with my 2018 reading goals (based on this criteria). The end of the year may well bear different criteria. ::sigh::”
How did I do?
- Overall goal 90
- Finished 382
- ◊
- Translation goal 12
- Translations read 35
- % of total 9%
I would say this is pretty darn good. Translations as a percentage of total could be better but I am in no way unhappy about it.
Female vs Male authors
I am again not remotely beginning down this road because if you look at my list you can see I read lots of women authors. I am not going to start “assigning gender” to authors and what is this only two gender BS? Just not a road I am heading down.
“But you read graphic novels ….”
Yes. They mostly were. But I also read 125 books that were not. How many did you read? At all? [Honestly that is rhetorical as the only answer I care about is that you feel that it was a good number for you this year.]
Did you read any like The Foundations of Access to Knowledge: A Symposium (Frontiers of Librarianship, #8)?
I read more widely than ever, probably, and I know the areas I would like to keep pushing/probing.
I don’t turn to the YA librarian and say “but you only read YA novels!” I read a couple of those again this year and I read them as fast as a graphic novel almost. They are very fast reads and are generally of middling to no actual substance but I am not going to belittle anyone’s reading of them.
Or how about the children’s librarian? I don’t turn to her (mostly) and say “but your books don’t have words at all or they only have a vocabulary of 28 words …!” I read a couple of those this year too, including a couple with no words.
So unless you read War and Peace and Moby Dick and two score more huge literary works then shut the fuck up about which books I read or that most were graphic novels or … whatever. I have no time or patience for it.
Some of my favorite books were:
- Michael Shea – The Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- Jackie Sobon – Vegan Yack Attack on the Go!: Plant-Based Recipes for Your Fast-Paced Vegan Lifestyle
- Cyril Pedrosa – Three Shadows
- Debbie Tung – Quiet Girl in a Noisy World: An Introvert’s Story
- Several volumes of Calvin & Hobbes
- Mat Johnson – Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery (New Edition: Ingognegro, #1)
- Keezy Young – Taproot: A Story about a Gardener and a Ghost
- Shigeru Mizuki – Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths
- Jirō Taniguchi – The Walking Man
- Geoffrey Canada – Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence, A True Story in Black and White
- Christopher Ryan – Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships
- Rik Smits – The Puzzle of Left-handedness
- Rakesh Satyal – No One Can Pronounce My Name
- Kate Evans – Threads: From the Refugee Crisis
- Esther Perel – Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence
- Matt Wastadowski – Oregon All the Time: A Beer Geek’s Guide to Bend and Central Oregon
- Scott McCloud – Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
- Wayne L. Westcott – Strength Training Past 50
- Terry Pratchett – Nation
- Elizabeth Strout – Olive Kitteridge
- Derf Backderf – My Friend Dahmer
- Doug Wechsler – The Hidden Life of a Toad
- Christophe Chabouté – Moby Dick [wordless graphic novel]
- Adam Glass – Suicide Squad Vol. 1: Kicked in the Teeth
Titles in bold are particularly high on this list; at least as best as I can remember.
I would particularly recommend The Walking Man.
I sincerely hope your 2018 year in reading was all you hoped it would be or at the least was as good as you could honestly make it for yourself. My wish for you in the new year is the same.
2019 Reading Goals
Now to turn to reading goals for this year.
I think I will make my Goodreads challenge 100 books and again shoot for a minimum of 12 translations and try to keep the translations as a percentage of the total at or above 10%.
And I think I will leave it that simple for now. There are places within that that I would love to go and after I have a look at how many books of poetry, science, sex & gender, etc. that I read I may want to focus on a couple of those categories more. As of now, without having added the numbers for those read in 2018, I am satisfied. Once I do though, I will evaluate how it went and if I want to increase my efforts in any of those categories.
I am also skipping making a list of potential reads for this coming year as, technically, I already have several things that can serve as such.
Good reading in 2019 everyone!