I love to read. Always have. I recently realized I’ve read over 500 books since 2011. My mom, sister, and I were discussing this milestone, and my sister asked if I’d requested to stop at a library on the way home from the hospital after my birth! Maybe not, but I vividly remember the trips to the little community library several miles away to get a new stack of books every week before I even started school. When a larger county library was built in our neighborhood less than a mile from our house, I was ecstatic.
And, yes, I was that child who “snuck” books to bed under my pillow to read via the closet light (used as a nightlight) long after bedtime! Now, my books come with a built-in light – thanks to my iPad!
My elementary school favorites included the Nancy Drew series, the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series, the We Were There historical novels, and my favorite easy-to-spot on the library shelf orange-clad Childhood of Famous Americans series (describing these as orange-clad will date me). Unsurprisingly, those genres still garner the majority of my reading interest today.
What might be surprising though, is that my all-time favorite childhood book was the classic A Wrinkle in Time.
I don’t recall reading many books more than once in my lifetime (been there, done that!). A Wrinkle in Time is the exception, I have read it multiple times – like use the fingers on both hands to count the times I read it. I still had my well-worn copy until I think I loaned it to a nephew in the 2000s; it probably disintegrated while he read it! When the 2018 movie was announced, I had to download the book to my Kindle app and read it once again, of course, to see if the magic and moral of the story was still there as a 55-year-old! It was! (No comment on the movie, though.)
I may or may not have mentioned in a previous post that I’m a data geek. I had an early Kindle device, but content was scarce, and formatting was terrible for the most part. However, by late 2010, I went pretty much all-in – especially when the Kindle app became available on the iPad. It was that or buy additional bookshelves as I typically buy books (Amazon made it easier than going to the library!) and keep them forever (even though I likely only read them once). My only problem was keeping track of what I had and what I’d read. My solution, you might have guessed, was a database…in Excel, of course (IYKYK). I have columns for the Author, Title, Subtitle, Format (Physical/Digital) and Date Completed. Over the years, I added Genre, Number of Pages, Favorite Indicator, Cost, and Date Added. Now, anytime I get (buy/borrow) a book, I enter it in the spreadsheet. I have a bunch of “reports” to slice and dice every which way to see how much I’m reading, what I’m reading, when I’m reading, and how much I’m spending!
I have only a few entries for 2010 as I started this originally for digital books, but I did add a handful of physical books into the list in 2011 and 2012 that helped me remember several books that were parts of series that I was reading with a mix of digital and physical versions. So, before I do a year-end review of what I read this year (in a future post or posts), I thought I’d summarize what I read from 2011-2022 by year.
Books Read in 2011
Total Books: 43 Total Pages: 14723 Average Pages: 368
Genres: 9 (Business, Dystopian Sci-Fi, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Religion, Technical, Thriller, Travel)
Most Read Genre: Thriller\Mystery – 34
Most Read Authors: Michael Connelly – 23; Lawrence Block – 5
Favorites:
Treasured: Knowing God by the Things He Keeps by Leigh McElroy
Moneyball by Michael Lewis
Books Read in 2012
Total Books: 44 Total Pages: 17519 Average Pages: 398
Genres: 6 (Biography, Business, Dystopian Sci-Fi, Mystery, Thriller)
Most Read Genre: Thriller\Mystery – 36
Most Read Authors: David Baldacci – 13; Tess Gerritsen – 12
Favorites: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand;
Extraordinary, Ordinary People by Condoleezza Rice
I don’t remember why the next 3 years had so few books read – it probably had to do with my job though!
Books Read in 2013
Total Books: 21 Total Pages: 7751 Average Pages: 369
Genres: 7 (Biography, Business, Historical Fiction, History, Mystery, Thriller, Travel)
Most Read Genre: Thriller\Mystery – 10
Most Read Authors: Lawrence Block – 3; Baldacci/Sue Grafton/John Grisham/Adriana Trigiani – 2 each
Favorites:
The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin
A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage
Books Read in 2014
Total Books: 21 Total Pages: 7370 Average Pages: 351
Genres: 5 (Biography, Dystopian Sci-Fi, Historical Fiction, Suspense, Thriller)
Most Read Genre: Suspense\Thriller – 15
Most Read Authors: Brandilyn Collins – 4; Liz Wiehl – 4; Veronica Roth – 3
Favorites: nothing stood out to make my favorite list
Books Read in 2015
Total Books: 17 Total Pages: 7494 Average Pages: 441
Genres: 6 (Biography, Historical Fiction, History, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller)
Most Read Genre: Suspense\Thriller\Mystery – 11
Most Read Authors: Baldacci – 3; Trigiani – 3
Favorites:
The Innovators by Walter Isaacson
The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Books Read in 2016
Total Books: 39 Total Pages: 14454 Average Pages: 371
Genres: 8 (Biography, Dystopian Sci-Fi, Fiction, Historical Fiction, History, Sci-Fi, Thriller)
Most Read Genre: Suspense\Thriller – 29
Most Read Authors: Lee Child – 17; John Grisham – 4
Favorites: Obviously I read a lot of Child’s Jack Reacher series, and a lot of other really good books, but another year when no single book qualified for my “favorite” list.
Books Read in 2017
Total Books: 34 Total Pages: 12696 Average Pages: 373
Genres: 8 (Biography, Fiction, Historical Fiction, History, Mystery, Technical, Thriller, Travel)
Most Read Genre: Thriller\Mystery – 14
Most Read Authors: Lee Child – 3; Baldacci\Terri Blackstock\Connelly\Grafton\Grisham\Kerry Lonsdale – 2 each
Favorites:
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro.
With 3 books on my 2017 favorites list, I guess that makes up for none in 2014 and 2016!
Books Read in 2018
My first full year of retirement and I finally met my goal of averaging a book a week!
Total Books: 53 Total Pages: 18141 Average Pages: 342
Genres: 14 (Adventure Fiction, Biographical Historical Fiction, Biography, Business, Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fiction, History, Mystery, Politics, Religion, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Travel)
Most Read Genres: Thriller\Mystery – 12; Historical Fiction – 11; Adventure Fiction – 9
Most Read Authors: Ernest Dempsey – 9; Lee Child – 3
Favorites:
Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan;
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Books Read in 2019
Total Books: 45 Total Pages: 16043 Average Pages: 357
Genres: 8 (Adventure Fiction, Biography, Business, Fiction, Historical Fiction, History, Mystery, Thriller)
Most Read Genres: Thriller\Mystery – 14; Historical Fiction – 8; Adventure Fiction – 6
Most Read Authors: Ernest Dempsey – 6; Elizabeth Jane Howard – 5; Baldacci – 3
Favorite:
The Last Palace: Europe’s Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House by Norman Eisen
Books Read in 2020
Total Books: 45 Total Pages: 13240 Average Pages: 294
Genres: 10 (Adventure Fiction, Biography, Fantasy, Fiction, German Fiction, Historical Fiction, History, Religion, Sci-Fi, Thriller)
Most Read Genres: Thriller\Mystery – 12; Historical Fiction – 8; German Fiction – 8
Most Read Authors: Andre Klein – 8; C.S. Lewis – 7; Grisham – 4
Note: I started learning German in earnest during lockdown and bought many “Dino Learnt Deutsch” books. They were shorter than my normal average pages, but took me longer to read, too, as I increased my “deutschen Wortschatz” (German vocabulary)!
Favorites:
The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
The Radium Girls by Kate Moore
Books Read in 2021
Total Books: 35 Total Pages: 11975 Average Pages: 342
Genres: 11 (Adventure Fiction, Biographical Historical Fiction, Biography, Fantasy, Fiction, German Fiction, Historical Fiction, Non-Fiction, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Travel)
Most Read Genres: Thriller\Mystery – 7; Historical Fiction – 5; Travel – 5
Most Read Authors: Dempsey – 4; Klein – 3; Grisham – 3
Note: I had a lot on my plate in 2021, so a down reading year. And, since travel was still very limited – more travel-related books in hopes of planning future visits to a variety of locales.
Favorite:
The Venice Sketchbook by Rhys Bowen
Books Read in 2022
Total Books: 50 Total Pages: 17759 Average Pages: 355
Genres: 10 (Adventure Fiction, Biographical Historical Fiction, Biography, Fiction, Historical Fiction, History, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Travel)
Most Read Genre: Thriller\Mystery – 32
Most Read Authors: LJ Ross – 19; Louise Penny – 6; Rhys Bowen – 4; Mary Kay Andrews – 3
Favorites: Another year where no single book stood out, but I really enjoyed starting Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Gamache series (love the quirky characters!) and consuming LJ Ross’s DCI Ryan series.
I obviously have some favorite authors and I will binge a series until I’m caught up. I had not noticed until compiling this that my “favorite books” tend to trend towards non-fiction. I enjoy the “stories” of the fiction I read, but I guess nothing sticks with you like “real life”! A couple of years ago, I got a Kindle Unlimited (KU) subscription, so I’ve gravitated to things mostly available there (thus, all the LJ Ross for example, but only 6 of the many Louise Penny Inspector Gamache books are available on KU to date). I will still buy the latest from John Grisham, David Baldacci, Michael Connelly, and Lee Child – as they aren’t on KU and I enjoy the characters they create and their story-telling. I’ll buy other books occasionally, too, as “needed”. And yes, I’m aware you can now borrow digital books from the library…I should probably investigate that next year!
That about sums it up in advance of my 2023 reading overview! I’d better get back to finishing that last book or maybe two of 2023….
Notes By Nancy 
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