Musings

After adding my new books to Goodreads yesterday, I went down the rabbit hole of looking at my categories and found them woefully incomplete. Cue 4 hours of listening to music while adding books that were on my Amazon wishlist, making sure all the kids books were labeled, adding a new category for teens and cross checking the rest of my adult fiction and non-fiction titles.

I’m not done yet but there has been a significant change in the numbers.

According to Goodreads I own 1204 books, a number which does not reflect the books I have multiple copies of (something I’m trying to resolve) and I’ve logged 1372 books.

Books to buy: 133

YA/Children’s books: 611 aka 50%

Teen: 140 or 11%

“Adult”: 453 and we so need a better descriptor for these titles

I mark all books, owned or not, as fiction or non-fiction. I’m thinking I should add a category for Poetry

Fiction: 1075 – 78% and probably a bit high with mis-tagged books

Non-Fiction: 216 – 15%

Recently I’ve been focused on reading more than writing, all in an effort to do less watching of Netflix, TV and YouTube…

After trading in some duplicate books at a used bookstore, I came home with a stack of novels to complete a series that I want to start in the Fall. So far this year I’ve been reading light fiction, mostly the Young Adult books that I’ve been collecting for years. Now that I’m tired of the light plots and easily wrapped up storylines, it’s time to dive into some modern fiction.

No kidding, in one series I’m on book 20 and the main character has been kidnapped 7 times in 20 books. I wish I were kidding.

My routine, when I bring a book home, is to log it in my book spreadsheet and then into Goodreads, both of which are very helpful when I’m at the bookstore, trying to remember which books I still need. And I thought I’d share some stats, for fun.

Currently I have 1313 books logged in Goodreads and only 72 of those books are on my “to buy” list. Of all the books I’ve logged, 258 of them have been read in the past 5 years. That’s just 19% of the books I own and at this rate it’ll take me 20 years to finish my current “to read” list, as long as I never buy more books which we can all agree is impossible.

Of the books I have logged only 4 are audio books (borrowed from the library) and 37 are on Kindle. That means I have, in my home, close to 1200 books.

Fiction makes up the biggest category at 85% of my books, the rest are non-fiction.

I also try to tag the books which are Young Adult/Children’s books and those make up 438 of my 1196 owned books – a respectable 36%.

Finally, I log books by the year I last read them. 2017 was the best year so far and 2019 was abysmal and 2021 is looking to fall somewhere in the middle. Here’s my 5 year track record:

2017: 60 books

2018: 52 books

2019: 31 books

2020: 58 books

2021: 48 books (as of Sept 1st)

The only thing slowing down my reading this year, so far, is the time I spend sewing which keeps my hands busy in another way. Considering that I’ve hand quilted 4 quilt tops and am working on a 5th, that’s a lot of time not reading.

When I leave for vacation next month I am thinking about the books I’ll bring along. For some reason I love paperback books at the beach and it’s the only time I’ll sit out in the sun to tan.

For 2021, I am fairly sure I can match my best year and reach 60, if not 65, books before New Year’s Day.

For over 10 years I ran my personal blog and, while I loved it, last year turned all the posts to private and shuttered the virtual doors.

Now it’s time for something new.

I’ve decided, upon my 2,895th listen to the Hamilton soundtrack, that I want to write essays. My goal is one per day for 3 months and, knowing that I’ll likely miss a day or two, my goal is 85 total.

More personal essays will be published here, business related topics may be on my business blog or Medium, and some I may cross post.