My Year in Books

Ever since I started using Goodreads to track books I want to read and am reading I started doing a yearly post to share the stats it collects about my yearly reading. It's fun to look over the year and see all the books I've read. I read way more books this year than I have in the past. I have the Coronavirus to thank for that. Between quitting my job to be home with the kids while they were in distance learning and not having plans on the weekends, I had a lot more time for reading. When I saw how close I was to hitting 200 books for the year, I was tempted to make that my goal for 2021. But I really just don't like having a set number of books to read as a goal because it encourages you to read shorter books for more volume than the longer books you actually want to read! So I didn't make that my goal, although if it were to happen one year it would be pretty cool! And to think this all started because after Elise was born I set a goal to read at least one book a month because with lack of sleep and caring for babies, I had stopped reading as much as I used to! It really took off from there! Read about my year in books last year here and in 2018 here.

I read 56,782 pages across 186 books.
Last year I read 41,911 pages across 132 books.
In 2018 I read 38,074 pages across 128 books.

My shortest book was The Bookish Holiday of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman at 36 pages.

My longest book was Anna Karenina at 964 pages.

The average length of book I read was 305 pages.

The most popular book I read was Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn with 3,575,162 other people reading it.

The least popular book I read was The Soloist by Steve Lopez with 117 other people reading it. That surprised me a bit because they made the book into a movie and that usually increases the popularity of a book significantly, as you can see with Gone Girl above!

My favorite fiction book I read this year was a tie between The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner, The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg, and Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid.

My favorite nonfiction book I read this year was Untamed by Glennon Doyle.

My favorite fiction book I listened to as an audiobook was Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver.

My favorite nonfiction book I listened to as an audiobook was Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson.

Overall favorite book of the year: I have no idea how I did this in the past. I can't do it this year.

Honorable Mention (how I read them in parentheses):

• Nothing Like I Imagined by Mindy Kaling (audiobook)
• Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center (audiobook)
• The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal (audiobook)
• The House Girl by Tara Conklin (audiobook)
• Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (book)
• Other People's Houses by Abbi Waxman (ebook)
• His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham (audiobook)
• Ordinary Grace by William Kent Kruger (audiobook)
• An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo (book of poetry)
• I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown (audiobook)
• Know My Name by Chanel Miller (ebook)
• American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins (ebook)
• Shit My Dad Says by Justin Halpern (audiobook)
• What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty (book)
• Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell (audiobook)
• Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell (audiobook)
• The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
• Light Over London by Julia Kelly

My favorite children's chapter books:

• Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling
• The One and Only Bob by Katherine Applegate
• Before the Ever After by Jacqueline Woodson
• Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
• Wonder by R.J. Palacio