Reading Review for 2021

Disappointing. That is how I would summary my 2021 reading journey. I read 45 books in 2021 which was lower than my goal of 52. In addition, there were very few truly memorable books, and I spent way too much time not challenging myself by reading books in a series. 

I track my reading via my LibraryThing account with a tag of “readXXXX” where XXXX is the year. The Export feature in LibraryThing keyed on the “read2021” tag produced a tidy spreadsheet with many more columns than I expected. For example, physical dimensions and weight of the book, number of pages, and Dewey Decimal classification. LibraryThing creates the report in .CSV format for easy parsing via Excel.

First reactions:

• As it turns out, I actually read 46 books and not 45. I forgot to tag “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” with “read2021”. I must have read that in 2021 since I also read books five and seven in the series to my younger daughter.
• ​Only 9 of the books in 2021 were non-fiction
• 27 books were part of a series or were with a persistent protagonist, like the Hercule Poirot books
• I read 7 books to my daughter
• There was only 1 book that I truly did not enjoy (“Ringworld”)
• 17 books were written by women
• 6 women wrote the 16 books written by women that I read last year: J. K. Rowling, Agatha Christie, Sue Grafton, Martha Wells, Maryrose Wood, and Traci Chee
• The oldest physical book I read was printed in 1975 (“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”), but the oldest story was originally published in 1922 (“The Secret Adversary”)
• The book that sat on my shelf the longest before reading (as determined by the Entry Date I entered it into LibraryThing) was “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”

Reading Goals for 2022:
I am not sure I have a plan per se, but I do have goals I would like to achieve. The goals can be categorized in number, genre, gender, and age. 

Number - Overall:
Getting back up to 50 books this year and hopefully the long-term target of 52 would be great. That will take discipline throughout the year that I have not been able to maintain to date. I am writing this post on January 14 and have only finished one book, but I should be done three by January 16 which will put me slightly ahead of a book-per-week pace. 

Number - Genre:
I would like to read more non-fiction this year. I have a lot of non-fiction on my shelves, so I should be able to find something to read whatever my mood.

Genre and Age:
I read a lot of mystery and I do not see that changing this year as Agatha Christie and Sue Grafton novels are a nice change after a deeper work. I would like to branch out more, and I have a number of classics to read from Dickens, Conan Doyle, Tolstoy, and others. If I can get some momentum with books written by Dickens, I might branch out to other English authors from that period. 

One gap in my reading is books about people. Nearly everything I read follows people and deals with very humanist points, but those books are often science fiction, fantasy, or mystery novels that have interesting people. I do not read a lot of books that are about people in contemporary, mundane worlds. I need to work on that. 

Gender:
As noted above, most of my books were written by men. It would be good to get more female perspectives into my reading, beyond Rowling, Christie, and Grafton.

Tracking Progress:
Consistent with previous years, I will be tracking my reading progress via Show Notes blog entries. If you are on LibraryThing, look me up there (as robertwmartin) as I will be tracking my progress there in the “Club Reads 2022” thread. 

Happy reading!