Monday, February 06, 2006

It's only a month or six late, but who's counting?

I cannot begin to tell you how relieved I am to tell you that I've finally finished reviewing all the books I read last year. Granted, most of them are just brief two- or three-sentence reviews, but enough to get the gist of what it was about and what I thought about it.

Part 1: April to June
Part 2: Early July
Part 3: Mid to Late July
Part 4: August to December

I read a grand total of 58 books over 52 weeks last year. There were a few slow months - November springs immediately to mind - but it still works out to a little over a book a week. So far this year, I've read five books, and I'm well on my way to finishing the fifth.

There are two things I have left to do. Firstly, post a complete list of the books in chronological order of reading, and secondly, post reviews of the books I've read so far this year. The biggest change I made this year is that I'm taking notes as I finish the books, so I at least have some idea why I did/didn't like something.

Some reflections:

One thing I didn't read a lot of last year was fantasy/sci-fi. I used to read them almost exclusively, but I'm branching out to other genres. However, this year I'm not going to worry so much about how it looks that I'm reading something by - *gasp* - a science fiction author. Plus, I didn't read any Tanya Huff last year, and I love her stuff to bits. It's time to revisit the Summoning series, I think.

I also read a lot more non-fiction, be it essays, histories, or sociologies. I enjoyed that, and I plan to read more of them this year.

The only thing I plan to read less of are books that bore me in the first twenty pages or so - more than a few of the books I finished last year were a chore to read, but I still felt obligated to do so. But not this year.