As my year in reading goes, I've certainly read less books, but I've not spent less time reading. It's just some books take me longer than others. For example, I read Call of the Wild, an 80(ish) page book in 4 weeks and then I read a 400 page book in 4 days… so it's really swings and roundabouts.
I recorded 21 books on my Kindle this year, but actually one of them was read aloud to the kids (Which I do still count) but another one was all of 19 pages… which, I think really doesn't count (it was Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory by Martha Wells). So… 20 books then.
This post is mostly data driven (from my own web site's data) to give me a sense of the quality of the books I've read, otherwise individual reviews are all linked in this post or available on my books page.
Longest book: The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2) - 1,000 pages (and indeed the longest book I've ever read)
Shortest book: The Call of the Wild - 91 pages
Quickest read: 3 and 4 days (included as the page count is so wildly different)
- A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1) by Becky Chambers (160 pages)
- Iron Widow (Iron Widow, #1) by Xiran Jay Zhao (392 pages)
Longest read/slog: 54 days - though I think thi might have been the months I was struggling with my tinnitus the most making evenings hard to pick up the book
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1) by Douglas Adams (133 pages)
Diversity of authors:
- Women: 14 - two of which penned five of these books: Martha Wells and Becky Chambers
- Men: 7 - two of which were non-fiction - which for me is a bit of an oddity
I also try to make some of my author selections based on experiences and upbringings that would be wildly different to my own. I found Xiran Jay Zhao, Liu Cixin and Nnedi Okorafor superb for this (and Xiran Jay Zhao's Iron Widow included some good recommended reading at the end of their book that I'll be checking out in 2022).
Rated books
5 stars
- Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet - 288 pages
- The Whole Truth (DI Adam Fawley, #5) - 416 pages
- The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2) - 1,000 pages
4 stars
- The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (Wayfarers, #4) - 290 pages
- 84K - 464 pages
- Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries, #6) - 172 pages
- Marge and the Secret Tunnel (Marge, #4) - 144 pages
- The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - 258 pages
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1) - 133 pages
- Away with the Penguins - 346 pages
- Hercule Poirot's Christmas - 176 pages
- Iron Widow (Iron Widow, #1) - 392 pages
Books by decade
1900
1903: The Call of the Wild by Jack London
1930
1938: Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie
1970
1979: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1) by Douglas Adams
1990
1998: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
2010
2011: The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2) by Patrick Rothfuss
2017: James Acaster's Classic Scrapes by James Acaster
2018: Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet by Claire L. Evans
2018: Marge and the Secret Tunnel (Marge, #4) by Isla Fisher
2018: 84K by Claire North
2019: To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
2019: Who Am I, Again? by Lenny Henry
2019: Zed by Joanna Kavenna
2020
2020: Away with the Penguins by Hazel Prior
2020: Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory by Martha Wells
2020: Hold Up the Sky by Liu Cixin
2021: Iron Widow (Iron Widow, #1) by Xiran Jay Zhao
2021: A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1) by Becky Chambers
2021: The Whole Truth (DI Adam Fawley, #5) by Cara Hunter
2021: Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries, #6) by Martha Wells
2021: Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor
2021: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (Wayfarers, #4) by Becky Chambers