2019 Wrap Up - Finally!

This was meant to be done in the final days of 2019. Or maybe even the first days of 2020. Ah well, better late than never!

It took 2019 a while to take off, reading wise; but in the end, I'd read a lot of books that I really loved. In fact, it was so hard to narrow down my fiction faves to just ten that I accidentally left eleven on my list!  It was, unintentionally, the year of the woman. Books by women outpaced books by men 4 to 1 and the majority of my nonfiction reads were by or about women. I read, again unintentionally, the second most books I've ever read in a year, thanks largely to having re-upped my library card and being able to download audiobooks at long last; I listened to twice as many books this year as I did in 2018. And I read a record number of nonfiction books. I made great use of the library; about 60% of the books I read were from the library. That actually kept me reading faster because of the time constraint of those darn due dates!

It was an abysmal year, on the other hand, for reading classics and for being a part of the blogging community (or, for that matter, even being interactive with my readers). Goals, there will be goals for 2020! But first, the numbers:

Total books read: 106
Books by Women: 81
Books by Men: 21
Diversity: 24
Nonfiction: 34
Audiobooks: 30
Short Story Collections/Essay Collections: 7
Classics: 3
Library Books: 60

My top ten books in each category are updated on the tab at the top of the page. When I added the books I'd read by or about persons of color, I was surprised; I thought I'd done better. I think the reason I felt that way was because so many of the 24 books I read were so good they made my best-of lists; 60% of my fiction choices and 40% of my nonfiction and audiobook choices were by or about persons of color. That should be a good incentive to read more diversely.

Now, about those 2020 goals.

I'm not good at goals (or challenges, either; you'll notice I don't sign up for those any more). But, as always, in looking back over the past year, I definitely see some things I'd like to change. And, let's face it, it's a whole lot easier to make changes to your reading than to your exercise routine. So this should be too hard, right?

1. Read more classics: I love classics. I almost every classic I'd like to read. To push this goal along, I chose The Remains of the Day, a modern classic, as my first book of 2020. It being 2020, I'd like to read 20 classics this year and get back on track.

2. Read less: Ha! I'll bet you've never heard me say that before! But when I was putting my list of books read in 2019 into my journal, I honestly couldn't remember what some of them were about. Which isn't the end of the world when we're talking about books that I read just for escapism. But I couldn't remember some of the books I knew I had enjoyed reading. That's not good. It's not a competition; and even if it were, I don't need to win. I'm not sure how to intentionally go about achieving this goal, but I am 10 days into the new year and have yet to finish a single book. Maybe the key is just to, sometimes anyway, find other productive things to do with my time, like take up crocheting again. Or finally get around to painting my office and making it the beautiful space I've been wanting it to be for years. So I can go in there, put my feet up, and read!