Finally, I got the energy and information together to summarize what I read last year and what an interesting (and tough, if I’m honest) year it was. An interim job promotion took over the majority of the months in late Spring to mid Fall, and the totals look a little sad due to my business then. However, couldn’t help that and besides – who’s measuring totals?
So to the main figures:
- 72 books in total
- 35 F / 30 NF, 2 plays, 1 collection of poetry
- 35% were books that I already owned (go, me), 29 library books, 4 e-books
- 10 were inter-library loans (ILL): 5 graphic novels, 4 NF, 1 F
- An even 50/50 split on male/female authors
- 20% were POC (authors)
- 1 DNF (but I rarely struggle too long with a potential DNF so hard to tell)
- Average 6 books/month
- 15,659 pages in total (av. 224 pp/month)
- 4 from 19th century, 32 from 20th century, and 33 from 21st century
- Shortest: 48 pp (Child’s Christmas in Wales)
- Longest: 554 pp (Oliver Twist)
Oh, and I really enjoyed reading more by (and about) POC so will definitely be picking up more from that category. It’s a whole new world with a new perspective for me to explore and I’ve really enjoying entering it. Expect more of that in 2016!
So to the titles (in no particular order of preference or pub date):
Fiction:
- Like One of the Family – Alice Childress (1954)
- The Country Girls Trilogy – Edna O’Brien
- The Diary of a Nobody – Weedon and George Grossman
- Annie John – Jamaica Kincaid
- The two I have read of Paule Marshall’s work – new author to me
- Elizabeth is Missing – Emma Healey
Non-Fiction:
- So We Read On (about the Great Gatsby) – Maureen Corrigan
- Readings – Michael Dirda
- Once Upon a Quinceanera – Julie Alvarez
- The 50’s: Women’s Oral History – Brett Harvey
- American Notes – Charles Dickens
- Yellow Woman and a Spirit of a Bear – Leslie Mann Silko
- 12 Years a Slave – Solomon Northrup
- Letters from New York – Helen Hanff (pure delight for me to read)
Classics (according to the Dictionary of Me):
- Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens (apart from the whole plot giveaway about 2/3 in)
- Child’s Christmas in Wales – Dylan Thomas (annual Christmas reading)
- 12 Years a Slave – Solomon Northrup
- Aurora Floyd – M. E. Bradden
- So Long a Letter – Mariama Bâ
- Diary of a Nobody – Weedon and George Grossman
Graphic Novels:
Hands-down winners were volume I and II of John Lewis’s The March about the early Civil Rights struggle in the U.S.
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