Analysis of 2008 reading

I took a closer look at my spreadsheet so that I could see what changed and what remained the same in terms of my 2008 reading. 

I read almost exactly the same amount of romances, but they were a much higher percentage of the total - since my overall reading was down by 25 books.  

2008 was the year of the mystery for me.  I read 13 of them, up from 8 the previous year and barely any before that.  In late summer I read the first of Julia Spencer-Fleming's Rev. Clare Fergusson mystery series, In the Bleak Midwinter, and went on a serious glom of this author.  I also read three Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries and tried several other new-to-me mystery authors.    My nonfiction reading was down from a high of 21 nonfiction books in 2007 to only 10 this year, and I also read far fewer young adult books this year.  

My re-reading was also down.  I re-read only 19 books, and several of these re-reads were children's books I read to Max.  I think this was because I discovered so many good 2008 books that I didn't have to fall back on old, already read titles to prop up my reading experience.  I had four 2008 DIK reads:

Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas

The Spymaster's Lady by Joanna Bourne

Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz

Just One of the Guys by Kristan Higgins

(I have no excuse for why I never wrote a review of Spymaster's Lady; I just never did.  And Margaret sent it to me and everything.  Mea culpa, mea culpa.  Mea maxima culpa.  I'll get to it the next time around.)

Also, two of the Spencer-Fleming books - Out of the Deep I Cry and All Mortal Flesh - were first-time DIK reads for me.

That's a lot of first-time DIK reads in one year.  No wonder I didn't need to re-read.  I had a lot of B reads too.  

In terms of by-month reading, the year had some real highs and lows.  In March I went on vacation to J.'s parents' Florida house, and they spent oodles of time with Max which gave me a ton more time to read.  Clearly, I took advantage of that.  

August was mid-Julia Spencer-Fleming glom.  I tossed aside bunches of other stuff to read her books.  In October and November I took over as one of AAR's four new publishers and that killed my reading time for those months.  I have no real excuse for May.  I don't know what happened there.

Can I just say here how much I love my little book database?  I love the graphs and charts.  I love having all that information at my fingertips at any time.  I am librarian geeked at all this data.  

2009 is a new reading year.  I'm starting slow with no expectations, but given how great 2008 was, I'd have to say I'm no longer in a slump, per se.  I may have morphed into an extremely picky reader, but obviously some of the current batch of romance writers can still take me there.   For that I am very happy.

tags: books  reading patterns