By the Numbers

I read 104 books this year.

84% were fiction
16% were non-fiction

Among the fiction (87 books):

55% were novels
23% were graphic novels
15% were plays
6% were short story collections
1% were novellas

In terms of century of publication:

1% were from the 17th Century
5% were from the 19th Century
60% were from the 20th Century
35% were from the 21st Century

These 104 books were written by 50 different authors or writing teams.

82% were male
16% were female
2% represents a book by a male/female writing team

8% were Canadian
50% were American
22% were English
4% were French
4% were Russian
And 2% (or one author) from each of Australia, the Czech republic, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, and Sweden.

98% were white, 2% were black.

Some Breakdown

The oldest book I read this year was Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline (1611).  I actually read it because I was on a giant George Bernard Shaw kick and came across his play Cymbeline Refinished in which he tries to correct some the issues with Shakespeare’s ending by rewriting the final act.  So, of course, I broke out the original and read it before reading Shaw’s “improvements”. Frankly, I come down on the side of Shaw in this particular debate.

I read three books published in 2009, the most recent being The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment by A.J.Jacobs, published in September.  I wish I had not read this book.  I discovered Jacobs last year; he’s a writer for Esquire magazine, and wrote 2 non-fiction novels. One about his quest to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, which is really funny and packed full of random trivia to know and tell. Jacobs other book was about the year he spent trying to follow the Bible to the letter.  Both had a modesty and sense of humour that I found very charming in a narrative voice.  His most recent book is a collected group of articles he wrote on ‘experiments’ that he did on himself, as it were, like subscribing to the Radical Honesty movement for a month (where you always tell the truth, but also use no filter between your thoughts and your words.  Think The Invention of Lying, if you saw it) or posing (with her permission) as his attractive nanny on a dating website to get her a date.  But without the depth, everything felt very cursory and crass, and I ended up liking him less at the end of the book.  Pity.

The author I read most of is Agatha Christie.  I’d been kind of saving her in the back of mind for when I get really old; I had this charming vision of really old Hillary in a rocking chair in front of a fireplace with a blanket over my legs and the mantle lined with the complete works of Agatha Christie.  But then I had a morbid moment and thought, I’d better just read through those now.  I can reread them in 60 years – I’m sure I’ll have forgotten most of the endings by then!  I read her most famous ones first (Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None, and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, the last of which you should go read RIGHT NOW if you have ANY interest in mysteries at all!), and then I read the complete mysteries of Miss Marple.  I’m going back to read chronologically now, so expect to see a lot of Agatha Christie on this list again next year!

My favourite quotes of the year were George Bernard Shaw, which I have already posted elsewhere on this blog.  I can’t wait to get back to Ontario – I’ll make a point of hitting the Shaw festival every year!

My least favourite book of the year was the one that isn’t even among the 104, because I couldn’t even finish it – American Pyscho by Brett Ellis Easton.  I respected some of the stylistic choices he made in order to show how monotonous and superficial the lifestyle of the main character was (constant descriptions of everyone’s clothing including brands, characters kept mistaking people for other people, etc.), but reading it was monotonous by itself.  Then came the psycho killer part and it was somehow gory and boring at the same time.  It crossed one of my internal lines with the goriness, so I put it down.  NOT recommended for the weak of heart.

Books I’m most glad to have found this year include:

One Half of Robertson Davies, a collection of speeches made by Robertson Davies.  The final speech was particularly striking, about Canadian cultural identity, as delivered to an American University’s faculty of Canadian Studies.  HIGHLY recommended, especially for those of you who are as madly in love with Robertson Davies as I am.

Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner. A fascinating read.  I’m going to reread it before I start my bachelor of education – I think there are some very exciting ideas in it!

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. I love a good dystopian future, and this one based on the hideous extremes of Henry Ford style labour ideals was brilliant.  And controversial – it was written in 1920-21, but it wasn’t published in the USSR until 1988!

Author I’m most glad to have discovered this year:

Mary Roach, an American journalist and popular science writer. I read three of her four books this year, and enjoyed each thoroughly.  She is not a scientist herself, but has a very inquisitive mind and the result is very accessible and very interesting.  She’s particularly interested in the history of lines of scientific inquiry – for instance, one of her books dealt a lot with the history of scientific inquiry into the afterlife and the spiritual realm.

I’m currently soliciting suggestions for 2010′s reading list!

-Hillary