Fifteen Reading Years, and the Hits of the Past Five.

I will hit a reading milestone in the next couple of days: fifteen years of keeping track of what I read, each new book that I finish (no re-reads are counted.). I wish I'd started recording my books earlier in my life, just for the pleasure of looking back and remembering, but that would probably be more data than even I would enjoy.

When I began recording my finished books in January 2007, I was entering the most prolific reading years of my life, from 2007-2015. I averaged 136 books per year in those years. In 2016, my reading fell off sharply for reasons I can't quite describe. I became much more addicted to social media and news sites because of the upheaval happening in the United States, and I became more interested in hearing other people's real-life stories, on blogs and Reddit and in comment sections, especially as the stories of women and people of color came much more to the forefront of our public discussions. And my eyesight and my attention span both went to middle-aged hell. Between 2016-2021, I averaged 44 books per year.

 Every year I resolve to get my reading numbers back up, and every year I fail for various reasons, but it's okay. I re-read a great deal, and those books don't go onto my list, so I am still reading. It's still a joy, whether I pick up a library book, open a Kindle book on my phone, or pull a comfortable, beat-up oldie from my shelf.

I record and rate my books on GoodReads. The five-star books from the first ten years (2007-2016) of my record-keeping are listed here on my blog: fiction and non-fiction. 

Here are the five-star reads from the past five years (2017-2021.)

Fiction:

Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton
News of the World by Paulette Jiles
The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
How To Stop Time by Matt Haig
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
The Tubman Command by Elizabeth Cobbs
The Lost Man by Jane Harper
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
Virgil Wander by Leif Enger
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
The Distant Dead by Heather Young
The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady HEndrix
Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison by Lois Lenski
Envious Casca by Georgette Heyer
The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H.G. Parry
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
V for Victory by Lissa Evans
Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty
The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams

Non-Fiction:

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild
Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn
High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic by Glenn Frankel
What Is The Bible? by Rob Bell
Altamont: The Rolling Stones the Hells Angels and the Inside Story of Rock's Darkest Day by Joel Selvin
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore
If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat by John Ortberg
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed
The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier by Scott Zesch and Grover Gardner
American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst by Jeffery Toobin
Calypso by David Sedaris
Slaves in the Family by Edward Ball
The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventures of Les Miserables by David Bellos
Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again by Rachel Held Evans
Tender At the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl
Stories From Jonestown by Leigh Fondakowski
The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World by A.J. Baime
Once You Go In: A Memoir of Radical Faith by Carly Gelsinger
Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles by Gary Krist
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser
This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing by Jacqueline Winspear
The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock: An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense by Edward White
Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage by Anne Lamott
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

In the past fifteen years, I have read 1,556 books. And 179 of those were five-star reads, the best and most memorable and most compelling. I always feel excited when a new year approaches and I wonder what wonderful new books will consume me. I can't wait to find them!

Halloween cards.

Cards.

I dug into my enormous stash of Anna Griffin supplies and made a bunch of cards last night for some of my spring and summertime birthday and holiday needs.

Fourteen through seventeen.

Nine thru thirteen.

Statistics, odds and ends.

So in a couple of weeks my ten years of reading will be over and I'll start a new year. In ten years' time, I have read 1,358 books (and will hopefully add at least one more to the total before December 31.)

The year in which I read the most books was 2008: 168 books. This was the year after I joined Paperback Swap, and I was reading and trading maniacally. (I was a member for six or seven years, and then I came to a point where the books I wanted to read were not the ones being traded any more. But I found some fantastic books through that site.)

The year in which I read the least books was this year, 2016. Right now my total stands at 69. One reason for this enormous drop-off (I have always easily broken 100 books every other year) was too much time spent following politics online, and another reason was an unrealized need for progressive lenses. I started reading more once I could see better!

I don't set reading goals. I like to let my desires and interests take me where they will. But I really do hope to do better than 69 books next year. I suspect reading will be a good escape in the midst of whatever 2017 holds.

I've listed my good reads, now what about my bad reads? I don't have a lot of one-star books on my list, because if a book is that bad, I usually just don't finish it. I have no qualms about dropping a book--or drop-kicking it! Several one- and two-star books loom large, though:

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery
Empire, Orson Scott Card
The Ladies of Missalonghi, Colleen McCullough
Little Bee, Chris Cleave
The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte, James Tully
A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
The Astronaut Wives' Club, Lily Koppel
Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Katherine Howe
The Storied Life of A.J Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin

These all went past merely bad into the realm of actively pissing me off, for being poorly plotted, under-researched, and/or just plain obnoxious. Fortunately, these books are fairly rare.

I'm excited to see what great reads await me in the next ten years!

Seven and Eight.

Here's my little snowman tart warmer I picked up at JoAnn's on Black Friday. I've always been a candle girl, and am new to the tart warmer, but I think I'm hooked.

And I took a close-up of our little tabletop tree. I got red tartan plaid bows at JoAnn's in the same Black Friday sale, so I decided to do the tree in red and gold. This required picking up some gold ornaments, gold snowflakes, red berry clusters and what not. The tree has red and white lights. And a big dark red bow on top. I don't love it like I did last year's, but it's quite pretty.

Also-rans, non-fiction.

Four-star non-fiction reads are still pretty awesome. Here are some of the ones I still remember and think about.

Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of Brian Wilson, Peter Ames Carlin

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, Terry Ryan

The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls

The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic, Steven Johnson

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson

An Autobiography, Agatha Christie

Picasso's War: The Destruction of Guernica and the Masterpiece that Changed the World, Russell Martin

Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood, Michael Walker

The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the End of the First Millennium, Robert Lacey

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, and Other Things I've Learned, Alan Alda

Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams, Gary Giddons

The Perfect Summer: Dancing Into Shadow in 1911, Juliet Nicolson

Travel As a Political Act, Rick Steves

The Lincolns in the White House: Four Years That Shattered a Family, Jerrold M. Packard

King, Kaiser, Tsar: Three Royal Cousins Who Led the World to War, Catrine Clay

Richmond Burning: The Last Days of the Confederate Capital, Nelson D. Lankford

Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife, Francine Prose

The Day We Found the Universe, Marcia Bartusiak

About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made, Ben Yagoda

Bossypants, Tina Fey

Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter, Randy L. Schmidt

Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Royal Marriage, Gyles Brandreth

Van Gogh: The Life, Steven Naifeh

Vita and Harold: The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, 1910-1962, Nigel Nicolson

A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception and Survival at Jonestown, Julia Scheeres

The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend, Glenn Frankel

The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Anne-Marie O'Connor

The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of "Hallelujah," Alan Light

A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees, Dave Goulson

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, Sheri Fink

One Summer: America, 1927, Bill Bryson

The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things, Paula Byrne

Digging for Richard III: The Search for the Lost King, Mike Pitts

Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World, Claire Harman

The Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule

Lady Bird and Lyndon: The Hidden Story of a Marriage That Made a President, Betty Caroli

Five and six.

I'm getting behind in my journal because I'm having some snafus with my photo developing place. (Wal-Mart, of which I shall never darken the door again.) Here's the Christmas card we are sending to family and friends this year. (I had to chop it up to fit it on the page.)

And here's yesterday's entry, just a couple lines on the horrible weather and the coziness of having a tidy, dry, warm home. I put some tiny doilies on it to connote coziness!