Books Read in 2015

While we're talking about 2015 facts, I have the totals for how many books I read last year. Drumroll, please:

217

Yeah, even for me, that's a lot. Compare it to 75 in 2014, for example! And 98 in 2013. Of course, those years were low for me; I blogged three years ago of reading 151 in 2012, down from 182 in 2011. Let's look at those in a line.

2011: 182
2012: 151
2013: 98
2014: 75
2015: 217

The jump from 182 to 217 doesn't seem as drastic. I think it's even funnier to contemplate why I read so little in 2013 and 2014 (for me; I'm not judging anyone else [well, except maybe people who don't read at all, or at least want to]).

A little more digging in the blog archives got me more data, if not quite the complete set.

2007: 88
2008: 122
2009: 126
2010: (can't find on blog)
2011: 182
2012: 151
2013: 98
2014: 75
2015: 217

So, basically, my numbers are all over the place, and it's just a coincidence that this last year was my record high and the previous was the lowest. Eh. Doesn't bother me.

Anyway, back to 2015: I was on pace already to read a lot, having reached 74 by June 8th, and then, well, as you may recall, I was laid off on the 11th. I didn't instantly kick into high reading gear--I think there was more sitting around, stunned, at first--but in July, I read 42 books, which was clearly escapism of the highest kind.

And really, when under such stress, reaching for a book (and then another and another) is not the worst reaction to have. I could have turned to drugs or alcohol, which could have done me some serious damage, but I didn't even buy most of these books; either I already owned them, or I got them from the library, but either way my purse was unharmed.

Of the 217 total, 108 were first-time reads and (therefore) 109 were re-reads. I couldn't have been that balanced had I been trying to!

Meanwhile, today I read my first book of the new year. I got Make the Bread, Buy the Butter from the library after reading about it somewhere (I am so bad at remembering where I read about things), and even though I may never make any of the recipes, I found her style light and amusing, and entertaining enough to read all the way through. I'll be reading her blog from here on, too.

(This made me look back at what was the first book I finished in 2015, and it was a very strange old novel called Queed, by Henry Sydnor Harrison, which I actually quite enjoyed but might not wholeheartedly recommend unless you, too, enjoying reading very old books just for the time-travel feeling of it. If you're interested, I first found it on Project Gutenberg, so you can take a look at it there.)