A list in the final days of 2020...
I guess we all dealt with the Covid-19 pandemic in different ways this year. I started posting quotes from books I read on Facebook back in 2018, and around the beginning of the shutdowns, I started keeping an Excel list of each book as I posted them. I have fields for title, author, year published, year read, and author gender. I've probably spent way too much time looking at this list. I like sorting it by one field, then another, etc. I just posted my last book quote for 2020, so here are some current list statistics.
The list currently consists of 126 books by 98 authors (encompassing almost everything I’ve read 2016-present). Of those authors, 20 are male, and 78 are female. The newest book is The Upside of Falling, by Alex Light, published in 2020, and the oldest is Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, published in 1813. The average year of publication is 1998. (When I first calculated average year, it was 2002, I think.)
When sorted by title, the top book is About the B’nai Bagels, by EL Konigsburg, and the last is Zero, by Tom Leveen. When sorted by author last name, the top book is Watership Down, by Richard Adams, and the last is Not Our Kind, by Kitty Zeldis. When sorted by date (not year), the first book is Mary Anne and the Library Mystery, by Ann M. Martin, and the last is If Only, by Carole Geithner. Only thirteen authors have more than one book listed, and all of them are female. The author with the most books is Ann M. Martin with 6. Second place is a three-way tie between Maud Hart Lovelace, Lois Lowry, and Melissa Wiley, each with 5. Currently, the only surnames shared by different authors are Greene (Bette and Jacqueline) and Martin (Ann M. and Valerie).
The book with the longest title is Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs. The book with the shortest title is a tie between Push, by Sapphire, and Zero, by Tom Leveen. The most common unique word among titles is light, which appears in five books: All the Light We Cannot See, Candlelight for Rebecca, The Light Between the Oceans, A Light in the Ruins, and Speed of Light.
For the first half of 2020, I chose books at random, but for the second half, I focused on books published in years that weren’t yet listed (which is how my average year published went down) and author last names starting with letters that weren’t yet listed (I was missing I, J, U, and V, and I’m still missing X). My reading goal for 2021 will alternate between a list that I created and rereading authors that are currently only listed once.
I'll be posting my book list for 2020 soon.
The list currently consists of 126 books by 98 authors (encompassing almost everything I’ve read 2016-present). Of those authors, 20 are male, and 78 are female. The newest book is The Upside of Falling, by Alex Light, published in 2020, and the oldest is Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, published in 1813. The average year of publication is 1998. (When I first calculated average year, it was 2002, I think.)
When sorted by title, the top book is About the B’nai Bagels, by EL Konigsburg, and the last is Zero, by Tom Leveen. When sorted by author last name, the top book is Watership Down, by Richard Adams, and the last is Not Our Kind, by Kitty Zeldis. When sorted by date (not year), the first book is Mary Anne and the Library Mystery, by Ann M. Martin, and the last is If Only, by Carole Geithner. Only thirteen authors have more than one book listed, and all of them are female. The author with the most books is Ann M. Martin with 6. Second place is a three-way tie between Maud Hart Lovelace, Lois Lowry, and Melissa Wiley, each with 5. Currently, the only surnames shared by different authors are Greene (Bette and Jacqueline) and Martin (Ann M. and Valerie).
The book with the longest title is Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs. The book with the shortest title is a tie between Push, by Sapphire, and Zero, by Tom Leveen. The most common unique word among titles is light, which appears in five books: All the Light We Cannot See, Candlelight for Rebecca, The Light Between the Oceans, A Light in the Ruins, and Speed of Light.
For the first half of 2020, I chose books at random, but for the second half, I focused on books published in years that weren’t yet listed (which is how my average year published went down) and author last names starting with letters that weren’t yet listed (I was missing I, J, U, and V, and I’m still missing X). My reading goal for 2021 will alternate between a list that I created and rereading authors that are currently only listed once.
I'll be posting my book list for 2020 soon.