A ton of statistics about what books Rebecca's read.
Sometime in late 2020, I made a list of twenty categories for books that I wanted to read in 2021. Some categories were ones that I knew would lead me to good books that I wouldn’t ordinarily read, some were borrowed from a list that Sara found on GoodReads, and some were just made up at random. I eventually read every category on this list except for two: a play (I could never find one on audio that I hadn’t already read) and a debut novel (I had a book in mind for this and didn’t realize until after I’d started reading that it wasn’t the author’s first book).
A book about a sport: Team Players.
A book Athena recommended: Wildwood.
A book by an author I’ve never read before: A Journey to the New World.
A book by two people: Burn for Burn.
A book over 400 pages: The Witch Elm.
A book published the year I was born: Summer Blues.
A book published this year: Winterkeep.
A book Sara recommended: Young Jane Young.
A book set in a non-English-speaking country: The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai.
Abook set in Texas: Perfect Peace.
A book set in the 1970's: The Virgin Suicides.
A book that’s been made into a movie: The Fault in Our Stars.
A book that’s part of a series: On Tide Mill Lane.
A book translated from another language: The Crow-Girl.
A book under 100 pages: Samantha Learns a Lesson.
A childhood favorite: Pictures of Adam.
A nonfiction book: Shame Nation.
A second book byan author I’ve read only once before: The Kid.
A debut novel: N/A. A nonfiction book: N/A.
After I was done with the list, then I went to work on rereading authors that I’d only read once before. That was really fun. I sorted my Excel list by year, started in 2017, and reread authors in the order that I originally read them. Obviously, I skipped over anyone that I didn’t like enough to reread or that the library didn’t carry another book by. I reread the authors that I was reading when we first viewed this house (Kaui Hart Hemmings) and when we moved into it (Curtis Sittenfeld). It was an interesting mixed bag of results. Some authors stayed good for both books, but with some authors, like the two in the "poor" category below, I enjoyed the first book I read by them but hated the second one. Below is every book I read in 2021 (35 total, average year published 1998), divided into five categories like usual.
Excellent:
Eligible, by Curtis Sittenfeld
The Dreamers, by Karen Thompson Walker
Above Average:
The Witch Elm, by Tana French
The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green
Burn for Burn, by Jenny Han & Siobhan Vivian
Betsy-Tacy, by Maud Hart Lovelace
A Journey to the New World, by Kathryn Lasky
How Hard Can It Be? by Allison Pearson
The Burgess Boys, by Elizabeth Strout
On Tide Mill Lane, by Melissa Wiley
The Road from Roxbury, by Melissa Wiley
The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai, by Ruiyan Xu
Young Jane Young, by Gabrielle Zevin
Average:
Samantha Learns a Lesson, by Susan S. Adler
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
Magic in the Mix, by Annie Barrows
The Sleepwalker, by Chris Bohjalian
The Crow-Girl, by Bodil Bredsdorff
Winterkeep, by Kristin Cashore
Summer Blues, by Emily Chase
The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides
Left Neglected, by Lisa Genova
How to Party with an Infant, by Kaui Hart Hemmings
Pictures of Adam, by Myron Levoy
Meet Josefina, by Valerie Tripp
Below Average:
Perfect Peace, by Daniel Black
Father's Arcane Daughter, by EL Konigsburg
Silver Days, by Sonia Levitin
Team Players, by Mike Lupica
Wildwood, by Colin Meloy
War Horse, by Michael Morpurgo
Shame Nation: The Global Epidemic of Online Hate, by Sue Scheff
The Guest Cottage, by Nancy Thayer
Poor:
Four Seasons, by Jane Breskin Zalben
The Kid, by Sapphire
For 2022, I’ve made a slightly shorter list of book goals; some categories on it are repeats from this year, and some are new. I’m hoping to do the same thing next year as I did in 2021: read one book for every category on the list, then go to work onsomething else. I’m not sure yet what the “something else” will be. I mightreread some more single authors or read some years that I haven’t read yet or even just pick books at random again (which I haven’t done in a long time). I also like the idea of reading at least one book from every shelf of the library’s audio and children’s sections. With my audiobooks, the only authors that I have in rotation are Tana French and Jane Austen, and I might add Isabel Allende if I like her stuff. With my children’s books, I currently have several series in rotation: two a year of Little House, and one a year each of American Girl, Betsy-Tacy, Burn for Burn, and Dear America.
The Excel list where I keep track of all this is currently at 178 books by 120 authors, and it covers almost everything I've read 2013-present. The average year of publication is 1999. Below is a list of every author who appears on the list more than once, with their book quantity:
7: Maude Hart Lovelace, Ann M. Martin, Melissa Wiley
6: Lois Lowry
5: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
4: Kristin Cashore, Tana French, Valerie Tripp
3: Laura Lippman, Anna Quindlen
2: Kate Atkinson, Jane Austen, Annie Barrows, Chris Bohjalian, Emma Donoghue, Lisa Genova, Kaui Hart Hemmings, EL Konigsburg, Ann Leary, Sonia Levitin, Liane Moriarty, Michael Morpurgo, Allison Pearson, Sapphire, Cathleen Schine, Curtis Sittenfeld, Mindy Warshaw Skolsky, Elizabeth Strout, Nancy Thayer, Karen Thompson Walker, Jane Breskin Zalben. Chris Bohjalian and Michael Morpurgo are currently the only male authors listed more than once.
And this is a breakdown of when the books were published:
Pre-1940: 2 (both by Jane Austen, published in the 1810's)
1940s: 6 (all Betsy-Tacy books)
1950s: 3
1960s: 3
1970s: 10
1980s: 15
1990s: 34
2000s: 22
2010s: 83 (almost half the entire list)
2020s: 2
And this is a breakdown of common words/things that appear in the book titles. I've always thought the results here were interesting.
11 titles with animals: Butterfly’s Child, The Crow-Girl, A Greyhound of a Girl, Incident at Hawk’s Hill, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Robin’s Diary, Silver Sparrow, Started Early Took My Dog, Tell the Wolves I’m Home, War Horse, Water for Elephants
8 titles with numbers: Every Last One, The Fortuneteller in 5B, Four Seasons, Nine Perfect Strangers, One More River, Station Eleven, When My Heart Joins the Thousand, Zero
7 titles with colors: Baltimore Blues, Bitterblue, A Greyhound of a Girl, Silver Days, Silver Sparrow, Sister Golden Hair, Summer Blues
6 titles with a food/drink: About the B’nai Bagels, The Cherry Cola Book Club, Flour Babies, Olive Kitteridge, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Strudel Stories
A book about a sport: Team Players.
A book Athena recommended: Wildwood.
A book by an author I’ve never read before: A Journey to the New World.
A book by two people: Burn for Burn.
A book over 400 pages: The Witch Elm.
A book published the year I was born: Summer Blues.
A book published this year: Winterkeep.
A book Sara recommended: Young Jane Young.
A book set in a non-English-speaking country: The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai.
Abook set in Texas: Perfect Peace.
A book set in the 1970's: The Virgin Suicides.
A book that’s been made into a movie: The Fault in Our Stars.
A book that’s part of a series: On Tide Mill Lane.
A book translated from another language: The Crow-Girl.
A book under 100 pages: Samantha Learns a Lesson.
A childhood favorite: Pictures of Adam.
A nonfiction book: Shame Nation.
A second book byan author I’ve read only once before: The Kid.
A debut novel: N/A. A nonfiction book: N/A.
After I was done with the list, then I went to work on rereading authors that I’d only read once before. That was really fun. I sorted my Excel list by year, started in 2017, and reread authors in the order that I originally read them. Obviously, I skipped over anyone that I didn’t like enough to reread or that the library didn’t carry another book by. I reread the authors that I was reading when we first viewed this house (Kaui Hart Hemmings) and when we moved into it (Curtis Sittenfeld). It was an interesting mixed bag of results. Some authors stayed good for both books, but with some authors, like the two in the "poor" category below, I enjoyed the first book I read by them but hated the second one. Below is every book I read in 2021 (35 total, average year published 1998), divided into five categories like usual.
Excellent:
Eligible, by Curtis Sittenfeld
The Dreamers, by Karen Thompson Walker
Above Average:
The Witch Elm, by Tana French
The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green
Burn for Burn, by Jenny Han & Siobhan Vivian
Betsy-Tacy, by Maud Hart Lovelace
A Journey to the New World, by Kathryn Lasky
How Hard Can It Be? by Allison Pearson
The Burgess Boys, by Elizabeth Strout
On Tide Mill Lane, by Melissa Wiley
The Road from Roxbury, by Melissa Wiley
The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai, by Ruiyan Xu
Young Jane Young, by Gabrielle Zevin
Average:
Samantha Learns a Lesson, by Susan S. Adler
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
Magic in the Mix, by Annie Barrows
The Sleepwalker, by Chris Bohjalian
The Crow-Girl, by Bodil Bredsdorff
Winterkeep, by Kristin Cashore
Summer Blues, by Emily Chase
The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides
Left Neglected, by Lisa Genova
How to Party with an Infant, by Kaui Hart Hemmings
Pictures of Adam, by Myron Levoy
Meet Josefina, by Valerie Tripp
Below Average:
Perfect Peace, by Daniel Black
Father's Arcane Daughter, by EL Konigsburg
Silver Days, by Sonia Levitin
Team Players, by Mike Lupica
Wildwood, by Colin Meloy
War Horse, by Michael Morpurgo
Shame Nation: The Global Epidemic of Online Hate, by Sue Scheff
The Guest Cottage, by Nancy Thayer
Poor:
Four Seasons, by Jane Breskin Zalben
The Kid, by Sapphire
For 2022, I’ve made a slightly shorter list of book goals; some categories on it are repeats from this year, and some are new. I’m hoping to do the same thing next year as I did in 2021: read one book for every category on the list, then go to work onsomething else. I’m not sure yet what the “something else” will be. I mightreread some more single authors or read some years that I haven’t read yet or even just pick books at random again (which I haven’t done in a long time). I also like the idea of reading at least one book from every shelf of the library’s audio and children’s sections. With my audiobooks, the only authors that I have in rotation are Tana French and Jane Austen, and I might add Isabel Allende if I like her stuff. With my children’s books, I currently have several series in rotation: two a year of Little House, and one a year each of American Girl, Betsy-Tacy, Burn for Burn, and Dear America.
The Excel list where I keep track of all this is currently at 178 books by 120 authors, and it covers almost everything I've read 2013-present. The average year of publication is 1999. Below is a list of every author who appears on the list more than once, with their book quantity:
7: Maude Hart Lovelace, Ann M. Martin, Melissa Wiley
6: Lois Lowry
5: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
4: Kristin Cashore, Tana French, Valerie Tripp
3: Laura Lippman, Anna Quindlen
2: Kate Atkinson, Jane Austen, Annie Barrows, Chris Bohjalian, Emma Donoghue, Lisa Genova, Kaui Hart Hemmings, EL Konigsburg, Ann Leary, Sonia Levitin, Liane Moriarty, Michael Morpurgo, Allison Pearson, Sapphire, Cathleen Schine, Curtis Sittenfeld, Mindy Warshaw Skolsky, Elizabeth Strout, Nancy Thayer, Karen Thompson Walker, Jane Breskin Zalben. Chris Bohjalian and Michael Morpurgo are currently the only male authors listed more than once.
And this is a breakdown of when the books were published:
Pre-1940: 2 (both by Jane Austen, published in the 1810's)
1940s: 6 (all Betsy-Tacy books)
1950s: 3
1960s: 3
1970s: 10
1980s: 15
1990s: 34
2000s: 22
2010s: 83 (almost half the entire list)
2020s: 2
And this is a breakdown of common words/things that appear in the book titles. I've always thought the results here were interesting.
11 titles with animals: Butterfly’s Child, The Crow-Girl, A Greyhound of a Girl, Incident at Hawk’s Hill, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Robin’s Diary, Silver Sparrow, Started Early Took My Dog, Tell the Wolves I’m Home, War Horse, Water for Elephants
8 titles with numbers: Every Last One, The Fortuneteller in 5B, Four Seasons, Nine Perfect Strangers, One More River, Station Eleven, When My Heart Joins the Thousand, Zero
7 titles with colors: Baltimore Blues, Bitterblue, A Greyhound of a Girl, Silver Days, Silver Sparrow, Sister Golden Hair, Summer Blues
6 titles with a food/drink: About the B’nai Bagels, The Cherry Cola Book Club, Flour Babies, Olive Kitteridge, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Strudel Stories