Citizen Reader

Second in a series on my first-time adventures in tracking my reading over the course of a year.

Okay, so I was able to make Excel tell me some basic information: how many books I read last year (99), and how those titles broke down along the fiction/nonfiction dividing line (44/55, respectively).*

Huh.

Now, that's not terribly interesting in itself. But I will say, I was a bit surprised that I read that much fiction. I knew I'd been reading more of it...but I would still have said I read a lot more nonfiction, and overall I still consider myself a "nonfiction reader." If I still had the ability to string two thoughts together or write a coherent sentence (those abilities will come back, maybe when my two CRboys graduate high school, right?), I'd say there was something to think about there, about how we *think* of ourselves as readers, and how our perceptions of our own reading habits and tastes may or may not be accurate.

I AM glad that I kept track not only of what I did read, but what I did NOT read. Separately from my "Books Read" spreadsheet, I kept a table of books that I merely "looked" at. These were books that I took out from the library and either didn't get time to read (but might want to get back) or that I started and didn't like. There the total of books was (and did not include purely how-to, cookbooks, or most parenting titles I perused) 11 fiction titles and 60 nonfiction titles. I'm guessing I checked out a lot of nonfiction and then didn't have the time to finish it, but this also tells me that mostly, if I started fiction, I finished fiction, leading to the low number of titles of fiction that I "just looked at."

Ever find any surprises in your reading habits?

*And all I can say about this total is, thank God for my spectacular local library, which is where I get almost all of my reading material.