I think the Year of the Book officially ends with the closing of 2008, but I at least thought about declaring it finished with the closing of the final book. I wrote about my intentions for this personal project on December 18, 2007, wanting to read 20 books during the past 12 months.
That sprang from an avid reader—myself—hearing statistics and soliciting my own poll results about how many adults actually sit down and read a book these days. In that blog I wrote about a poll that found 57 percent of adults read one book in a year. I was working in a writing-heavy environment and assumed my coworkers would certainly be above average. But what I found was that many people I worked with hadn’t read a single book all year.
The number 20 came out of a guesstimate that I could probably do 15 without much trouble, and thus wanted to add a few more to make it challenging. Beyond committing to a concrete project for 2008, I’m not sure what I actually thought I wanted to get out of it except for a few good reads and to clear off the unread portion of my bookshelf. Actually, that’s a lie. Like a normal person—at least I think—I keep them roughly alphabetized without discrimination for the unread.
What I ended up with was a really great experience. The project brought in some of my closest friends with their recommendations for the books that perhaps not surprisingly were some of my favorites. I tried to read a diverse enough group that I could learn things about different areas and experience a wider range of storytelling. A somewhat alienating schedule, a quiet one bedroom apartment and some heartbreaking and uplifting stories gave me moments of almost meditative reflection on some characters I never knew, and others that never existed.
The reading itself took place in five places. There was the recliner in my apartment in Jacksonville, Fla., which had great natural sunlight and the dull drone of traffic on nearby State Road 9A. On nicer days, those that weren’t too hot, I dragged the current selection down to Jacksonville Beach and parked in the sand in front of the Comfort Inn. I believe every book through October made this trip at least once, including reading all of “The Last Lecture” on one particular trip. This spot involved the least amount of clothing, but also the most effort due to the 10-minute drive and certainly the least comfortable seating. Actually, I take that back. Location No. 3 definitely takes that title. That would be terminal at Jacksonville International Airport. I know I took care of a large portion of “At Home in the World” and “The Dead Beat” while waiting for flights to North Carolina and Virginia, respectively. The last two sites were the setting for reading everything in November and December—the couches in my parents’ family room and basement, which qualify as the two most comfortable reading locations possibly known to man (particularly the basement spot).
One of the parts of the journey I have most enjoyed is being able to chronicle it in some way. I’m sure many people have clicked on one or two book-related entries and been bored to tears. But mostly, the writing has been for me. I have gone back several times to re-read what I posted about earlier books and it has been invaluable in being able to put together a sort of retrospective of the journey. My thoughts about the first few books I read may be very different now than how I felt when my eyes went across their last period. As I finished more and more books I liked, the ones from January and February are afterthoughts when trying to place them all in context. It wasn’t until I had all of them stacked up today that I remembered how much I loved “The Year of Living Biblically” or “At Home in the World.” I’ll get to some sort of awards system shortly, though as I wrote in the post announcing the project, there has only been one book in my recollection that I truly hated—Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms.”.
This is the first and only time the entire collection has been together, seen here in chronological order from “Zlata’s Diary” to “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs:”
And I know I promised at some point to try to build something cool out of the books, but that proved immeasurably more difficult than I thought. Perhaps if I had more than three hardcovers in the group it would have been a touch easier:
Before I began, I listed 12 books as the initial list with a plan to obviously add more as time went on. Of those, only seven actually made the final cut. A total of eight of the 20 were recommended by friends. Actually one was by the author of a recommendation, but I switched to a different book (Hornby’s “How to be Good”). The last of those was “A Confederacy of Dunces,” which I found through an awesome new tool to me. It’s a Facebook application called Visual Bookshelf that allows you to show your friends what you’re reading, what you’ve read and give comments. It’s no real surprise that people I feel like I get along with very well have similar reading histories and loved books that I did as well.
Before I go too far into some numbers and awards, here’s the final list in order of their completion:
-Zlata’s Diary by Zlata Filipovic
-The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs
-The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
-The Audacity of Hope by president-elect Barack Obama
-Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
-The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
-At Home in the World by Daniel Pearl
-Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
-The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
-The Survival Game by David P. Barash
-The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
-The Dead Beat by Marilyn Johnson
-A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
-Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
-How to be Good by Nick Hornby
-The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster
-1984 by George Orwell
-The Best Seat in the House by Spike Lee
-A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
-Sex, Drugs and ..Cocoa.. Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
In case you were wondering, I am enough of a nerd to have made an Excel spreadsheet involving several aspects of the project. But thanks to that effort, I can quickly and easily share some things with you:
-Total pages: 5579
-Average length: 279 pages
-Longest: 437 pages (Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)
-Shortest: 132 pages (The Prince)
-Two books had the same length (1984 & Beautiful and Damned at 297)
-During one stretch I almost read three books in a row with the same length (278, 276, 132, 277)
I did a calculation of how long it took me to read each one, though my data set is slightly inaccurate. The only thing I had to go on was the date I posted the blog about each book, which in many cases was one-to-several days after actually finishing. This includes one day where I posted about two books, and two postings in two days though I know there was a bigger gap between those books. But for the most part, I think it is still a useful way to look at how the project got off to a decent start, then quickly bogged down for a few months before finishing at a torrid pace.
The average time between postings for the year was 19 days, with the longest gap being 63. Here are those gaps in order: 19, 28, 14, 29, 63, 10, 34, 18, 28, 1, 28, 30, 7, 1, 5, 7, 12, 7, 15. If I told you I was not working for one of these stretches, it’s only slightly obvious where. Hint: see all items following “30.”
Made me laugh: “Year of Living Biblically,” “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs”
If you only read five of them: “Year of Living Biblically,” “Audacity of Hope,” “Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” “Book of Illusions,” “Confederacy of Dunces”
Would have left out: “Best Seat in the House,” “The Prince”
You’ll learn something: “At Home in the World,” “Last Lecture,” “Survival Game”
Hate the characters, love the book: “Picture of Dorian Gray”
Best cover: “Year of Living Biblically:”
While I may not have a whole lot going for me in a conventional sense right now, this gave me a lot to be happy about today and throughout 2008. I wouldn’t recommend this project to others in a do it like I did sense, but I think something in this spirit has a lot of value. It gives you a chance to do something with and for yourself outside of all of the other pressures and responsibilities of life. It’s no small feat to commit to something for 12 months and ride out the ups and downs of life and your schedule and come out on the other side having finished what you started. So for 2009, make your own goal and make it happen. Mine doesn’t involve another reading number, but does involve a lot of writing inspired by 2008. Happy New Year.