1657

Have I mentioned before that I'm a mathematical genius?

Of course not. Because that would be a baldfaced lie.

I am so mathematically inept I somehow thought I would be finishing 20 years of tracking my reading at the end of 2013 instead of realizing that the 20 years ended on December 31, 2012.

In case you've forgotten or weren't reading the blog back when I wrote at length about my Book-Woman journal, I've kept a list of all the books I've read dating back to January 1993.

During that 20 year period I completed 1657 books. The first five years I kept track I averaged 68.2 books per year. Now that the kids are grown my average over the past five has improved to 92.2 books. My overall average is 82.85 books per year. I think that's a pace I should be able to maintain for the next 20, although I'm certainly off to a slow start this year.

As you can tell, my reading tastes have remained fairly stable. I still read primarily literary fiction with some classics mixed in.

L. has been under doctor's orders to walk a lot every day, which means we have to go to the mall in the mornings when it's too cold to be outside. Our first morning there, before he'd realized it was better to keep me out of the bookstore altogether, I pounced upon a gorgeous peacock feathers journal with gilt-edged pages and a ribbed leather spine--quite a different vibe from the funkiness of the Book-Woman journal, let me tell you. But it seemed time to transition to a new journal since the pages are falling out in the old and I'm worried about losing them.

I'm going to try a new approach with the new journal. I'm going to record more than just the name and author, with a line drawn to separate the months, a practice I started in the late 1990s. I'm going to note the year of publication, whether it's a reread, and I'm going to attempt to list the stories and essays I read as well, particularly if they aren't from a collection that I'm working through. Considering how seldom I watch a movie or tv show, perhaps I should track those as well.

Nah.