I admit that June may have been more sensible for a review of the year so far BUT bear with me.
In a little over a week, it'll be my birthday (the number of which I'm trying to ignore - quarter of a century is unpleasant...). My birthday being the middle of August always signifies the beginning of the end of summer to me. That sounds a little depressing! I don't mean it as bleakly as that sounds, though, so don't worr - I'm not feeling mournful! It just sets me thinking about the year so far :-)
Anyway, on to the bookish stuff!
This year has been a little slower than the last for volume of reading, I think, with the numbers looking like this:
Complete books read: 28
Pages read: 10,262
Average pages per book: 366.5
I'm reasonably happy with the average amount pages per book - 350-400 seems like a nice, solid length of book to be reading. As I said, though, it's much less in number than I would like! I am all but positive that that is due to the change in jobs. Previously, I worked in the public sector (and enjoying the flexi-time contract that included) while I was hunting for the trainee position that I needed to move forward in my career of choice. Last September, I started that trainee job and, even though I love it and it's the last phase of my training before I qualify, it's a lot busier, involves longer hours and leaves me more tired out in my time off. All in all, that gives me less time and energy to read. Sad though that may be, I'm happy with the trade the vast majority of the time...
So, what have I been reading?
eBooks v. 'Real' books: So far this year, 14 of the 28 books I have read have been eBooks. I don't need a calculator to tell me that's half! That's a trend that I expect to continue until I have read through my back catalogue of paperbacks. In the future, I can see that increasing. Perhaps not to 100% eBooks but certainly at least 75%. What can I say? I'm a complete convert!
Female v. Male authors: Early this year, when I started keeping track of my reading more closely, I realised that the amount of female to male authors I read was vastly off balance and I read way more books written by women than men. So far this year, 18 of the 28 books I have read have been penned by ladies; at about 64%, that's a split I can live with and not something I feel a desperate need to go about rectifying.
Classic v. Contemporary: Broken down by century, my reading looks a little like this:
21st century: 23
20th century: 4
19th century: 1
Oh dear...that's poor...no excuses for that! Any recommendations for pre-21st century books anyone?! I promise that I'll take your advice to sort this one! There's a goal for the end of this year, clearly!
Reviews: I'm a little behind on reviews and have 4 books that I've read but haven't reviewed. Give me a couple of weeks and that should be all sorted!
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So that's my year so far! How has your reading been this year? Slower/faster than normal? Any goals for the 'end' of the year? Oh, and don't forget to help me out with pre-21st century recommendations - much appreciated!!