The end of year 2

Last year my goal was to read a book a week, and made it to 49 or 51 (depending on how you count). You can read about it here. This year I decided to read at my leisure and see where I landed. The answer is 37 books, or about 3 per month. Admittedly, this is better than I expected – I would have guessed closer to 24 books for the year.

A quick summary: 10 Book Club books, 8 mysteries, 4 nonfiction, 4 pure science, 8 scifi (2 of which were dystopian) and 1 spy novel. Some surprises:

• I thought I would read more science books, but I am happy that I fit more in than last year.
• My scifi count is WAY higher than I expected, since I consider myself more of a fantasy reader than scifi. Which leads me to ….
• ZERO fantasy! Damn.
• It appears that my guilty pleasure is mystery novels.

I’m doing it again this year, but I plan to set a few goals this time. I will read fewer book club books (which are, in a sense, books you read for other people), I will increase my science books to at least 6 (one every other month), and I WILL find a fantasy series that I love!

1. The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene (blog entry pending)
2. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
3. Monkey Beach, by Eden Robinson
4. All The Missing Girls, by Megan Miranda
5. The Island of Doctor Moreau, by H.G. Wells
6. The Girls, Emma Cline
7. The Travelers, Chris Pavone
8. Persons Unknown, Susie Steiner
9. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown
10. Missing, Presumed, Susie Steiner
11. The Gene, An Intimate History; Siddhartha Mukherjee
12. Fakes, Frauds, and Flimflammery: Even More of the World’s Most Outrageous Scams, by Andreas Schroeder
13. The Outsiders, S. E. Hinton
14. The Perfect Stranger, Megan Miranda
15. Sojourner: An Insider’s View of the Mars Pathfinder Mission, Andrew Mishkin
16. Little Brother, Cory Doctorow
17. My Life on the Road, Gloria Steinem
18. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
19. The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
20. When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi
21. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer
22. What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim, Jane Christmas
23. The Likeness, Tana French
24. Passion on the Vine, by Sergio Esposito
25. Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld
26. The Daily Show (the book), by Chris Smith
27. The Particle at the End of the Universe, Sean Carroll
28. The Murder Wall, by Mari Hannah
29. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
30. I Let You Go, by Clare Mackintosh
31. Foreigner, Robert J. Sawyer
32. The Heart Goes Last, Margaret Atwood
33. Fossil Hunter, Robert J. Sawyer
34. Far-Seer, Robert J. Sawyer
35. The Widow, Fiona Barton
36. No Time for Goodbye, Linwood Barclay
37. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts One and Two, Jack Thorne