You can't beat a good book

Focus on Books, a photo by Kamal H. on Flickr.

I used to be quite an avid reader until my job relocated and I could no longer get to work by public transport. Losing those 2 hours a day for reading reduced the number of books I read in a year. I must have restarted knitting about 2002 and that impacted my reading even further.

I knew that I was reading less but I had no idea how many books I was actually reading so in November 2004 I started keep tracking of the books I was reading. It’s just a simple list of book title and author and then I tally up the numbers read at the end of each year.

2005 :: 31 books
2006 :: 26 books
2007 :: 23 books
2008 :: 10 books
2009 :: 23 books
2010 :: 15 books

I must have done a lot of knitting in 2008. 2010 would have been even less but I got a Kindle in November and I managed to read 7 books while knitting.

I have so many books on my shelves sitting unread and I keep adding to them. This year’s resolutions were - read more books, try different genres and only buy books for the Kindle. So far I’ve managed 2 out of 3. Yes, I haven’t bought a single book for the Kindle this year even though it’s ideal for knitting and reading at the same time. My excuse is that in light of all the council cuts I’d better join the library and help their usage statistics.

This year I have read 19 books from 18 different authors, one of them has been a reread, 5 have been on the Kindle and 9 of them have been library books. I have also only read books from 4 of the authors before.

I try to set aside Wednesday evening and late afternoon Saturday and Sunday for reading and if I don’t have anything arranged for weekend mornings I’ll read in bed for an hour before getting up. Having library books is also helping as I like to finish them before they are due back.