Introduction
In 2019, I challenged myself to read 52 books in the calendar year. Despite rarely setting yearly goals - or even resolutions - the quanitifiable benchmark was motivating. For a 2020 reading resolution, I decided to extend the 52 goal by collecting more data (exact end dates, genres) with the aim of building something I can share. When 2021 arrived I had the makings of a nice little project: a dataset of the books I read in 2020, a previously acquired domain name, and a desire to make some neat visualizations. Now we have this webpage!
The webpages's initial phase produced graphs with Google Charts, which was easy to setup. In subsequent phases, I replaced Google Charts with Chart.js, and that's the charting library used to produce the bar and donut charts below. As I was wrangling this together I also added some contextual components to the graphs, including mentions of books that stoodout to me. Maybe they'll standout to you too, or maybe they won't. Read on for charts.
Data Visualizations
The Data Visualizations that follow are broken out across 3 subsections: The Books, The Bars, and The Donuts. The Books contains a table of all the books I read, and as their names imply The Bars has bar charts and The Donuts has donut charts.
The Books
| Book | Author | Start | Finish |
|---|
The table above is produced with DataTables, which includes sort, pagination, and search functionality. Poke around with the table, and you might find a title or author that piques your curiosity. Disclaimer: I have no legal, business, or financial association with any of these books, authors, publishers, etc. Feel free to copy and paste this data to use it for personal reference or projects (export functionality still to come).
The links above all point to Bookshop.org.
The Bars
The bar charts (and one of the donut charts) are grouped by Reading Categories, which merit an explanation. Reading Categories are initiatives that I use to encourage variety in my reading, and so that I can read more than one book at once. For 2020, my Reading Categories were Nonfiction, Fun Fiction, W and P, KBC Book Club, EO Book Club, and AS Car Book.
The Nonfiction Reading Category is populated by audiobooks, and I always have an audiobook going. Similarly, I always have a fiction book that I'm reading, which rolls up to the Fun Fiction Reading Category. These are all books that I chose to read for my own enjoyment, hence the "Fun." I also decided to follow along with A Year of War and Peace, which is reflected in the W and P category.
KBC Book Club and EO Book Club are two book clubs that I belonged to during 2020, and "KBC" and "EO" are initials that I'm using to preserve anonymity, and the AS Car Book category ("AS" is also initials) is comprised of audiobooks that provided entertainment and education during longer car rides.
September was the maximum month with a total of 8 books finished. The majority of that total comes from 6 audiobooks, including the rather short (227 pages), but rather impactful, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, while the only Fun Fiction entry for September was author Brandon Sanderson's 672 page short story collection Arcanum Unbound. "Short" is not an accurate qualifier for the collection, because it contains novella-length works, but like all of Sanderson's work I found it extremely difficult to put down.
June was the minimum month with 2 Nonfiction audiobooks completed. I mentioned previously that I caved on A Year of War and Peace, and I cranked through the book early (instead of the intended 1 chapter a day for a whole year). To finish Tolstoy's doorstopper I tapered off Fun Fiction books after April, and I buckled down on W and P (finished it in July). This also coincided with beautiful Summer weather, so the second half of the book was read by our fireplace in the backyard. Delectable, I know.
Summing the pages of the books finished in each month pushes July (7 books finished), August (also 7 books finished) and October (5 books finished) past September (the 2020 high with 8 books finished). July makes the top with a 1,392 page contribution from War and Peace. If you've ever thought about picking it up, just try it. If you hate it, stop reading it, and put it on a bookshelf so that you appear literary.
August ranks second on sum of pages finished per month, with 1,619 pages of Fun Fiction, and 601 pages - John Steinbeck's East of Eden - for KBC Book Club. Fun Fiction books that are worth mentioning here are Michael Connelly's The Black Echo and Ngozi Adichie's Americanah. The Black Echo is the 482 page first installment of the Harry Bosch series, and I enjoyed it so much that I read it in 2 days. The Harry Bosch books are excellent for reading by the beach, or just traveling in general. The 477 page Americanah was a recommendation from a good friend and great reader, and I loved it. I think Americanah would be an interesting read for a book club, and fun fact: Ngozi Adichie is featured on Beyonce's song ***Flawless.
October arrives in third on sum of pages finished per month. Brandon Sanderson's Oathbringer was the only Fun Fiction book I read in October. Oathbringer is the third book in Sanderson's epic fantasy series The Stormlight Archive. After seeing the announcement that the fourth installment in Stormlight was getting published in November, I had to kick myself into gear to get Oathbringer finished. If you are a fan of the fantasy genre, and you haven't tried any of Brandon Sanderson's work, add one of his books to your reading backlog (high priority). If you can't decide where to start, checkout Mistborn: The Final Empire. You should also give Mistborn a shot if you like crime (particularly heist) stories. This book has one of my favorite "Lets meet the crew" moments.
All page numbers referenced were sourced from goodreads.
The Donuts
I listened to 34 audiobooks in 2020. Yes, this webpage writer counts audiobooks, and there are a few titles that earn a shoutout. I don't play golf, I don't watch golf, and I don't even enjoy Top Golf, but I could not stop listening to writing power duo Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian's Tiger Woods. This book has a little bit of everything in it: life, death, addiction, sports and special forces. Another great book that contains much more special forces content is Annie Jacobsen's Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators and Assassins. Jacobsen's research is impressive, her writing is engaging, and she narrates her work - excellent reading voice. Another writer with a great voice is Bill Bryson, who narrates his memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Bryson is insightful and funny, and his memoir is no exception. If you were a child in the 1950s, put Thunderbolt Kid on your reading list.
The 30 ebooks and books split into 26 ebooks, 3 paperbacks, and 1 hardback. At this point I prefer the convenience of ebooks, but some titles from this year were only available as physical copies. One of those paperbacks is John Barth's The Floating Opera, which is set on Maryland's Eastern Shore, and reminded me of my paternal grandfather. Opera is existential and asks a lot of probing questions, and is also absurdly funny at times. I think about this book often. If you want to look at US politics from a media angle, or if you're interested in television as a medium, pick up Dannagal Goldthwaite Young's Irony And Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States (the lone hardcover). Young is a professor at the Univesity of Delaware, and based on this book, I suspect that she's an excellent teacher.
Here we are, back to my clunky term "Reading Categories." Nonfiction and Fun Fiction are the top two categories by number of books read (32 and 18). I am a big fan of the legendary Terry Pratchett, and his work fits nicely into Fun Fiction. I loved Jingo, but if you've never read his work I would recommend starting with Guards! Guards!, which is a fantasy novel about a dragon, but told from the perspective of a rag-tag and endearing bunch of city watchmen.
After a gap comes KBC Book Club and EO Book Club with 6 and 4 books each. This averages out to a book every 2 months and a book every 3 months, which I think are reasonable paces for book clubs. My contribution to KBC was John Steinbeck's East of Eden. Everything positive about East of Eden has already been said, but yes you should read it. Although it's a longer book, the story really ropes you in. Terry Pratchett made an appearance in EO Book Club (in addition to Fun Fiction) with his first novel The Colour of Magic.
Lastly we have 3 books in AS Car Book and 1 book in W and P. I am a major fan of humorist and writer David Sedaris, so listening to Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls for an AS Car Book installment was a treat. Sedaris is extremely funny, and his work fits very well with the audiobook medium. If you aren't aware he has a background in radio, so his narration is phenomenal. His narrating often includes impersonations (hilarious) and live recordings (fun idea). I leave it to the reader to figure out what the 1 book in W and P is. Hint: it's Crime and Punishment.
This was fun data to pull together. I didn't want to assign genres myself, because I wanted a shred of objectivity, but I had trouble finding a data source. First I tried Bookshop.org, but I thought the genres were too specific for any sort of combining and charting (e.g. "Health & Daily Living - Diseases, Illnesses & Injuries"), or didn't seem like genres at all in my opinion (e.g. "European - English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh").
I eventually settled on using goodreads, but I had to do some data manipulation, because similar to Bookshop, some of the genres didn't seem like genres that would give a sense of the books that I read. For example, this webpage author does not consider "Novels" or "Audiobook" to be genres. I also consolidated some genres to get more meaningful data. "Biography", "Biography Memoir", "Autobiography", and "Memoir" were all consolidated and counted as "Biography/Memoir".
History tops this chart with 20 books tagged with that genre. I have had a lifelong interest and passion for history (a young me wanted to be a historian for a few years) and I try to puruse a variety of topics. Two of the historical books I read and enjoyed this year were A History of the World in Six Glasses and The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. Six Glasses is a quick history of beer, wine, coffee, tea, spirits, and soda (and their impacts on human society), and The Five is a very interesting look into the lives of five women living in Victorian London. Jack the Ripper is rather secondary to this book.
Conclusion
There it is, you saw the data, you saw a few charts, and maybe you read some blocks of text. In a perfect world this experience just pointed you to a book (or books) that you go on to read, enjoy, and maybe even learn from. Thanks for visiting, and check back later.