Book List 2006

In 2006, for the first time in my life, I kept track of the books I read. I started a few weeks late, so the beginning of the year was a little uncertain regarding which books I finished when, etc. I tracked title, author, publisher/line, date completed, IF I completed it, what it was about, and my comments on the story.

I read 99 books and 10 novellas.

I started but did not complete 31 books, plus a few that I knew on the first page I couldn’t read, but didn’t count them because one page is irrelevant.

In addition, I read Time magazine every week until August, People every week until mid-December, and Entertainment Weekly every week ongoing (until it runs out in April). I also critiqued three to five full-length novels for friends.

This year I will do more critiquing, but less magazine reading, so that should balance out a bit.

I was going for 100 books this year, but I thought I was on 99 and needed one more, so I cheated and read a really, really short book that counted as a whole book because it was sold for $13 even though it was only 121 pages long.

My last day at my day job was June 7, 2006. As of that date I had read 27 books and 6 novellas (some for a contest for published works) and attempted 13 other novels. Which means that after I quit the day job I read 72 books and 4 novellas and attempted 18 other novels.

The obvious deduction: I had more time to read after I quit my day job.

Ratings

I rated the books on a scale of 1-10. Of the books I did NOT finish, I rated them as follows:

1--one

3--one

4--two

5--six

6--thirteen

7--eight

Of the ones I completed, I rated them as follows:

5--one (this was my cheat book)

6--three

7--twenty-six

8--thirty

9--thirty-two

10--seventeen

Basically, if a book is middle-of-the-scale, it could easily go either way whether I finish it or not. If I set the book down to read a magazine, or for some other long period of time, if I am not compelled to get back to the story, I won’t. If it has one strong element that I want answers to, I will continue, even if it’s not completely floating my boat.

The number of 10s surprised me. Later in the week I’ll post a list of the books that scored a 10. If I feel enterprising enough I’ll put up the covers, too.

Tomorrow I'll analyze the authors I read, and Thursday the publishers/imprints.