Books Analysis: 2023 Update
Some Background
Since 2018 I have kept track of the books I've read. Last year I analyzed what I had read through 2022 and this page updates that analysis with 2023 data.
I will mostly focus on the changes, but previous years are still up. 2021, 2022.
Last Year's Goals
In January 2023 I set several goals for my reading in the then-new year. Read 40 books (I didn't hit this in 2022), read women's books at 45% or greater level, read two books from each of seven time periods, and get through half of a list of 10 books that I've wanted to read for a while. Some of these I succeeded at and others were miserable failures.
Goal 1: Achieved! In fact, I read more books this year than in any since I started keeping track. This is after not reaching my goal last year. (Don't give these numbers too much weight as the length variance is large.)
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 | 36 | 29 | 40 | 38 | 48 | 217 |
Goal 2: Another success! I started thinking about this about three years ago, and you can see the progress. It looks like a sigmoid curve to me, which is perhaps what one might expect when moving from one stable level to another. More data is needed.
Goal 3: Miserable failure. Only from the 20th and 21st centuries did I read at least 2 books. As you can see, recent books are more dominant in my reading than ever before. This goal is in conflict with goal 2, but I did have a list of old books I wanted to read, which I just failed to reference much. I'm disappointed with myself here, as I want to be the sort of person who reads lots of classic books.
Another statistic that has been creeping down as my 21st century book % has risen is the fiction %. I was intentionally trying to increase this in 2022, and it worked. When I stopped focusing on it in 2023, I shifted back to nonfiction once again. I'm not sure I care enough about this to work on it. In childhood I mostly read fiction and it is perhaps not suprising that this has changed as I age.
Goal 4: I only read 3/10 and the goal was 5/10. So a failure, but better than last year. The ones in bold have been read. I won't set a goal like this for 2024, as it has never worked well in the past.
1. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
2. Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin
3. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by bell hooks
4. Idylls of the King by Tennyson
5. The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark Noll
6. The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
7. Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich
8. Analects by Confucius
9. Middlemarch by George Eliot
10. Devotions upon Emergent Occasions by John Donne
Other Findings
I'm not sure what to make of this data.
The big story here is, of course, the resurgance of nonfiction books spread across most genres. I read not a single play this year--a first. About 2/3 of those novels were fantasy, by the way.
Also, the best book I read this year was Perelandraby C. S. Lewis. It's a fascinating world of philosophical fantasy that plays with the Fall, free will, and temptation.
2024 Goals
Medical school hasn't stopped me from reading so far. I'll keep my numerical goal at 40 books in 2024 so as not to overextend myself. Additionally, I want to broaden my reading. To that end, I'll make a new geographic goal while maintaining my old goals of 1) >45% of my reading being authored by women and 2) reading two books from each time period.
Here's a map of the world, colored according to very rough culture regions. You may take issue with this map, and I probably would too if I hadn't made it. But my goal to read at least two books from each region. I've labeled the map with the three books from outside the core Anglophone region which I read in 2023. That's not a lot! This goal will increase that to a minimum of 10 if I succeed.
This isn't about setting; it's about the author. For instance, Americanah is set mostly in the USA, but the author is Nigerian. On the other hand, I didn't count The Sun Also Rises, which I also read this year, as European because Hemingway was an American. Edge cases will be decided according to the vibes.