2020: The Year In Reading Review

Brian J. Noggle

Well, gentle reader, as you might know, I like to post a recap of my annual reading to look at some of the trends I discover only at the end.

This year, I apparently read about 126 books this year. A little more, a little less–my book year started on December 28, 2019 with the completion of the first Jack Reacher novel and ended about the same time this year. Not depicted in this total are books that I started but did not complete, including the collected poems of Andrew Marvell, Wuthering Heights, and some reading I’ve done on the complete works of Keats and Shelley that are upstairs now and will probably gather dust until the springtime, when I read a little poetry on the deck.

With further adieu, here’s the list for 2020:

Well, 126 books is the most I have done since I’ve been keeping track in 2010ish as I ran out of cells with borders in the Excel spreadsheet–although my previous high was 2019 with 110, so I don’t know why I ran out of bordered cells at 123. I stopped the numbering at 125, and I blew past it. Strangely enough, my spreadsheet was missing three titles that I added at the end when going back through the Book Report category to make this post.

I think I padded out the numbers a bunch this year because I read a lot of poetry, plays, and artistic monographs. The only big piece of literature I read was Barnaby Rudge, but I also condensed the numbers by only counting various omnibus editions (five Miss Marple novels, Lord of Janissaries, and Euripedes II) as single books.

I read 10 Executioner novels. I read a lot of science fiction and a lot of local authors. I read a bunch of plays, including the aforementioned Euripedes, Eugene O’Neill, and Dylan Thomas among others. I read a lot of art monographs, but not much of artists I like.

Next year, I will read more classical literature under the influence of The English Novel audio course–although, if Wuthering Heights is any indication, I will read a lot of shorter works in between chapters.

And, of course, even at 126 books, I start the year further behind as I have surely bought more books than that. But I will never want for something to read.

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