What I read in 2020

Even though in most aspects 2020 was a huge dumpster fire, I had quite a nice reading year. According to Goodreads, I read a 100 books with a total of 23222 pages. That makes the average book length 232 pages, with the shortest book being only 12 pages (De wereld bij avond by Menno Wigman) and the longest 1522 pages (War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy).

This year I planned my reading a bit differently. Normally I participate in Goodreads’ reading challenge but that was getting a bit on my nerves. I was becoming too focussed on just crossing of titles instead of actually enjoying what I read. So this year I ignored the challenge and just looked up the amount of books I read at the end of the year (I might have done a few small books in the last week to make it this nice round number). I did keep my tradition of selecting 10 Big Books I Want to Read around my birthday in May, so I did need to work on that and I also participated in quite a few book clubs that prescribed all kinds of different books. I also read a lot of non-fiction for my research.

Unfortunately Goodreads doesn’t automatically tell you about what kind of books you’ve read in a year, so I had to figure that one out myself. In total I have read 18 books of poetry and 26 books of non-fiction (mostly about South African literature or trauma literature). I have read 2 graphic novels and 3 books made up from letters. The other books are mostly novels. I have read only 1 piece of classical literature this year (Aesop’s Fables) which is less then I would have hoped for. In the end, I’m pretty okay with what I read this year.

I don’t really have a lot of New Year’s resolutions about what I want to read next year. I still have some of the Big Books I have to finish before May, and I have three book clubs that I have to read for as well. I also still have my research to focus on so those will take up some books as well. I’ll probably end up between 100 and 120 books again, that’s a number that seems to fit my reading habits.