2010 in Books

I didn't manage to finish the one book I wanted to over the Christmas holidays, but I did manage to finish a few. Brian Greene's book starts off with Newtonian physics and ends up with superstring theory and beyond. It's very readable considering the subject matter, but I can only take so much of it before my brain needs a rest. I started it last July and am now steaming ahead into the final quarter.

One of the delights which upped my total number of books read was reading the graphic series about Stephen King's The Dark Tower, possibly my all time favourite story, if not the most awesome tale ever told. There are probably over 50 comics in the series so that would explain the sharp rise from 191 books in 2009 to 257 in 2010 The graphic novel of Darwin's On the Origin of Species is also a beautifully drawn book that renders a complicated story accessible to children (and adults).

I love the statistic of how many books I've read this year, but would like that summarised as well as how many pages in total. A really geeky widget would analyse each book according to word and sentence length and appoint an intelligence rating as well. That would be far more telling.

Most of what I read is light fiction. I borrow books by the sackful from the library and get about 20 minutes reading in along with my first cup of tea in the morning before getting up for school. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to browse and reserve books online from my library for free but a charge now applies and, like many others, my library is at risk from cutbacks. I try to read something more challenging at the weekends and in the holidays but often fail miserably. Children addle your brain.

I joined LibraryThing over 2 years ago, with the aim of cataloguing every book as I read it, with the secondary aim of entering all the books I possess to show my library. The widget on the sidebar randomly shows all the books I have read since starting this, sometimes to my shame.

I have a lovely book club full of friends and we read (well most of us do) a great variety of books for our regular gatherings.We take it in turns to choose and the choices can be as revealing as the comments afterwards. Partly because of this and the offer of free books from LibraryThing I have started writing reviews. I don't know whether they're any good but they are honest.

I have a pile of books by my bed and regularly resolve to not buy any more until I've finished them. I always crack eventually but hope one day to not possess a book unread. Then I can start on my long list of books I'd like to read but haven't got round to purchasing.