Thoughts on Two Years Reading

Since I graduated secondary school last week, I was curious to see just how much studying had affected my enjoyment of reading for pleasure; over the two years of the Leaving Cert., I often felt bad that I wasn't reading enough. 

I kept a shorthand list over the two year period, and finished porting it onto 42409 this morning. Scrolling through it, I'm a little surprised at the length of it, considering that I always felt I could do more when it came to reading books. I still have a long list I want to get through this summer, but seeing this black-and-white list makes me feel a little better. 

I've set up a permanent page for the list, and I'll continue updating it. You can find it over on the Reading Log. 

Some thoughts: 

Before we get into the objective likes and dislikes, let's look at ol' reliable numbers. There are 44 books on the list as of this writing. Across the 22 months since I started recording the log, that neatly works out at 2 books a month, or a book a fortnight. Before I went and worked it out, I would've anecdotally told you that a book a fortnight or a book every three weeks would've sounded right. I used notation stolen from Patrick, my older brother, to gauge enjoyment of books read. A star (★) meant I really liked the book, a minus (-) meant I finished the book wishing I hadn't bothered. Neither of these notations beside the title meant that the book fell somewhere between these two extremes.Twenty books are marked with a star, or 45% of the total. Six were marked with a minus, which leaves 18 in that nebulous middle-ground. I'd like to be able to say that so few books I didn't enjoy being on the list points to an ability to choose to only read books I have a fair chance of enjoying, but there's probably some bias there. I feel like I was predisposed to mark a book with a star purely because it meant that reading the book was a good use of my time. Conversely, it's hard to shake the feeling that a book marked with a minus meant I wasted my time. Of the books marked with neither star nor minus, it's more likely that some should have minuses than stars. I feel that this bias is perhaps the reason it's so hard to trust things like GoodReads star rankings. Thirteen of the 44 books were non-fiction, accurately reflecting the fact that, while studying, I'm more likely to enjoy fiction novels to non-fiction.Of those 44 books, I had read 4 of them previously. In general I try and read new books rather than reread old ones. When it gets close to exams, though, I prefer to be reading something, anything, than not be reading. Often, I'll have an audiobook in my iTunes library and put it on when I'd be unwilling to look at a print book (after staring at a textbook for so long). Anecdotally, I'd say that I consumed about a quarter of the books in audiobook form. Given the choice between audiobook and print book, I'll usually err on the side of the latter because it means I'll get it read quicker. With the advent of Kindles, I can read on public transport or in cafés. About the only time I get to listen to audiobooks are the time between getting into bed and falling asleep (I'll recall perhaps 20 minutes of an audiobook in this scenario) or those rare moments when I'm playing a video game. It can often take me several weeks to listen to an entire book in audio form.

I love recording things, so as I said above, I'll continue to update the list over the summer and next year in NYU. I just thought it would be nice for me to take a look at my reading habits over the last two years.