The Year in Review

I have a very good reason for not posting in the past two weeks. Two good reasons, actually, but they both boil down to the same thing: viruses. First I had one, then my computer had one! Mine was a nasty stomach bug that kicked my butt and had me laying on the couch moaning pitifully for the entire Christmas week. Then my computer caught some horrible spyware/trojan thing on Facebook, and I spent the last week helping her recover. Thank goodness one of our techie guys at work gave me advice on the best procedure for running the cleaning software. I will have to buy him some chocolates to say thanks!

So here it is January 2, 2009 and I'm just getting to my "Year in Review" post. This year was busy for me both personally and professionally. I traveled to California to attend ALA (and Disneyland--I won't pretend that it was all business), started a new systemwide reading program at my library, networked with local preschools and community agencies, was promoted to the head of my department, became a Regional Coordinator for Ohio Ready to Read, helped create the Ready to Read Wiki (which is now up and running), and trained my staff in Every Child Ready to Read. In addition, I made some great new library friends through blogging, Twitter, and Facebook. All of this has made me feel really good about my career and the choices I've made to get where I am.

I also discovered my absolute favorite social networking site this year: Goodreads. Back in April, I signed up for my account and started adding the books I had read, the books I wanted to read, and everything I was currently reading. Like many librarians, I read a lot. But until I started my Goodreads account, I didn't realize how much I really was reading, and how much I was forgetting about the things that I had read. Now, I have a record of everything with ratings and reviews. Even better, I can look at what my friends are reading and grab their picks for my "To Read" list.

I thought it might be fun (for me anyway) to go back and look at what I had read this year, since April when I started my Goodreads account, and see how things stack up.

Since April, I have read a total of 46 books. This averages just over 5 books a month, which is amazing to me. I never realized I was reading that much!

Not surprisingly, my highest concentration of books was Children's/YA. There were 21 books in this category. What DID surprise me was that the categories of Nonfiction and Fantasy were neck and neck in second place (17 and 16 books respectively). I had no idea I was reading so much nonfiction.

I read 8 books with a humorous tone, 5 graphic/manga books, 3 each of Miscelaneous Fiction, Poetry, and Classics, 2 each of Science Fiction, Library Literature (this is a category I created for myself that holds anything having to do with libraries--fiction or nonfiction) and Horror books , and 1 each of Historical Fiction, Chick Lit (bet that one was a Janet Evanovich), Jane Austen (yes, this is its own category--I count both her own novels and all of the derivative literature and fan fiction here), Short Stories and the Newbery Award.

Looking at this data, I have made some goals for myself in the coming year. First, I need to read more classics and award winners. I'm currently working on a Nobel Prize winner, The Magic Mountain, and I really enjoy it. There's just something uplifting about reading a book that is really well written. Also, I need to step it up with the poetry. For a while there I was reading a poetry book every month, but that somehow fell off. Ditto on the short fiction.

Overall, I'm really pleased with myself and my reading variety this past year. I should probably sort out my nonfiction into categories now that I know I read so much of it!

And now I'm going to go knock out a chapter of The Magic Mountain before I go to bed. What will you be reading in the New Year?