December 21, 2012

2012: The Year In Books, Part 1

2012 has been an amazing year for me, book-wise.

I get an uncommon amount of my life pleasure from books.  I know this about myself.  And yet, not since before college have I gone so far out of my way to make reading for pleasure such a major priority in my life.  I am pleased with this change, and wonder just how far I can push it, in terms of increased value in my life.

Most importantly, I discovered audio-books.  So while I also spent the year visually reading the words of more pages per day than my norm, in addition,  I consumed 5 great books that I otherwise wouldn't have experienced.  I suspect that running, slowly, with an audiobook (or slowly using any of the cardio machines at the gym) may be my default "keep-myself-healthy-as-long-as-possible" work-out as I slide toward the comforts of middle age.

Second, I set a goal of 9,000 pages to avoid the short book shuffling I did in 2011.  It worked like a charm.  I'm still closing out the year, but I fit in IQ84 and Reamde without any concern -- Unlike last year, when I was shooting for total books and worried about the 900+ page options.  This year's page count goal made the big bertha books just as attractive as their emaciated cousins.

I've got 9+ days to go and I'm guessing I'll land just short of 12,000 pages with an additional 6 audiobooks.

Reviews for all will come in over the last few days of the year.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I started off 2012 with a resolution of reading 2 books per month. I was ahead of pace in March or April, but then I hit upon 1Q84. Yikes. It kinda drained me and I didn't want to read for months after I was done. I ended up reading mostly running books the rest of the year. Anyway, looking forward to your posts on what you've read this year!

Biting Tongue said...

Thanks, Jen. Yeah, IQ84 definitely was a doozie, size-wise. I felt like it was a workout just to lug it around...