I briefly resurfaced from under the dark waves to discover that I’d missed an important anniversary – the 13th anniversary of my massive project to read every book in my local library. So, instead of giving my totals as of September 5, I’ve got totals as of September 23 – when I realized I’d forgotten to write an update.
TOTALS as of Sept 23, 2019 (13 years and 18 days or 4766 days)
| Category | Items this year | Total Items | Total Categories Closed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Juvenile Picture | 323 | 1980 | 611 |
| Juvenile, Board Books | 31 | 543 | 285 |
| Juvenile, First Readers | 2 | 77 | 3 |
| Juvenile, Chapter | 0 | 92 | 7 |
| Juvenile Fiction | 4 | 324 | 25 |
| Juvenile Nonfiction | 133 | 413 | 14 |
| Teen Fiction | 3 | 52 | 5 |
| Teen Nonfiction | 6 | 11 | 0 |
| Adult Fiction | 22 | 490 | 78 |
| Adult Nonfiction | 49 | 1002 | 52 |
| Audio CD | 488 | 1421 | 116 |
| Juvenile DVD | 8 | 61 | 2 |
| Adult Fiction DVD | 5 | 112 | 9 |
| Adult Nonfiction DVD | 18 | 63 | 2 |
| Periodicals | 33 | 127 | 2 |
| Total | 1125 items | 6786 items | |
| 2.94 items/day | 1.21 items/day |
We made two big gains in the past year, closing the board books entirely per challenge rules (543 total books by 285 different authors) and closing the picture books by author last name B (979 total books by 335 different authors).
I’ve also made significant headway with the audio CDs, trying to listen to one CD from each Library of Congress classification. I’ve “cheated” a bit with these, though, listening to albums that are available on Spotify that way and (mostly) only checking out stuff that isn’t available on Spotify. That way, I’m listening at home in addition to in the car. I have not, however, been faithful with recording what we’ve listened to on Spotify – which means I likely have an additional couple dozen albums that haven’t been logged.
I was hoping to get picture book authors “C” read in 2019, but it’s looking like that might be a bit of a challenge since the kids have decided that nonfiction is really where it’s at. We have read just about every book the library owns about new babies and about construction vehicles, as well as a fair bit about tools and floods. And then, of course, there are giraffes and states and butterflies and “black knights”. The children almost always tell me as we’re walking in to the library what topic they’re interested in researching this visit.
I’m a little surprised to find that I read a little over 80 books for myself (not counting re-reads). I really thought my personal book consumption had slowed almost to a halt over the past year, but apparently not!