Boklista 10 år!

In 1999, that is, during my first year in college/vidaregåande, I started keeping a systematic list of all the books that I read, including number of pages, genre etc. This means I can actually say with certainty how much and what I’ve read each year for the last ten years. Ironically, 2009 – the year that marks a decade of “booklisting” – is an absolute low point so far… Including bits and pieces I read for the University, articles etc. last year I read approximately 45 books. By comparison, in 2007 and 08 I read 62 books a year.

I blame the masters thesis, for several reasons. Firstly because I did not have time or energy to read as much this year as I usually do. Secondly because I’ve read a much larger proportion of scientific articles this year than I have ever done before – in addition to not counting as books, articles are harder to read and take longer.
I know this makes me look rather geeky and weird, but I still think it’s fun, so here are some statistics from my now ten-year-old booklist (these numbers of course exclude newspapers, magazines, comics etc., and include academic literature only since I started studying at the University):

• Top reading year in terms of pages: 2002 – 16 500 pages (2002 was the year I spent 6 months on what was basically an extended holiday in Costa Rica, passing most of my time with a book and a glass of lemonade in a hammock.)
• The year with the highest proportion of text read in English: 2002 – 76% (not a lot of Norwegian literature can be found in Costa Rica, but loads of US tourists…)
• The year with the highest proportion of text read in any foreign language: 2007 – 90% (I spent the first half of 2007 in Barcelona, the second half reading up on the subject of my masters thesis.)
• The year with the highest proportion of text read in foreign languages other than English: 2008 – 54% (Master thesis related non-fiction and Italian literature studies would explain this.)
• The year with the highest percentage of University related literature: 2004 (Surprise, surprise: the year I did History 100-levels.)
• Average number of books read each year 1999-2009: 55
• Average number of pages read each year 1999-2009: ca. 13 000

The biggest changes in these ten years, seem to be the rising proportion of foreign language texts, especially those in other language than English, and the type of texts that I have read. I beleive that I probably spend just as much, if not more time reading now, even if the statistics would indicate otherwise. Compared to the sort of books I read ten years ago, now read much "heavier" literature: non-fiction (bot University related and not) and classics, which take more time and effort to read, but which usually turn out to be more rewarding in the end.