or, More Findings of No Ultimate Interest
As I said last week, I have now read 300 books of my collection since I started tracking my reading back in June 2015. Now follows a shallow analysis of the books in this last hundred books, eschewing (mostly) reference to books in the “Comics & Graphic Novel” category, of which I read only two since last report.
First we note (as previously said in the post hyperlinked above) that I read books at a staggering pace over the last 100 books. Merely 279 days elapsed during my last book century, giving me a blistering rate of a little less than three days to read each book (1 book per 2.79 days). Besides the fact that my page rate also soared (of which more anon), the speedy book reading means that my overall pace for the entire 300 books read also dropped to a respectable 4.6 days per book. This is in line with my pace for the first hundred books (4.83 days/book), which had crawled to only 6.19 days/book for the second hundred.
1 Book Read per 2.79 Days
Of course, if Comics & Graphic Novels are included, these reading rates drop even further — though only a couple in that category were read in this last set. The difference is most apparent in the 1st hundred books read, when 33 comic books and graphic novels were read, but the reading rate for the entire set (342 books all told) drops by half a day if these ‘picture books’ are considered.
Average Time to Read a Book
non-Comics All 1st hundred 4.83 3.63 2nd hundred 6.19 5.79 3rd hundred 2.79 2.74 All 4.60 4.03
I am highlighting the reading pace here because of a disquieting statistic I uncovered during my inquest into an error with my last analysis of the previous hundred books read. During that investigation, I found that I would not finish reading all of the books in my collection (at my then-current rate) before Pearl Harbor Day in 2124. I thus began reading with the explicit purpose of bringing my projected completion date more in line with currently expected human lifespans (though not my own, undoubtedly), or, failing that, at least within the present century. To this end I began reading much of my genre fiction paperbacks (as will be seen), which books I had yet another purpose in reading, as I was seeking to make space in my limited paperback shelving by retiring those books already read.
I should point out that the underlying calculation for ‘books read’ in my collection included those books which I have read before beginning this quite pointless endeavor in data tracking, but when I made my first stab at guessing my ETA for reading my last book I did not have many works marked as previously read. I have tried to denote those I have read before since that time (July of 2018), but … I found myself in a quandary. I am sure, for example, that I have read most of the Badger comics which I have, but am I positive I read all of them? Or, in another vein, I read a version on Melville’s The Confidence-Man online (what a terrific book!), but can I really say that I’ve read the edition I bought a physical copy of later? So … I decided that I will only mark as ‘read’ those books for which I am sure — entirely sure — that I have read in that edition, and that I read the entire book from cover to cover. More on this statistical kerfuffle anon.
All this prologue is merely an attempt to explain the ridiculous dominance of genre fiction in my last century of books. While over 40% of the previous hundred books were nonfiction works of one stripe or another, barely one tenth of the last hundred were nonfiction. Even Fiction itself was overwhelmed by so-called ‘genre fiction’ works read, contributing barely 5% of the total (and two of those books could more properly, if loosely, be labelled as ‘Horror’). The full breakdown is below:
Books Read by Genre
Mystery & Thriller 53 Science Fiction & Fantasy 31 Nonfiction 11 Literature & Fiction 5
And of course there is a chart
The breakdown of the not-quite-a-dozen Nonfiction books is as follows:
Nonfiction Breakdown
History 2 Poetry, Drama & Criticism 2 Children’s Books 1 Foreign Language 1 Humor 1 Language & Linguistics 1 Militaria 1 Philosphy 1 Religion & Spirituality 1
I’ll leave it for the complete list of these last hundred books for you to discover into which category I’ve placed Strunk & White.
Since I now have full data on page counts for each book I have read, I am able to track my reading over time more precisely, and so am able to see that I maintained a fairly steady pace over the past nine months, with few spurts or slogs. This can be seen by looking at the cumulative pages read:
The fast pace can be seen even more clearly by considering the average reading rate:
Though my pace got as high as 110 pages per day, the overall average turned out to be just over 90 pages per day.
90.13 Pages Read per Day
Just how drastically my reading speed jumped a gear is shown by the fact that my pace for the previous hundred books was merely 34.4 pages per day. I should point out that page count information is incomplete for that set of one hundred books, with ten books missing that datapoint, so the actual pace was higher, though obviously still much lower than that for the last hundred books. Aaaand … another chart:
I know, you’re thinking “Hey, wait a minute! That chart makes it look like the average pace was more like 35.5 pages per day! What gives?!?” You are eagle-eyed, aren’t you? Well, the truth of the matter is that I didn’t exclude the comic books from that chart, since I only read 7 of them, and since they didn’t really affect the pace that much. You don’t believe me? *Sigh* Okay, then, here’s the same chart showing the non-comics page rate, which diverges only slightly from the total rate:
Now are you satisfied?
Flipping the paradigm — or rather switching some axes — the page count per book slightly increased from last report (with the usual caveat about missing data etc., etc., blah, blah). While the previous set of books sported 236 pages per book, the just completed hundred books averaged just over 250 pages in length. Including the two comics read drops this figure to 246.5 pages per book.
Average Book Length: 250.5 Pages
Not only was the pace of reading increased, the actual number of pages read was also significantly greater, though this may have been more influenced than the ‘pages per day’ statistic by the lack of complete data in my previous report. Over 25,000 pages were read in this last tranche of books, even with comics excluded (which added 94 pages to the full total).
Total Pages Read (non comics): 25,052
The average rating rose slightly from last report, though here, too, some duds were to be found.
Overall, the quality was quite good, which was a slight surprise since I was purposely choosing books which seemed as if they should be leaving my shelves for good. Many of the last hundred books read made my Best of 2018 book list. The average rating for all books was a respectable 3.96, or the only slightly lower 3.94 if the two comics are excluded.
Average Rating for Books Read: 3.94
I will return in the near future with the complete list of books read, after which I hope to delve into the question of when I might complete my collection of books (after which I guess I’d better get around to the analysis of the last thousand or ten thousand songs listened to).
Leave a comment