Why is this so fun for me? It’s a sickness.

My annual reading goal last year was to increase my daily reading to two hours a day and I’m proud to say that I almost got there. I was only slightly disappointed to miss the mark though. I really thought I read more than I did.

My habit is to read when I get up in the morning and most days I do. Some days I can only get in about an hour and a half, some days I get in three hours. There are some days, like the days when we need to be somewhere early in the morning, that I don’t get any reading in at all. Those days really can’t be avoided, so this year I’m going to make my daily goal at least two hours and see if I can’t reach an average of two and half hours. Dare I say three hours?! You never know!

To show my exciting progress, here is a comparison of the two years side by side.

2017		2018
31 books		49 books
376.24 hours		432.05 hours
10,133 pages		14,309 pages
1.03 hours per day		1.84 hours per day
12.14 hours per book		8.82 hours per book

 

I’ve had some great leads on books this year! I get them from articles I’ve read, podcasts, and suggestions from friends. Sometimes I’m just pulled to books I find on my thrift store tours. In addition to just more daily reading time, I’ve added more fiction to my reading list, so it was about half and half fiction and non-fiction.

There was a lot of classic fiction, Crime & Punishment and Les Misérables being favorites. I also fell in love with a few new authors, like Neil Gaiman and John Fowles. The best memoir I read was by Stephen King. I feel like I’ve reconnected with an old lover after reading his book On Writing. I read lots of amazing non-fiction this year too, some history and a lot of philosophy and “self-help” stuff. Napoleon by Andrew Roberts was my second favorite history book next to Indianapolis by Vincent & Vladic, which left me breathless. Plato at the Googleplex, Quiet, and Sex at Dawn were amazingly enlightening. And Jordan B. Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life was wonderful.

I already have several books on my shelf ready to read and some on their way from Amazon. It’s going to be a great year!

If you’d like to see my book tally post from last year, click HERE!