Progress with the challenge & reading habits analysis

[kittiwake]

At the end of January I joined the 50bookchallenge, a community for people who are trying to read 50 books in 2003. People are still joining now, even though we've reached the half-way mark of the challenge. By the end of June I'd read 30 books in six months, so I'm still ahead of target. I've been doing some analysis of the books I've read so far.

Reading Analysis:

1) By Book Category:

novels - 1, 2, 6, 7, 11, 13, 18, 20, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29.
short stories - 3, 4, 9, 10, 12, 14.
plays - 5.
sagas - 8, 21, 22, 23.
non-fiction - 15, 16, 17, 19, 30.

I have given norse sagas their own category as they are a mixture of fiction, mythology and history. I have arbitrarily decided to count them all as fiction rather than non-fiction.

2) By Subject Matter:

Fiction
historical - 1, 13.
fantasy - 2, 4, 7, 11, 28, 29.
sagas - 8, 21, 22, 23.
science fiction - 9, 10.
humorous - 5, 6, 12, 14.
family saga - 3, 20.
murder mystery - 18.
spy stories - 24, 25, 26, 27.

Non-Fiction
true crime - 17.
memoirs - 15, 16, 19.
popular science - 30.

I've got a lot of non-fiction books that I haven't read yet, so I must get round to reading some of them soon.

3) By Book Origin:

unread book crates - 1, 4, 5, 6, 13, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 23. *GOOD*
re-read owned - 8, 10, 12, 17, 30.
bought recently (new) - 2, 7, 9, 11, 20, 24, 25. *VERY BAD*
bought recently (second-hand)- 26, 29. *QUITE BAD*
library - 14, 28.
BookCrossing swap - 3, 27.
intra-family swap - 18.

I'm still aiming to read a lot of the books in my unread books crates, but I've lapsed a bit and bought a lot of new books recently. It's partly the fault of those book shops with their tempting displays of 3 for 3 and 2 for £10 offers, and partly the faulty of all the other 50bookchallenge posters, with their oh so tempting book reviews!

1 - The Sea Road - Margaret Elphinstone
2 - I, Lucifer - Glen Duncan *
3 - Little Altars Everywhere - Rebecca Wells
4 - Smoke and Mirrors - Neil Gaiman
5 - The Complete Plays of Joe Orton
6 - The Girls of Slender Means - Muriel Spark
7 - Gloriana, or the Unfulfill'd Queen - Michael Moorcock *
8 - The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America
9 - The Persistence of Vision - John Varley
10 - The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury
11 - Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
12 - The Best of Saki - edited by Tom Sharpe
13 - The Quincunx - Charles Palliser
14 - Beans, Eggs and Crumpets - P.G. Wodehouse *
15 - Out of Africa - Isak Dinesen
16 - Child of Happy Valley - Juanita Carberry with Nicola Tyrer
17 - White Mischief - James Fox
18 - Dancing with the Virgins - Stephen Booth
19 - South From Granada - Gerald Brenan
20 - I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
21 - Egil's Saga
22 - The Poetic Edda
23 - The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki
24 - Call for the Dead - John Le Carré
25 - A Murder of Quality - John Le Carré
26 - The Spy who Came in from the Cold - John Le Carré
27 - The Looking-Glass War - John Le Carré
28 - Doomsday Book - Connie Willis *
29 - Tea with the Black Dragon - R. A. MacAvoy
30 - The Joy of Sleep - Shirley Motter Linde & Louis M. Savary

* read for the Motley Fool Book Club Board