2020: My Year in Reading

• For a list of my favorite books I read this year, go here >
• I participated in #LibFaves20 on Twitter. See my selections here >
• I had a few least favorite books this year but not enough to merit making a list.
• A complete list of all the books I read in 2020 is at the bottom of this post

I read 41 books this past year, which is one more than the least amount I’ve read of any year since I started tracking (2014 only had 40). Honestly, this is more than I thought it would be because… well, because 2020. This was not an easy or normal year. 22 titles were assigned to me by Booklist to review.

2020 is the first year in the past six that I didn’t track my reading in depth. I kept a list of titles but I didn’t record start or end dates, or the number of days spent on each book. I explained why I chose not to keep a detailed reading list anymore in a previous post.

Now it’s time to assess: Was this a good choice?

I’m grateful this was the year I decided to abandon this project. I didn’t like the pressure it put on myself and 2020 turned out to be a year when none of us needed any extra pressure.

I had a hard time making myself read this year. I spent most weeks unable to pick up a book. When I did manage to start a book, I had no problem getting into it and the act of reading was as enrapturing and rewarding as always. I still devoured each book in just a day or two. But I really struggled to make myself start anything. As a result, I didn’t read much this year.

If I had still been tracking my reading, the pressure to read more and the sense of failure would have been more than I could handle. I had to give myself permission not to read this year. Accept that my mind needed other outlets to deal with everything in these strange times (hello, hours of random YouTube videos!) When I did read, it was all about the quality of the experience with no thought of quantifying it.

I liked that. I needed that.

In the end, that’s really why I stopped tracking my reading: It doesn’t work for me to quantify something that should be about quality. For some people, the act of tracking adds to the experience. For me, it detracts from the rewards of reading. It causes me focus on the wrong thing.

I can honestly say I never once in this past year found myself missing this data or tempted to start tracking it again.

I also questioned why I had been tracking my reading in the first place. What did I hope to accomplish with it? What goals did it serve?

The truth is, six years of documenting my reading habits hasn’t changed them. I haven’t done anything with all of this data and I can’t see how I ever will. It helped remind me to keep a better eye on some of my reading goals—particularly my desire to read more diversely—but I don’t need start-and-end dates or days-to-read data or seasonal patterns to see that.

The truth is, I was only ever tracking this data to participate in an activity I see many other people doing online. It seems like a thing a lot of librarians do, so I did it.

There’s no point in collecting data if you’re not going to use it. I’m never going to use my reading data. I have no desire to change when or how often I read. I like keeping a list of titles read, so I can refer back and remember books I’ve forgotten. My yearly lists of titles help me recall where my head was at over the course of each year: a reading biography, of sorts. But 2020 has proven I have no use for all the rest of it.

I do best when I focus on the quality of my reading experience without concern for the quantity. Honestly, the only thing I slightly miss about collecting my reading data is playing around with spreadsheet formulas to run as many different kinds of calculations on it as I can think of. I’m a nerd for good spreadsheet formulas. But I get to do plenty of that at work, so I don’t need to do it here.

In conclusion, my answer to the question which opened this post is:

Yes.

Books Read in 2020

I’ve linked titles which I’ve reviewed on this blog. Asterisks (*) indicate titles I reviewed for Booklist.