Year end beckons and it time to measure myself against my 2016 reading targets.  These turned out to be ambitious and unattainable but I’m not going to beat myself up about it.  I never got 100% in any exam at school, but I never failed one either.

  •  I read 105 books,  56% of which were taken from the pre-2016 TBR (target was 80%),  31% were either in German or translated from German (target was 40%).
  • I also said I would even the score in The Battle of the Books. Well I culled 278 from the piles, and acquired 100. (Review copies are not included in this score.)  Not enough unfortunately to balance the purchase allowance equation I’d devised for 2016. I bought 25 more than I should have, and was depending on a final cull to bring myself back on target.  It didn’t work out, and you can read more about that over at the TBR Dare website. Books 2 Lizzy 0.  Looks like I’ll have to make this competition best of 5.

Those were the only measurables for this year, and against those I’d give myself a B.

Here are a few more interesting facts.

  • I paid no conscious attention to author gender resulting in a 56%:44% male:female ratio.
  • 48% were works in translation.
  • 70% of the books read were new-to-me authors. I’m quite staggered by that, but, of course, this means that I have a huge backlog of works by favourite authors, which will be addressed in 2017.
  • I read 6 books on Kindle – a 600% increase on 2015 – a paperwhite making all the difference.
  • I abandoned 7 books.
  • The oldest book read was published in 1613. (Dialogue of the Dogs -Cervantes)
  • The longest book was Craig Russell’s The Ghosts of Altona at 540 pages.
  • And my books of the year were …. Come back tomorrow when all will be revealed.