I Flipped through 71 books in 2010

Before Shelfari, I had a collection of maybe 200-400 books. Mostly shelf candy. I would read whenever I felt like it, which was not all that frequent. On a good year, I would complete no more than 10 books. And I would scan an almost equal number of picture books on design, fashion, and domestic divaesque pursuits.

It was in 2007 when my friend, Sana, invited me to www.shelfari.com. It looked like an interesting site, a Facebook for book geeks, and it gave me a solution to my book inventory problem.

Through shelfari, I became part of a book club that changed my reading patterns dramatically.

Now, my shelves are bursting with close to two thousand books. I’m not boasting. I am groaning. And my husband is frowning because our living quarters look like a bookstore warehouse with books spilling out of the shelves onto precious walking space. Books sitting on his futon taking up his TV-watching space. Towers of books that threaten our safety.

So I have tried my best to do justice to the collection by forcing myself to read more and more books every year. I start the year with a plan, a target number of books to read, and it should be a target higher than the previous year’s. So far, having a plan is working.

Here’s a chart that shows the progression of my reading.

I am fuzzy about the years 2007 and 2008 because I was not purposely documenting my reading back then, but I think these are fairly accurate estimates.

As for 2010, I targeted to read 70 books, and I thought that I achieved that close to midnight of December 31. It turned out that I miscounted, and I actually read 71 books! Yey, me!

Now, I have to admit that the list includes a number of really, really, really short books with more pictures than text, but they are books nonetheless.

So, this is my quantity report for reading 2010.

In summary,

I read a total of 16,077 pages, not counting the pages of books I have only read partially. That’s a summary of 226 pages per book.

Of the 71 books I read:

53 are fiction

18 are non-fiction

12 are children’s books

8 are graphic novels or comic books or picture books

14 are Philippine publications

33 are novels

3 are short story anthologies

5 are biographies

3 are travel books

There is 1 business book,

1 self-help book,

and 1 poetry collection.

And the 71 books’ titles and authors are:

1. Pugad Baboy XX 20th Edition by Pol Medina
2. The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
3. How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents by Julia Alvarez
4. The Game by A.S. Byatt
5. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (reread)
6. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
7. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (reread)
8. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
9. The Great Automatic Grammatizator and Other Stories by Roald Dahl
10. The Gathering by Anne Enright
11. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
12. Mantissa by John Fowles
13. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
14. Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman
15. The Darwin Awards by Wendy Northcutt
16. My Life in France by Julia Child
17. Chasing Cezanne by Peter Mayle
18. Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
19. Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland
20. Falling Off the Map by Pico Iyer
21. Kubori Strips for the Soul by Michael David
22. Best Things in Life, A Second Collection of Comic Strips from Kuborikikiam.com by Michael David
23. Postsecret by Frank Warren
24. The Pretenders by F. Sionil Jose
25. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
26. Hallmark Creative and Thoughtful Gift Giving by Leah Ingram
27. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Leguin
28. What Now? by Ann Patchett
29. While I Was Gone by Sue Miller
30. Fables, The Deluxe Edition by Bill Willingham
31. The Mystic Masseur by VS Naipaul
32. You Can Reach the Top by Zig Ziglar
33. A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe
34. The Pact by Jodi Picoult
35. A Good Year by Peter Mayle
36. Boys’ Toys Bikes by Hulton Getty
37. Wine 101 by Gerald C. Hammon
38. Fifty Days by Sarah Quigley
39. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
40. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
41. Alamat ng Paniki by Segundo Matias
42. Fetch by Becky Bravo, illustrated by Blooey Singson
43. Pied Piper
44. Ang Mga Kwento ni Lola Basyang- Anting Anting, retold by Christine Bellen
45. Alamat ng Buwaya by Segundo Matias
46. Tell Me About Beatrix Potter by John Malam
47. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
48. 4000 Years of Christmas by Earl W. Count and Alice Lawson Count
49. Flight to the Stars and other Stories by Samantha Mae Coyiuto
50. Billy Bryson’s African Diary by Bill Bryson
51. Successful Time Management byPatrick Forsyth
52. Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
53. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
54. Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
55. The Many Moods of Plantation Bay
56. Picture Palace by Paul Theroux
57. Journey to Ellis Island by Carol Biernan
58. The Music School by John Updike
59. Slaughter House-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
60. Love, Ten Poems by Pablo Neruda Pablo Neruda
61. The Fat Woman’s Joke by Fay Weldon
62. My Secret Bully by Trudy Ludwig
63. Twas the Night Before Christmas on IPad. by Clement Clarke Moore
64. A Loyal Character Dancer by Qiu Xialong
65. Blu’s Hanging by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
66. Teo’s Trash Can by Grace D. Chong
67. Big Eyes, Small Eyes by Grace D. Chong
68. The Magic of Apo Mayor, 31 pages Grace D. Chong
69. Half and Half by Grace D. Chong
70. Nana by Emile Zola Emile Zola
71. The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

In 2011, I will read 80 books. So help me, God.