2016 reading in review

In the beginning of 2016 I set myself six goals which I hoped would inspire me to switch up my reading and pick up new, exciting and challenging books. And I believe this is exactly what it would have done had I remembered my goals. Alas, it was not to be, and here were are, in time for the confessional.

I successfully met only one of the six goals. However, looking at my reading statistics I’m positively surprised that some of my goals from previous years are now bearing fruit: my gender balance is close to 50/50, I’ve started actively reading both plays and poetry and am no longer avoiding “big books” (In 2016 I read 4 books that were over 600 pages, and am currently in the middle of two more). All the same, it’s time to look back on those goals and how gruesome where my failures. But first, some numbers:

In 2016, my Goodreads challenge was to read 52 books – and I read 101 books. That’s 4 books more than in 2015. However, according to Goodreads that’s a total of 25,193 pages which is almost 1,000 pages less than in 2015.
In 2016, I read 9 books out of my 274 TBR, which means I now stand at 101/274. That’s down by half from 2015.
In 2016, I read 49 books by male authors and 44 books by female authors. There were also six graphic novels that had both male and female authors/artists.
In 2016, I read 73 books in English, 19 books in Finnish and 7 books in Swedish. Out of these, 12 were translations.
In 2016, I read 47 books by North American authors and 19 books by Finnish authors. The United Kingdom fell into the third place with 15 books. In 2015, the number of US authors was 43 and 30 for UK. The number of Finnish authors on that year was 25.
In 2016, I read 76 physical books and 22 ebooks. Out of the physical books, 61 were paperback and 15 hardcover. I also listened to one audiobook.
In 2016, I read a variety of different types of literature. Compared to 2015, the greatest changes were the decrease of classics (by half from 2015) and the increase of science fiction and childrens literature (doubled) as well as disappearance of some previous genres (horror and contemporary).

So let’s recap the goals and analyse my failures shall we.

1. Read 20 books I already own

AHAHAHAHAA… This is actually quite sad. I read a measly 8 books that I’d bought before 2016 and continued to buy on seven books a month on average, so this goal was utter failure. This year alone I acquired exactly 100 books, and little over half of them still stand unread on my shelves. Although many of these were either gifted to me or bought with gift cards, I still need to kick the habit of buying cheap ebooks from the Kindle Daily Deals – this amounts to 35 new books of which 19 unread – as well as second-hand books (33 books of which 23 unread).

2. Read 20 books from my TBR 274 list

NOPE. In 2016, I read only nine books from this long list of high-ranked books. I enjoyed most of them, but I’m also seeing a trend of my reading shifting more towards what’s current now instead of picking up the backlist from previous years and decades. This is a shame but also understandable as I often am more exposed to new releases than reviews of older titles. However, I don’t plan on scratching out the massive TBR. I’ll wait for one year and see if the progress continues to be minimal or if 2016 was simply an anomaly.

3. Read at least 4 from the selected list

EH, 2.5/4 ain’t so bad? I was so excited for my choices, but then I never got excited enough to actually pick up and read the books. Why? I don’t know. I guess my downfall was beginning with Anna Karenina which I first procrastinated on for several months and then after starting it had to return it back to the library before even reaching the end. However, I do plan on going back to and finishing Anna Karenina in 2017. The two books that I did finish from the list were Lord of the Flies by William Golding and The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami. Lord of the Flies left me a bit underwhelmed, whereas The Strange Library definitely delivered on the strange. I’m definitely want to read more Murakami in 2017!

4. Read 16 books in translation

ALMOST THERE. I read 12 books in translation in 2016 – that’s about one per month. This was mostly thanks to signing up for the Around the World in 80 Books challenge, which forced me to look for books from different countries. In 2016, my reading was dominated by US authors, and although several of them had an immigrant background, they mostly publish their writing in English. However, similarly to the TBR274 goal, I’m not letting go of this one yet. Translations do still make approximately one tenth of my reading, but with more time and conscious effort I might be able to up that into 15 or even 20 per cent.

5. Read at least one book in Swedish and German

YAY for Swedish, nay for German. In 2016, I read the most I’ve ever read in Swedish in year – 7 books! This was partly due to a Swedish literature course that I took in the spring and partly because I came across several interesting Finnish-Swedish authors. My plan is to keep reading around five books a year in Swedish to broaden my vocabulary and improve my reading comprehension. In contrast, I don’t know what I should do with German. In 2015 I read 3 books in German, so to drop down to zero is quite a downgrade. I currently have a couple German books on my TBR shelf, but unless I get round to reading them in 2017 I don’t know when I might read them – if ever.

6. Read 16 books by Finnish authors

SUCCESS! In 2015 I started to make a more conscious effort to read in my native language, Finnish, and to read more Finnish authors. I set myself a 15 in 2015 challenge which I aced and felt confident that next year would be piece of cake. In the end, it wasn’t. Reaching the milestone of 16 books took a real last minute reading sprint. My top three reads were Compartment no. 6 by Rosa Liksom, Sing no Evil by JP Ahonen and The Wednesday Club by Kjell Westö. However, this will not be the end of these goals, as I plan to devote 50% of 2017’s reading solely for Finnish fiction and classics. After the bumpy experience of 2016 I do feel a bit apprehensive, but like they say – no pain, no gain.

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