100th book in 2016

[starfishstar]

I just read my 100th book of this year – finished it last night, in fact.

Once again, lately I've been reading 2 or 3 or 4 books simultaneously (one at home...one at work...one on audiobook...sometimes more just because?) so even after I finished book #99, it wasn't necessarily clear which would be the book I finished next, thus making it officially #100.

And then I decided, you know what, I wanted #100 to actually be something a bit special – something I chose for myself, not just whatever I arbitrarily happened to be reading at the time. So I picked something off my want-to-read list specifically for the occasion that would be a fun, quick read, but also feel right for the occasion. Thus book #100 was:

"The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" by Agatha Christie.

It felt fitting as a classic, and a classically cleverly written book. Back when I read "And Then There Were None" for the online_bookclub, I also read "Murder on the Orient Express" – both of them excellent examples of Christie's virtuosity with the whodunit structure, in very different ways – and my librarian colleague told me I really had to read "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" as well, that it was the best of the best when it came to Christie's clever twists. So now seemed like the time to pluck it from the "want to read list" and have a little classic Agatha Christie jaunt for my 100th book of the year.

When I got to work this morning and told my colleague I'd read 100 books this year, he didn't react all that much... Apparently, it took him all day to process that fact, because near the end of the day he looked at me and said, "Wait, you've read a hundred books this year?"

Comments

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

Wow, 100 books in a year! That's fantastic. (I like the fact that it took your colleague a while to process that information, heh.)

I went through all (I think) of Agatha Christie in high school, but I really should revisit her some time; I do like mysteries for unwinding, and I've probably forgotten most of the plot twists by now. ;) That, plus, I like to think I read with a little more analysis and consideration than I did back then?

So now the question is, will you finish any more books this year, or will you leave a bunch nearly-finished until Jan 1 so that you can keep your annual total as a nice round number? ;)

[starfishstar]

Ha, I wish I had the self-possession to stop at 100! No, I'm already on book # 106 or something like that... There are just *so* many books I want to read – that was always true, but so much more so now that I work with kids and want to be reasonably informed on what I recommend to them. I brought home a whole stack of books from the school library with the hope of getting through as many of them as possible over the break!

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

That's a good point about wanting to know about the books you might be recommending to the kids at your school! And it's a good reason to do lots of reading. :)

So now I'm curious -- when you read books from your library, are you able to keep them all in your head, or do you have a system for making notes about what kinds of books to recommend to what kinds of students?

[starfishstar]

Hm, kind of both... Mostly, yeah, I just have this massive file in my head of everything I've read. But I do also keep spreadsheets at work – literal spreadsheets – for a few high-interest areas.

For example, books with LGBTQ+ themes, because that's both an area that kids ask for specifically, and an area where we've really built up our collection over the last year, so I was involved in a lot of the book-buying decisions and know at least a bit about most of them, even if I haven't personally read them yet. I also have a spreadsheet of all our horror books, because that's a frequently requested area but conversely one I'm not well versed in at all, because I just can't stand to read horror, at all. So at least I have a list to refer to! I also made a spreadsheet of all our historical fiction, broken down by era, but unfortunately no one's ever asked for that. ;-)