bsowell

As I promised last year, I kept careful records of every book I read in 2009. In addition to recording the titles and authors, I’ve noted the length of each book and when I read it. Below are some statistics I’ve calculated from this data.

Reading Statistics

• Total pages read: 18031
• Avg. pages per month: 1502.58
• Avg. pages per week: 346.75
• Avg. pages per day: 49.40
• Longest book: A Pattern Language, 1166 pages
• Shortest book: Brunelleschi’s Dome, 165 pages
• Longest time to read a book: A Pattern Language, 48 days
• Shortest time to read a book: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, 1 days

In addition to the average number of pages, I also computed the distribution of the number of pages read each month. For this I assume that I read at a constant (i.e. the same number of pages per day). This is clearly not true, but it still shows the basic trends.

Finally, I’ve plotted a histogram of the lengths of the books I read. As one would expect, the largest buckets are between 200 and 400 pages.

Here is the complete list of books I read in 2009. The rows highlighted in yellow are books I reread this year, and those highlighted in green are books I listened to in audiobook form. In the later case I used Amazon for the number of pages. Of course, the number of pages is approximate, and I make no claims to consistency about things like handling front and end matter or different editions.

Update: I’ve added stars to those books that I particularly like.

It’s time for my annual year in places. As before, I only counted cities in which I spent at least one night. I visited those cities with a * on multiple non-consecutive days. The list is chronological by first visit. See also my lists from 2007 and 2008.

• Omaha, NE*
• Asilomar, CA
• Ithaca, NY*
• Fairfax, VA*
• Mountain View, CA*
• Providence, RI
• Lyon, France
• Paris, France
• Memphis, TN

The following is a list of all the books I read in 2008. They are listed chronologically by completion. I’m collecting better data for 2009, but for now I only have the titles and authors.

• Decoding the Universe, Charles Seife
• Postsingular, Rudy Rucker
• I’m Just Here for the Food, Alton Brown
• Blankets, Craig Thompson
• The Constant Gardener, John le Carre
• A Cook’s Tour, Anthony Bourdain
• The Practice of Programming, Brain Kernighan and Rob Pike
• Glut, Alex Wright
• Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge
• Deep Economy, Bill McKibben
• Mistress of the Art of Death, Ariana Franklin
• Mind Wide Open, Steven Johnson
• Oath of Fealty, Larry Niven and Jack Pournelle
• Farewell my Subaru, Doug Fine
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
• Suburban Nation, Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck
• Consider Phlebas, Iain M. Banks
• The Architecture of Happiness, Alan de Botton
• Confessions of an Economic Hitman, John Perkins
• Player of Games, Iain M. Banks
• The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson
• Black Hole, Charles Burns
• Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, eds.
• Collected Fictions, Jorge Luis Borges
• Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett
• The Most Beautiful House in the World, Witold Rybczynski
• Saturn’s Children, Charles Stross
• WorldChanging: A User’s Guide to the 21st Century, Alex Steffen ed.
• A Place of My Own, Michael Pollan
• The Poisonwod Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
• The Edifice Complex, Deyan Sudjic
• Use of Weapons, Iain M. Banks
• Anathem, Neal Stephenson
• The Option of Urbanism, Christopher Leinberger
• The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri, David Bajo
• The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross
• The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie
• Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Live of a Critic in Discuise, Ruth Reichl
• The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought the Down, Colin Woodard

Just like last year. I spent at least one night in each of the cities listed, and I visited cities with a * multiple times on non-consecutive days. The list is roughly chronological, but it’s entirely from memory.

• Omaha, NE*
• Ithaca, NY*
• Fairfax, VA*
• Vancouver, BC, Canada
• Niagara Falls, ON, Canada
• Toronto, ON, Canada
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Memphis, TN

I encountered a Cornell tradition today. The Friday before spring break is “Dragon Day”. Freshmen from the College of Architecture design and build a dragon, which they parade around and burn. It’s quite a spectacle.  Apparently there used to be rivalry between the architecture and engineering students, so the engineers build a phoenix every year to compete with the dragon.  The event dates back to the early 1900s, and there are some pretty neat pictures on the Wikipedia page