Geeking Every Minute of It

Okay, I'm a geek. I love the World Almanac. This past Thursday, each graduate of LATI (Library Associate Training Institute) received a copy of the almanac, which made me as happy as a greyhound chasing a slobber-soaked tennis ball. I mean I am in complete nerd mode.

Where else can you find great stuff like this?:

Americans paid an average of 24.5% of their total income in Social Security and income tax payments in 2007; Germans paid 42.8%.

Mozart beat out Beethoven as the most performed composer in 2006-2007, 425 to 391.

The population of New Orleans in 2000 was 484,674. In 2007? 239,124.

The best-selling magazine for 2007? Take a guess. Go ahead.
Answer: AARP The Magazine with a paid circulation of 24,444,293
(Second place - AARP Bulletin - 23,815,128. Oprah lagged woefully behind at a mere 2,405,177.)

Good stuff, man. Geek out!

Nerd Stats Part II

Hmmmm.... This breakdown is interesting.

It certainly looks like I read a lot of J-Fic/YA this year. But those numbers skew things a bit. Several of those books were either sf, fantasy or horror, so had they not been in the J-Fic/YA category, the genre numbers and percentages would look a little different. But that's how I chose to do it.

Also the definitions of "sf," "fantasy" and "horror" are somewhat fluid. Is Lucius Shepard fantasy or horror? What about Howard Waldrop? Is he sf or fantasy?

But no matter how you look at it, it would seem I'm reading more "non-genre" fiction, which includes "literary" and classics. I'm certainly not abandoning genre, but I think I'm just being more selective in what I read from genre.

Consider also that if I see something interesting on audio, I'm more likely to give it a try than if I saw the print version of the book. I suppose I'm more agreeable to taking a chance on an audiobook, although I can't really give a good reason why.

Other Nerd Stats:

Of the 115 books I read in 2008, I own 41 (or 35%) of them. More on this in a future post.

Well, this is embarrassing:

Books written by men - 80%. Wow. Sorry, ladies. I'll do better in 2008.

Only 13% of the books I read were written by non-American writers. Again, embarrassing.

Only 2% were works translated into English. Man...

Needless to say, I'll work on these three deficiencies in 2009.

Nerd Stats Part I

Over the next few days, I'll be geeking out with my lists of the Best Reads of 2008, listing my favorites in several different categories of fiction as well as non-fiction. I know, I'm really nerding out here. (But it's fun for me!)

Okay, if I stopped reading right now, today, I'd have read a total of 115 books in 2008. That's not counting graphic novels or picture books, but it does include J-Fiction, YA fiction, other fiction and all non-fiction. That's up about a dozen books from 2007, due in large part to audiobooks on the iPod. (Yes, I count audiobooks.) We'll get into more geek numbers as we go along, but for now, you can see that just over 60% of my reading this year was fiction. It sure felt like I read more non-fiction, but maybe that's because in the last month I read an awful lot of it.

The most books I read in one month was fourteen in March; the least (not counting December), eight in February.

Of the 115 books read, 32 of them were published in 2008.

More in the coming days. Nerd out!