Books. Yup. Books.

Weather: 55 degrees (feels like 55); WINDY and potentially rainy
Mood: OK
Hair: Clean! Conditioned. Blown out.
Listening to: nothing in here; the boys (including one extra doing the overnight thing with Sparky) have Star Wars Episode IV or whatever on in the living room so I'm occasionally bombarded with spaceships and space weaponry in surround sound

While that all is going on, I'm also baking cookies and doing dishes. And blogging. Multitasking is us.

I'm thieving again, this time from Amanda and Jessamyn. This is a substantially less intense way of looking back over the year, but it suits my record-keeping nuttiness. On my book blog, I'm doing more of a "best of" listing. And I've modified this a bit in the interest of time: mine, as in I'm outta...

number of books read in 2004: 102
number of books read in 2003: 100
number of books read in 2002: 118
number of books read in 2001: 83
number of books read in 2000: 128
average read per month: 8.5 (over five years: 8.85)
average read per week: 1.96 (over five years: 2.04)
number read in worst month: 0 (July)
number read in best month: 12 (June)
number by male authors: 66
number by female authors: 36
number of fiction: 61
number of non-fiction: 41

What I find remarkable is how consistent this is. The blips are explainable--

In December of 2002 I took on more hours at work, which brought the consequent drop in number of hours available for reading in the most recent two years.

In 2001, we took a major two-week trip to Europe, which involved a great deal of planning ahead of time. It also brought the need to get all the scrapbooks sorted out after returning, and I was much more dutiful about that it then compared to the past 16 months or so. I also brought home a large number of brochures to read which I don't normally write down as books.

In 2000, I think I was reading a lot more YA novels because I was either actively running that department or gearing up for it. YA books take lots less time, obviously. And I had a reading vacation that year--spent hours on the porch or on the rocks at the edge of Moosehead Lake reading and reading.

(And yes, I have this back further, all the way to 1993. Because I'm clearly insane.)

It's very disappointing, however, to see that I read so many more male authors. Must try to do better on this. The first half of the year I was doing fabulous; I actually read more by women than by men (24 men, 32 women) through June. Weird. I don't actually pay a lot of attention to gender of author usually. It's actually the book I'm more interested in than the writer... ahem.

So.

I need to finish the dishes. Han and Leia are fighting with each other, there are multiple booms coming from the living room, and the kids are giggling. They are sated on video games, DVDs and pizza. J had three pieces of za, Sparky only one. There are cookies galore. I'm tired. Don't think I'll be going to sleep if they decide to watch the next episode (The Beast got the trilogy for Xmas), since my bedroom is right over the Home Theater. The upside is that I don't have to work tomorrow. Woohoo. The downside is that I've lost continuity.

Good night.