Reading rate revisited

[lethargic_man]

I went back and revisited this graph from my previous post, so that it now shows counts of fiction (purple) and non-fiction (pink). I think there might be some non-fiction missing at the start, and certainly I have not included anything I read for academic purposes, but nonetheless one can see how during my Ph.D. (1996–2000) I felt non-fiction to be a chore, and avoided it; it was only afterwards that I started seriously reading non-fiction.

It's also clear how the proportion of non-fiction in my reading has got much higher in recent years (with the exception of the year before last, which I spent re-reading a whole load of books I'd been intending to reread for years, partly to justify having brought them all from the UK).

I did consider breaking the graph down further into, for example, non-fiction read for entertainment for edification, but the boundaries between them are difficult to determine, so I did not in the end.

Comments

[doseybat]

Interesting. I struggle to even properly imagine having kept consistent records. Confident that highest life reading must have been ages 8-12,1988-92. As an adult reading would have the unfortunate correlate of feeling bad, as reading is the standard comfort activity for me.

[lethargic_man]

I had to keep a record of what I read for my English GCSE (though I'm not sure why!)... or was it English Literature? I handed it in before my exam, and within a few months regretted not keeping a copy, so started a new reading log, which I have maintained ever since.