I did it! I (just barely) met my goal of finishing 50 books in this very long year. Our local lockdown certainly helped as I racked up 17 books during my 105 days of “captivity”. I had a brief panic attack last night when I realized the count in Goodreads was one shy of the reality so I grabbed a novella for a quick read starting just before midnight. For comparison, I only finished 40 books in 2019. However, my page total of 34,647 is somewhat less than last year’s 37.039 pages due to choosing shorter books on average this year.
For most of the year, I read my eBooks using the simply named “Book Reader” app for Windows 10. I have the font set rather large so that I can see my laptop screen easily while laying in bed; these are the page numbers I add to the ReadMore app on my phone which makes it seem that I read more than I actually do. Anyway, I am planning to read most of my books in the New Year using my new tablet (Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite) via the ReadEra app so we will see what that does to the page counts. I have also started reading more “tree books” again recently as a result of having my eyes checked and getting new glasses.
Fifty books for 2020 is the most I managed to finish in a single year since 2014 when I had a respectable 61 (down significantly from 77 in 2013). My record since I began keeping track was in 2010 with 119 books completed that year; I was a reading teacher at the time, however, so I counted a lot of the 32-page graded readers we used in my classes.
I will give you one more stat before we get to the list of books (now with covers!). I am now on day number 1,036 of my current streak of reading every day since 1 March 2018. I still have a way to go in order to reach my previous record of 2,279 days (from 17 July 2010 until 12 October 2016).
1. 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die edited by Steven J. Schneider (2017): finished on 14 January 2020
2. Missing In Rangoon by Christopher G. Moore (2012): finished on 16 January 2020
3. The Guardians by John Grisham (2019): finished on 29 January 2020
4. The Debriefing by Jeffery Deaver (2019): novella; finished on 9 February 2020
5. The Best American Mystery Stories 2019 edited by Jonathan Lethem (2019): finished on 14 February 2020
6. A Minute to Midnight by David Baldacci (2019): finished on 6 March 2020
7. One Good Deed by David Baldacci (2018): finished on 14 March 2020
8. The Warsaw Protocol by Steve Berry (2019): finished on 3 April 2020
9. The Last Odyssey by James Rollins (2020): finished on 11 April 2020
10. Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips (2019): finished on 13 April 2020
11. Crooked River by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child (2020): finished on 22 April 2020
12. Memory Man by David Baldacci (2015): finished on 30 April 2020
13. The Last Mile by David Baldacci (2016): finished on 5 May 2020
14. Mexico by James A. Michener (1992): finished on 9 May 2020
15. The Fix by David Baldacci (2017): finished on 17 May 2020
16. The Fallen by David Baldacci (2018): finished on 23 May 2020
17. Redemption by David Baldacci (2019): finished on 1 June 2020
18. Lockdown by Peter May (2020): finished on 3 June 2020
19. Walk the Wire by David Baldacci (2020): finished on 9 June 2020
20. Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It by Gina Kolata (2001): finished on 13 June 2020
21. The Innocent by David Baldacci (2012): finished on 17 June 2020
22. The Hit by David Baldacci (2013): finished on 25 June 2020
23. The Science of Self-Learning by Peter Hollis (2018): finished on 26 June 2020
24. Bullseye by David Baldacci (2014): novella; finished on 30 June 2020
25. The Target by David Baldacci (2014): finished on 12 July 2020
26. The Guilty by David Baldacci (2015): finished on 21 July 2020
27. End Game by David Baldacci (2017): finished on 30 July 2020
28. Remain in Love: Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Tina by Chris Frantz (2020): finished on 11 August 2020
29. An Atlas of Countries That Don’t Exist: A Compendium of Fifty Unrecognized and Largely Unnoticed States by Nick Middleton (2018): finished on 15 August 2020
30. Generally Speaking: All 33 Columns, Plus a Few Philatelic Words from Keller by Lawrence Block (2019): finished on 19 August 2020
31. Keller’s Fedora by Lawrence Block (2017): novella; finished on 26 August 2020
32. Vacation Guide to the Solar Systemby Olivia Koski and Jana Grcevich (2017): finished on 3 September 2020
33. 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music by Andrew Grant Jackson (2015): finished on 3 September 2020
34. The Night Swim by Megan Goldin (2020): finished on 1 October 2020
35. The Eighth Detective by Alex Pavesi (2020): finished on 16 October 2020
36. Notre-Dame: A Short History of the Meaning of Cathedrals by Ken Follett (2020): finished on 17 October 2020
37. The Spartans by Andrew J. Bayless (2020): finished on 22 October 2020
38. Rage by Bob Woodward (2020): finished on 29 October 2020
39. Daylight by David Baldacci (2020): finished on 15 November 2020
40. On Pandemics: Deadly Diseases from Bubonic Plague to Coronavirus by David Waltner-Toews (2020): finished on 16 November 2020
41. The Roof: The Beatles’ Final Concert by Ken Mansfield (2018): finished on 20 November 2020
42. The Philately of Third Reich Germany 1933-1945 by Robert W. Jones (2012): finished on 27 November 2020
43. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan (2015): finished on 28 November 2020
44. The Burglar in Short Order by Lawrence Block (2020): finished on 2 December 2020
45. The Bat by Jo Nesbø (2013): finished on 8 December 202046. Lost Countries: Exotic Tales From An Old Stamp Album by Stuart Laycock and Christ West (2017): finished on 14 December 202047. Stamps Of The Siamese Kings 1876-1948: A Journey Through Five Reigns by Michael A. Jones (2003): finished on 23 December 202048. Keller In Dallas by Lawrence Block (2009): novella; finished on 25 December 202049. Head Wounds by Michael McGarrity (2020): finished on 29 December 202050. The Collectors by Philip Pullman (2015): novella; finished on 31 December 2020
Mark Joseph Jochim 