The 2015 Reading Report

A year ago, after nearly a lifetime of reading more than a hundred books every year, I resolved to cut back.

Generally, reading is a respected activity—friends often speak admiringly of my reading load—but for me it has sometimes resembled an addiction. I read to forget, I read to escape, I read to avoid my more challenging responsibilities, I read to pass the time. It’s comparatively harmless if you place it against smoking, heroin, compulsive shopping, or sugar cravings, but anything pursued to an obsessive degree will inevitably crowd out more potentially rewarding pursuits.

In my case, that’s been writing. I could have written much more, for creative and revenue-generating outlets as well as for my blog, during the hundreds of hours I spent reading books in 2014, not to mention the preceding decades.

So last winter I decided I would stop reading for pleasure. Not entirely, of course: I stayed with my three book discussion groups, because those were also social activities—a chance to spend quality time with people I like—which meant I was committed to read at least 30 books over the course of 2015. That’s quite a bit more than the average American, apparently, but less than a quarter of my normal intake.

How’d I do? Not too badly. Especially during the first half of the year. I mostly stayed away from the library, rented an office space so I could dedicate myself to writing projects there, and kept to the books chosen by the members of my discussion groups.

By July, I had drafted more than a hundred pages of a bio-memoir of my paternal grandmother, Dorothy Roth Loftus, who grew up and raised her family in frontier Fairbanks, Alaska between 1906 and 1947. (I call it part memoir because it draws heavily on 14 hours’ worth of interviews I conducted with her and a tape recorder back in the mid 1980s.) I also cut, rearranged, and expanded my Japanese-American mother’s 1990 memoir for republication in the not-too-distant future.

Feeling a sense of accomplishment, I fell back into my old habits, especially after my wife was struck by a cyclist on Tilikum Crossing bridge in early October. I had to take time off work and other activities to see to her at the hospital and take care of her at home. Now I had something big to write about on my blog, from Portland transportation and medical privacy to the media coverage, which was good, but I also fell back into the comfort of reading.

By year’s end, I had read about 15 books on my own: more than twice what the average American reads, but less than half the number assigned by my book groups, and far less than a quarter or even a fifth of my normal year of reading. Although two were graphic novels, which are quick and dirty, I couldn’t resist Neal Stephenson’s 1,044-page Reamde. The English translation of Peter Longerich’s biography of Heinrich Himmler and the SS (748 pages) and The Guns at Last Light (641 pages), the final volume of Rick Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy about the Second World War, were hardly slim volumes, either. My book groups chose some fabulous works in 2015: from David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers to Atul Gawande’s thought-provoking Being Mortal: medicine and what matters in the end.

My wife and I continued to read books aloud to each other over dinner, so that added another six to the total. Half of those were detective novels from G.M. Ford’s Leo Waterman series set in Seattle.

I’ve made no plans for 2016. I want to continue writing, so I’ll try to limit my reading somewhat, but I won’t be dogmatic about it. I’ve already read a couple Harlan Ellison collections along with my book group assignments. I’m working through Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton and I want to read Peter Stark’s Astoria.

Easy does it.

2015 READING

Adams, Neal – Batman Odyssey  (258p)

Armstrong, Karen – Fields of Blood: religion and the history of violence  (401p)

Atkinson, Rick – The Guns at Last Light: the war in western Europe, 1944-1945; volume three of The Liberation Trilogy  (641p)

Capuzzo, Michael – The Murder Room: the heirs of Sherlock Holmes gather to solve the world’s most perplexing cases  (438p)

Dundas, Zach – The Great Detective: the amazing rise and immortal life of Sherlock Holmes  (306p)

Ellison, Harlan – Harlan Ellison’s Endlessly Watching  (185p)

Gaiman, Neil – The Graveyard Book  (318p)

Gaiman, Neil – Neil Gaiman’s “Make Good Art” Speech  (68p)

Gaiman, Neil – Trigger Warning: short fictions and disturbances  (334p)

Karr, Mary – Lit  (386p)

Karr, Mary – The Art of Memoir  (218p)

Longerich, Peter – Heinrich Himmler  (748p)

Manson, Graeme, John Fawcett, and Jody Houser – Orphan Black  (112p)

Stephenson, Neal – Reamde  (1,044p)

Men’s book group

Mitchell, David – Cloud Atlas  (509p)

Barnes, Julian – The Sense of an Ending  (163p)

Tuchman, Barbara – The Guns of August  (483p)

Strachan, Hew – The First World War  (344p)

Collins, Wilkie – The Woman in White  (656p)

Barker, Pat – Regeneration  (250p)

Boo, Katherine – Behind the Beautiful Forevers  (254p)

Blaisdell, Bob – World War One Short Stories  (153p)

Gaiman, Neil – The Ocean at the End of the Lane  (178p)

Gawande, Atul – Being Mortal: medicine and what matters in the end  (267p)

Berry, Wendell – The Memory of Old Jack  (170p)

Lightman, Alan – Einstein’s Dreams  (140p)

Lightman, Alan – The Accidental Universe  (157p)

First women’s book group

Horwitz, Joshua – War of the Whales  (383p)

Ravitch, Diane – Reign of Error: the hoax of the privization movement and the danger to America’s public schools  (325p)

Ozeki, Ruth – A Tale for the Time Being  (418p)

The Boys in the Boat: nine Americans and their epic quest for gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics  (370p)

Baptist, Edward E. – The Half Has Never Been Told: slavery and the making of American capitalism  (420p)

Conklin, Tara – The House Girl  (370p)

Gilbert, Elizabeth – The Signature of All Things  (499p)

Buck, Pearl S. – The Good Earth  (260p)

Smiley, Jane – Some Luck  (395p)

Second women’s book group

Rachman, Tom – The Rise & Fall of Great Powers  (384p)

Llosa, Mario Vargas – The Dream of the Celt  (356p)

Klay, Phil – Redeployment  (288p)

Zola, Emile – The Ladies’ Paradise  (432p)

Wyld, Evie – All the Birds, Singing  (229p)

Mankell, Henning – The Shadow Girls  (329p)

McBride, James – The Good Lord Bird  (417p)

Read for book writing research

Hunt, William R. – Distant Justice: policing the Alaska frontier  (342p)

Books read aloud

Mones, Nicole – Night in Shanghai  (277p)

Ford, G.M. – The Bum’s Rush  (301p)

Englander, Nathan – The Ministry of Special Cases  (339p)

Ford, G.M. – Slow Burn  (324p)

Ford, G.M. – Last Ditch  (280p)

Johnson, Craig – A Serpent’s Tooth  (335p)

Total books = 50

Total pages = 17,254

Plays read to prepare for a production, find monologues, or prepare for an audition

Peters, Michael – Unwritten  (32p)

Coenson, Demerath, Kutka and Robinson – Left of Sanctuary  (8p)

Film or play scripts read aloud at table reads

Hamley, Laura w/Shirley Keltner – In Search of Walter  (105p)

Johnson, Michael – Success! a musical play  (117p)

Selvitella, Micki – Ten Days of Truce  (115p)

Scripts studied, rehearsed, and performed aloud

Bennett, Kathryn – “In Search of the Red Skull”  (81p)

Rubin, Rich – “ Eggs Over Easy”  (17p)

Feder, Miriam – “Those Bastards”  (11p)

Barrow-Green, Donna – “If There Are Any Heavens”  (140p)

West, Brighton – “Friends of Trees” training script  (6p)

Piantadosi students: “A New Start” by Andrew (10p), “Warped Reality” by Fernando (9p), “The Suing of Mitchell Romero” by Harley (5p), “A.T. Aliens” by Justin (12p)

Subtotal = 668

Grand Total, pages = 17,992