A nice bonus to going through all my reviews and labelling them by decade is finding out statistics for my reading tastes. (N.B. sorry, the links don’t work unless you’re me! If you want to see the relevant posts, you’ll have to use the drop-down menu in the left hand column… oops!)
1770s (1)1810s (1)1830s (1)1860s (2)1870s (4)1880s (3)1890s (4)1900s (1)1910s (3)1920s (22)1930s (31)1940s (16)1950s (17)1960s (9)1970s (9)1980s (17)1990s (18)2000s (96)2010s (5)
Obviously there is definite weighting towards the 2000s, not least because for the past three years these are the books I’ve been sent to review (although I’ve only managed to review five published this year, oops!) but I was surprised to see the 1950s and 1980s quite well represented, as I didn’t think I read much from these decades. Well, the 1950s-1980s really, so I wasn’t surprised to see the ’60s and ’70s neglected!
All good fun… I know most of you won’t have statistics like these to hand, but which decades do you think your reading usually falls into? Let me know!
what a varied depth simon ,sure if checked mine it be stacked up in post war to now but suppose mine is variety 30 plus countries this year :) ,all the best stu
Oh, interesting! This is the decade books were published in, not the decade in which they are set? Hmm… I'm not sure what my spread would be like! In fact, I have NO IDEA what it would be, and now want to know… I assume I veer to the second half of the 20th century, but I don't know how much.
my imaginary survey says my results are similar to yours. I believe my 1920's will be off the charts with 1930's a close second.
You have an admirable spread Simon! Mine is shockingly contemporary – when I did a year-end totting up a full 90% of the books I read in 2009 were from the noughties, and just 5 were published before I was born.
I resolved to do better this year, despite the growing TBR piles, always being tempted to read the latest titles and reviewing commitments. I am actually doing much better so far – especially if I count Lord of the Rings as three separate books!
That's interesting Simon – I wouldn't have expected you to come out with such a high tally of recently published books – I associate you with mainly mid century novels! Clearly I don't pay enough attention. ;)
I think I read mainly pre 1950 novels but I could be wrong…I'll have a look at my reviews and come back when I have some time to analyse them!
Stu – I think if I did countries of publication, the limits of my reading would definitely be illuminated! Probably 95% published in England or America.
Aarti – yeah, the decade they're published in (or originally published in, if reprints) – it's quite a research project to find out the answers! Bless Wikipedia…
Daniel – you are obviously a gentleman of discernment ;-)
Annabel – push those tbr piles away, and enjoy older fiction! I made a determined effort to do that a while ago.
Rachel – I think, over the past year or so, my reading *has* been much older books. When I started getting review books, I got all excited and read lots of them – hence lots of 2000s books – but I decided a year or 18 months ago to read what I wanted instead – hence back to the older stuff!
Ooh fabulous idea!! I would have no clue what decades I read most from. Interesting!
The past eighteen months have been all about the thirties and forties. I'm laughing just now thinking that it's all down to you telling me about Persephone! Prior to that it was everything from the 16th century to Victorian times showing my preference is definitely for the historical.
Interesting assignment. I have no idea where my "clusters" would fall. Probably more recent books than I think, although with children's books we stay away from anything printed after about 1967 as they seem to be semi-worthless (at least that's our opinion of "award-winners" post 1967). I wonder if there's any quick and EASY way to research this…
As always you have provided more food for thought. Perhaps going forward in my reading log I'll include the original publishing date.
Ooh, I bet it is interesting categorising by decade. Not sure how mine would turn out but I suspect alot of 60's / 70's writing then contemporary stuff with some Victorian thrown in for good measure.
Which decade? Almost any from 1920 to the one about to start!
So I've just analysed my books read – I have read a few from the 1860s, and then at least one from every decade from 1890 to the present. This is over the past year, by the way. Surprisingly most are from the 2000s, with the 1930s and 1920s the next most popular decades. I think the high proportion of 2000s books are due to non fiction and book club titles more than anything else. I am quite surprised that I managed to read so widely across the entire 20th century – I thought I was a much more niche reader than that!