Six degrees of separation: from New York to the Atlantic

 

#6Degrees

Six degrees of separation:
from beach reading to beach walking

Time flies so fast, it’s only by visiting another blogger that I reaized I had missed to post last Saturday for this meme. I double checked that I have the date scheduled for next post in March!
My quirky rules were challenged with this one word title we had to start from. Apparetly, I haven’t read any book with the word trust in the title, which I actually find surprising.
I did read a book by another Diaz, but I found it so so bad that I certainly do not want to feature it here.
Trust was published in May 2022, so I went with another book published in May 2022 – at least in one of its English translations (I read it in the original – French).

Using my own rules for this fun meme hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest
(see there the origin of the meme and how it works
– posted the first Saturday of every month).

Here are my own quirky rules:

1. Use your list of books on Goodreads
2. Take the first word of the title (or in the subtitle) offered and find another title with that word in it – see the titles below the images to fully understand, as often the word could be in the second part of the title
3. Then use the first word of THAT title to find your text title
4. Or the second if the title starts with the same word, or if you are stuck
5. To help you understand what I’m doing, you will find in orange the word that will be used in the following title, and in green the word used in the previous title

six-degrees-of-separation 0223

 

We are supposed to start from Trust, by Hernan Diaz (published in May 2022).
I have not read it, nor plan to do so.

1. A Single Rose, by Muriel Barbery (published in May 2022)
Each word seems chiseled. The result is an amazing gem.
See my short review.

2.  The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
I so enjoyed it, but read it in French a few decades ago, way before the existence of this blog. Totally time to reread it, in Italian this time!

3. My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok
The comment for #2 fits perfectly for this one as well!
I so liked it that I devoured in a row all the books by Potok – yes, I was just as book obsessed in my younger years, lol.

4. The Year of My Life, by Kobayashi Issa
This was a book I cherished a lot last year. I have lots of notes, and haven’t published them yet!!

5. A Hundred Million Years and a Day, by Jean-Baptiste Andrea
VERDICT: Beautifully written and remarkable narrative about following one’s dreams, and human behavior in harsh conditions. I promise you, you won’t forget this expedition! 
Read my full review

6. Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms & a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, by Simon Winchester
This is the most thorough “biography” I have ever read, and the most entertaining as well. One thing I would like to highlight, however, is the plan of the book, a genius idea I believe. 
Read my full review

So I didn’t have far to go: I started in New York, where Trust is set, and ended up in the Atlantic!

📚📚📚

Visit other chains here

📚📚📚

HAVE YOU READ AND ENJOYED ANY OF THESE BOOKS?
IF YOU HAVE CREATED A CHAIN,
PLEASE LEAVE YOUR LINK IN A COMMENT

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Year of reading 2022 Part 2: Statistics

After the list of my 2022 favorites, here are my statistics.
Then tomorrow you can see the fun I had with the titles I read in 2022.

Year of reading 2022
Part 2: Statistics

I have used Book Roast’s CAWPILE, so I have even more graphs to share with you!
But she counts some things differently, so I’ll include my own graphs as needed.

With 140 books, that is, 20 more than my original goal, 2022 was a very good year of reading for me.
Let’s look at it more closely.

My total numbers of books read/listened to is actually the highest ever since I have started tracking it seriously through Goodreads and Google sheets:
92 books reads (92 in 2021!), and 48 listened to (73 in 2021) = 140 (165 in 2021), which is an average of 11.6/month (165 books in 2021, with a monthly average of 13.75).

Books read in 2022:
92
. That’s an average of 7.6/month
Total of 20,399 pages (21,654 in 2021), which is an average of 55 pages/day (59 in 2021).
That’s an average of 221 pages/book (235 in 2021).

So I tend to read shorter books.

Books listened to in 2022:
48
[73 in 2021]. This is an average of 4/month (6 in 2021)
Total of 24,600 minutes (22,153 min in 2021) with an average of 67 min/day (60 in 2021)
That’s an average of about 8.5 hours/audiobook. (5 hours/audiobook in 2021).

So, much longer audiobooks than in 2021, which makes sense,
as in 2021, I listened to a lot of Biblical books, which tend to be shorter.

In graphs, this is what it looks like:

2022 Books read per month

Total books, print and audio

2022 Pages read per month

2022 Average pages per day

With only 6 months above an average of 50 pages/day, not as impressive as 2021.

2022 Hours listened per month

2022 average minutes per day

Definitely happy here, with 8 months having an average of over 60 minutes per day – it means the house should be rather clean, as I only listen to audio books while doing house chores and gardening.

2022 genre

Nice diversity, getting more balanced.
With a major increase in scifi (double)
and children’s lit (five times more, mostly classics)

2022 format

Here again, things get more balanced.
Less audio, more ebooks.

2022 authors

11% more female authors than last year.
Male/female doesn’t matter for me,
as long as they know how to write well!
The diversity that counts for me is country of origin
and languages, as you can see below

2022 nationality

Exact same number of nationalities as last year,
but with different countries.

2022 languages

English books are less than 50%. See details below.
One more language than last year, as I read my first book in Italian.

In translation: 31 [52 in 2021 – due to Biblical books] 22% of all books read

  • 16 from the Japanese
  • 4 from the French
  • 4 from the Russian
  • 23 from the Spanish
  • 1 from the Chinese
  • 1 from the German
  • 1 from the Norwegian
  • 1 from the Swedish

In original language other than English: 41 – 29% of all books read
40 in French
1 in Italian

***

Out of a Total of 115 authors (105 in 2021)
59 were new to me (51%. It was 50% in 2021)

Books by the same author: 41 [69 in 2021]:
6 by Georges Simenon
5 by T.H. White
4 by Michel bussi
2 by Haruki Murakami, Yukio Mishima, Keigo Higashino,
Guy de Maupassant, Marc Levy, Jules Verne, Serge Joncour, René Barjavel,
David Foenkinos, Laurent Gounelle,
Diane Setterfield, Dorothy Gilman, Josephine Tey

8 Re-Reads: [28 in 2021, because of my Biblical project] 5%
Mostly read with French students
Le Pays où l’on n’arrive jamais, by André Dhôtel
Le Horla et autres nouvelles, by Maupassant
Cyrano de Bergerac, by Rostand
Le Grand Meaulnes, by Alain-Fournier
De la Terre à la Lune, by Jules Verne
Le Petit Prince, by Saint-Exupéry
Human Nature, by Serge Joncour (read before in French)
Beginning to Pray, by Anthony Bloom, read twice in 2022

2022 publication year

Only 22% of very recent books, less and less every year.
Many more from the 19th century than before.

Oldest: The Year of My Life, by Issa Kobayashi (1852)
Newest: Progress Report, by Roman Lando, December 9, 2022

2022 source

Most books bought are part of my EStories audio subscription,
and books that have been on my TBR for a while.

About same balance as last year

33 countries these books led me to (24 last year):
France (37), US (30)
England (23), Japan (21)
6 books set in Russia
5 in space (one of these was on the moon)
4 in Antarctica
3 in Canada, Israel, Italy
2 in Argentina
1 in Scotland, Sweden, Norway,  Lithuania, Belarus, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, China, Tibet, India, New Zealand, Australia.
Plus in Persia, on an island in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, in an unidentified desert, in the Amazonia region, around the Panama canal, and somehwre on Earth after some type of apocalyptic event.

I visited 10 US States:
Arkansas, California (5), Colorado, Florida, Illinois (2), Mississippi, Minnesota,
New York (2), Vermont, and Washington (2)

Shortest book: Dojoji, by Yukio Mishima –  33 pages
12 books under 100 pages – mosly novellas and children’s books

Longest book: Ensemble, c’est tout, by Anna Gavalda 574 pages
7 books over 400 pages

Shortest audiobook:
The Story of the Other Wise Man, by Henry Van Dyke – 53 minutes

Longest audiobook:
The Wonderful Adventures of Nils/ The Further Adventures, by Selma Lagerlöf – 17H06

Funniest: Revenge of the Libraries, by Tom Gauld

Most Unique Books:
The Heart of a Dog, by Mikhail Bulgakov:

“A rich, successful Moscow professor befriends a stray dog, whom he names Sharik, and attempts a scientific first by transplanting into it the testicles and pituitary gland of a recently deceased man”.
The Cloven Discount, by Italo Calvino:
This is a very weird (and hilarious too) book, about a viscount (and the narrator’s uncle), who gets split into two by a cannonball during battle. So now, we have two viscounts, a good one and a bad one. The story follows both, and makes us reflect I believe on human nature.

Most tearjerker: The Snow Goose, by Paul Gallico

Most disappointing: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin

Creepy: The Last House on Needless Street, by Catriona Ward

Eye-opener: Digital Hell: The Inner Workings of a “like”, by Guillaume Pitron

Best reading companions:
Agatha Christie Poirot, by Mark Aldridge
Cliffs Notes on The Sound and the Fury, by James Roberts

Beautiful illustrations:
A Brush With Birds: Paintings and Stories from the Wild, by Richard Weatherly
Red is my Heart, by Antoine Laurain

Biggest discovery:
Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, by Isabella Lucy Bird

Favorite characters of the year:
Bastien (Entre eux mondes), Laurus (Laurus), Mary (Jamaica Inn),
Alexandre (Human Nature), Vadassy (Epitaph for a Spy),
Raymond McPheron (Eventide), Dilsey (The Sound and the Fury),
Philip and Fritha (The Snow Goose)

Classics I finally got to read:
I read 71 classics, that is 50% of all my 2022 books.
Check my 3rd (tab “sheet 1) and 4th list (tab “sheet 4”) of the Google doc

posted in this post, for the Classics Club.
The ones with the red margins are the ones I read – with the date.

Books present for a while on my TBR that I finally got to read
(other than the classics just mentioned):
Thomas Jefferson’s Crème brûlée, by Thomas J. Craughwell
Le Voyage d’Octavio, by Miguel Bonnefoy
Eventide, by Kent Haruf
Ensemble, c’est tout, by Anna Gavalda
Wanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit
Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa, by Haruki Murakami
A is For Alibi, by Sue Grafton
This Holy Man: Impressions of Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, by Gillian Crow
The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin
Laurus, by Eugene Vodolazkin

Which authors new to me in 2021 that I now want to keep reading?
Eric Ambler, Isabella Lucy Bird, John Buchan, Blake Crouch, David Foenkinos,
Paul Gallico, Anna Katharine Green, Alexander Grin, Kanae Minato, E. Nesbit, Guillaume Pitron, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, Josephine Tey, Bernard Werber,
Cornell Woolrich

I have read more books from series than I thought:

2022 series

From the new ones started this year (18 series),
I want to keep reading books coming after:
The Three-Body Problem, Les Fourmis, The Man in the Queue, Fer-de-Lance,
The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, The Roman Hat Mystery, The 39 Steps,
The Leathenworth Case, The Story of the Treasure Seekers

Best title:
It Can’t Happen Here

Longest book title:
Thomas Jefferson’s Crème Brûlée: How a Founding Father and His Slave James Hemings Introduced French Cuisine to America

Shortest book title:
NOA, by Marc Levy

MORE FUN RECAP TOMORROW!

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2022: March wrap-up

MARCH 2022 WRAP-UP

March was a very hard month, with the situation in Ukraine. It was harder to take time to read – plus very busy work (lots of new French students!) and Church schedule.
I managed to read as many books as in February, but much shorter books.
I actually listened to one extra book, as I took time to listen to audiobooks while coloring books, to try to get stress relief.
I didn’t visit as many blogs as usual, and I have been very late in reading your comments, even though I so much appreciate you taking time to leave meaningful comments.

📚 Here is what I read in March:

13 books:
9 in print 
with 14,439 pages, a daily average of 46 pages/day
4 in audio
= 36H53
, a daily average of 1H11

5 in mystery:

  1. The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain – read with the Goodreads Mystery, Crime, and Thriller group 
  2. Le Fou de Bergerac (Maigret #16), by Georges Simenon – read with a French student
  3. The Clairvoyant Countess, by Dorothy Gilman – audiobook
  4. A Nun in the Closet, by Dorothy Gilman – audiobook
  5. L’Aiguille creuse (Arsène Lupin #3), by Maurice Leblanc – audiobook

2 in literary fiction:

  1. The Box Man, by Kobo Abe
  2. Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel García Márquez

2 in poetry:

  1. River of Stars, by Yosano Akiko
  2. The Year of my Life, by Issa Kobayashi

2 in nonfiction:

  1. The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women, by Kate Moore – audiobook
  2. After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque Through Revolution and War – received for review through Netgalley

2 in picture book:

  1. Love in the Library, by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Yas Imamura
  2. The Night Gardener, by the Fan Brothers

MY FAVORITE BOOKS THIS PAST MONTH

Love in the Time of Cholera  The Year of My Life

READING CHALLENGES & RECAP

Classics Club: 113/137 (from November 2020-until November 2025)
Japanese Literature Challenge: 9/12 books
2022 TBR Pile Reading Challenge: 0/12 books
2022 books in translation reading challenge
: 13/10+

Total of books read in 2022 = 40/120 (33%)
Number of books added to my TBR this past month = 7

 OTHER BOOK  REVIEWED THIS PAST MONTH

The Final Days of Abbot Montrose

GIVEAWAYS

The open giveaways are on my homepage

Books available for swapping

REVIEW COPIES AVAILABLE

Posted on my homepage

And we offer a Book Box!

MOST POPULAR BOOK REVIEW THIS PAST MONTH

Before the Coffee Gets Cold

click on the cover to access my review

MOST POPULAR POST THIS PAST MONTH
– NON BOOK REVIEW –

Sunday Post #56

BOOK BLOG THAT BROUGHT ME MOST TRAFFIC THIS PAST MONTH

Caffeinated Reviewer
please go visit, there are a lot of good things there!

TOP COMMENTERS 

Marianne at Let’s Read
Tammy at Books, Bones & Buffy
Deb at Readerbuzz
please go and visit them,
they have great book blogs

BLOG MILESTONES 

2,510 posts
over 5,620 followers
over 244,000 hits

📚 📚 📚

How was YOUR month of MARCH?

2022-Monthly-Wrap-Up-Round-Up400

Nicole at Feed Your Fiction Addiction
has created a Month In Review meme
where you can link your monthly recap posts
Thanks Nicole!