brought to book

I'm very conscious that we've done a run of pretty much exclusively book-related posts for a while now, and that this one is no different. So let me get this out of my system and we'll move on to something about plate tectonics or axolotls next time, honest.

This is the latest in an occasional and irregular series where I provide some pointless statistics about the previous year's blogging. Well, the headline news this year is that the long-standing gradual decline in my frequency of posting has been arrested, whereby every year since 2010 has seen fewer posts than the year before. 2018 saw a fairly paltry 58 blog posts, but that was still more than the previous year's 44. No return to the heady days of 2007 with its 282 blog posts but realistically those days are gone now that I have a) kids and b) an alternative outlet on Twitter.

Further analysis reveals that 21 of those 58 were book reviews; not only is that the highest number of books I've read in a single year since 2012, it's also 36.21% of the total number of posts, comfortably a record. They weren't flimsy little pamphlets, either, the total page count of 6598 being the highest since the all-time high of 2011 and more than double 2017's paltry 3199 pages. Only in 2015, 2011 and 2013 was the average book longer than 2018's 314.19 pages (A Man In Full was the longest book of the year at 742 pages). Some graphs can be enjoyed below.

Finally, the run of five consecutive book reviews which ran from 26th November 2018 to 3rd January 2019 and comprised Marathon Man, The Sweet Hereafter, A Landing On The Sun, Earthlight and Orphans Of The Sky is the longest unbroken run of book reviews in the lifetime of this blog, beating the previous record of four as recorded here. As I said in that earlier post, this is no cause for celebration as it just means I'm not doing enough general blogging about underwater hockey and artichoke husbandry, but it's worthy of mention anyway.