Has this year been good or bad for you, for reading more books?

[Holymanm]

I've spent 10 million hours at home in 2020, but I've read fewer books than I did last year, when I was travelling for 35% of the year and working for the rest.

I'm the type what can't do anything, if I'm not doing something. If I'm busy all day and have an hour free on the bus, I'll read for 50 minutes. If I have 16 free hours in a day, I'll read for 30 seconds. What about all you who've had an insane amount of free time this year too? Books books books, or thumping your leg up and down against the floor while staring at the wall all day? (Or just movies? Pee-yew!)

[kanafani]

I think this is the most books I’ve read in a year. I read 24 books pre-lockdown in 2020, so January through March, about 8 a month. Since then, I’ve read 90 more books, so about 11 books per month. Some of them are graphic novels/comic books, but quite a few are very long (decline and fall vol 3, a bright shining lie, the debacle, capital in the 21 century, conquest of Mexico...).I’ve probably increased my daily reading time by about 2 hours - I can read for 45 minutes in the morning while having my coffee, whereas pre-COVID I used to drive to work straight after waking up. I don’t have to commute for an hour, so I can use that extra time to read instead. I’ve also watched less movies this year, like 350 instead of the usual 450. Most of the freed time I’ve spent reading. I am going to miss this when I go back to the office in July. Or maybe we’ll stay home longer who knows.

[MrCarmady]

My reading definitely declined during the first lockdown period - I had almost 50 books last year but this year I'd be lucky to hit 35 after making some ground up in the second half of the year. Exactly as you say, knowing I can read at any time actually became a deterrent of sorts.

[---]

I've been a piece of shit. I read 12 books by the end of March but literally nothing since then

[brian d]

definitely went down for me. part of it was not being able to hang in coffee shops to knock out pages, some of it has just been getting distracted more easily. definitely haven't been watching more movies than usual either. but i've started making furniture so i guess maybe i've just shifted to things that are a bit more hands-on.

[nrh]

i always find quantifying reading kind of difficult - books come in so many different lengths and are demanding in very different ways - but by numbers alone i'm more or less where i was for the last few years, at 74 books now and probably in the 80 to 90 range by the end of the year. but again a bunch of those will be paperback mysteries and so on.

watching movies has definitely taken a much larger hit for me, especially for the last few months.

[rischka]

i can't concentrate on anything lately it takes me sometimes 3 days to watch a 90 mins film. and forever to read books. i fall asleep after 2 pages

i want to read middlemarch but i fear it will take me a year. maybe should start on my birthday

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Atrocious year for books. It's been good for movies in quantity.. but I'm not even confident I'm engaging with them properly. Not a shot at being able to commit longer term than 3 hours to any individual work of art anymore.

[pabs]

The last 10 years have been very very bad for me. I used to be quite a voracious reader. I can't blame it on anything other than myself and an inability to concentrate and to make a commitment to finishing anything I've started reading. So many unfinished books on my shelf!

[wba]

What about all you who've had an insane amount of free time this year too?

I've had to work all year (not a single free or shorter working day because of Covid-19), but my reading is about as I expected and wished it to be at the end of 2019 (and not really different from my reading during last year).
I wanted to read more than 100 books this year (fiction and non-fiction), and I've already achieved that - as well as reading tons of other stuff (like comics/graphic novels, newspaper/magazine articles, short stories, novellas, lots of diary entries from people close to me, proofreading and revising a friends' PhD thesis, etc. etc.)

But my film watching has been down for the past 3 years, so...

PS: I've had a reading hiatus roughly beteen 1999/2000 and 2017/2018, though. During these 20 years I found it difficult to finish books, to engage with more complex stuff and generally to keep up an interest in reading on a regular daily basis, and I usually merely finished some 20 to 30 books a year during that time. Interestingly enough this was also exactly the period in which I was a voracious cinephile, watching some 400+ films a year and reading a lot of film books (rarely finishing them though, as I said), film magazines and online film texts. Thus, in my life being an active cinephile and an active bibliophile at the same time hasn't happened so far. I hope this changes in the future, though I never want to read less than 100 books per year ever again. Those 20 years not reading much felt like the so-called "dark" middle ages to me, and I almost lost interest in reading books on a regular basis, which seems like a horrible experience in retrospect.

[kanafani]

i've started making furniture

Hey that's cool! What kind?
Idea for new thread: What furniture did you make last month?

[brian d]

maybe i'll post some images on my page. made some furniture for my daughter, a hallway table for my mother, a writing desk for me when covid started and i was stuck working at home, some end tables, stuff like that. i've been challenging myself to make things that don't use fasteners and mostly making them with hand tools, so it's slow going but a lot of fun. some of it ends up being like a puzzle that i'm also making to figure out how to fit things together.

[Holymanm]

i replaced several parts on a busted toilet, installed some new plumbing, and am doing some various other repairs 'n' fixtures here now. handymanm is a philistine and does not read books, but does know how to handle a ballcock