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Well, my third attempt at A Century of Books was my second success! In 2014 it rather petered out, but in 2012 and 2018 I managed to read a full century of books, finishing in the final days of December. The full list is here, and it’s probably too similar to my overall reading stats to warrant a whole new set of stats, but here are some reflections. At the bottom of the post are my plans for 2019…

It made me read some books I wouldn’t otherwise have read

And that’s been good and bad. There are some excellent books from my shelves that I wouldn’t have read unless I were doing the challenge – notably Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver – and some rather uninspiring ones that I probably wouldn’t have finished if I didn’t have a year to tick off (e.g. Harold Ross’s letters).

It was surprisingly easy this time

Reading 153 books this year meant that I didn’t struggle too much to fill my century. Last time I successfully completed ACOB, I read 136 books – also rather above my usual average. So maybe ACOB encourages me to read more? (The time I failed, I read 98…)

Audiobooks are your friend

And specifically Librivox – quite a few of my earlier titles were unabridged audiobooks from the free audio site Librivox. Though that did clutter up the beginning of the century, because they had to be out of copyright.

The 1920s went quickly

Because of course they did They also included reading some books I’ve been meaning to get to for many, many years – like David Lindsay’s Sphinx and Edith Olivier’s As Far as Jane’s Grandmother’s.

Shifting the century helped

Last time, I read 1900-99. This time I read 1919-2018, and that really made the process much easier – partly because I found the pre-WW1 years quite hard last time, and partly because I missed the post-1999 years. Doing the previous 100 years is definitely how I’d do it again another time. (Though I’d be sad once I’m chipping into my beloved 1920s!)

Buddies helped 

Quite a few people were doing ACOB this time – either in one year or spread over several. I don’t think I quite matched up with the buddy system Claire at the Captive Reader and I had back in 2012, but it was good to know that others were doing it alongside.

Reading the zeitgeist was quite rewarding

Last time, I sort of cheated a bit by reading lots of 1980s and 1990s books that were about earlier periods – author biographies, etc. This time I still did that a little, but I almost entirely read books that reflected the 80s and 90s. I think ACOB counts either way, for sure, but there was a nice feeling of authenticity to it this time.

Iris Murdoch didn’t come along to scupper my plans!

Last time, The Sea, The Sea almost proved my undoing – being enormously long and completely baffling. This time around, I don’t remember any particular blockers. One of the longest books I read, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton, was pacey enough that it didn’t hold me back.

So, yes, I’ll probably pick it up again in 2020. Watch this space!

As for 2019…

Coming off the back of ACOB, I do feel rather unstructured at the moment. The two books I’m reading right now are for podcast and book group, so I’ve yet to feel wholly unleashed on the infinitude of literature – but I do wonder if I should put in some parameters.

And yet, except for the club years that Karen and I run – 1965 Club coming up in April! – I haven’t made any reading commitments. The nearest I’ve got to it is a determined effort to read more from shelves, which I say every year – but this year I’m backing that up with a vague resolution about… not buying books? I guess? (Exceptions for going on special bookshop trips – e.g. I am going to Hay-on-Wye in a few weeks’ time.)

I’ve done Project 24 a couple of times and it’s been hard but good – but also means being on constant look out for which books might make the grade. If I do a more blanket ban, then I’ll stay out of temptation’s way. Riiiiight?

And if anybody knows of any reading projects like ACOB or like club years – i.e. some structure but a huge amount of choice therein, and able to be completed with books I already own – then let me know!

I have rather failed on giving updates on how many Century of Books is going – though you can, of course, see what I’m updating in my list. I’ve been relatively good at keeping it up to date – there are 68 titles on there and, at the time of writing, I’ve read 71 books from my century.

On track

So, yes, I’m on track. I only need to have read about 65 century books to be on track – so I’m even a little in hand. But it’s getting to the time of year when it stops being quite so serendipitous and easy to fill out titles in ACOB. For the first half of the year, at least, I can just read what I want to read – jotting down the titles and dates as I go. I don’t even have to think about it. By the time we enter the final third, it becomes a maddening discovery that everything I want to read was written in (somewhat to my surprise) 1987 or 1978. Huh.

Pencilling in

I’ve been pencilling in titles along the way, particularly when I start reading them (so I don’t accidentally double up), but also other books that I’ve got in the pipeline – for book group, say. It’s a balancing act, because I definitely don’t want to write them all out in advance. Nothing kills a reading project dead for me like setting out all the titles in advance. BUT I do have another five ACOB books on the go, and have pencilled in a further eight that I’m intending to read. That still leaves quite a few gaps to surprise me.

Reading from my shelves

I definitely have unread books for every year of ACOB, often quite a few, so I am spoiled for choice and should be able to read just from my tbr. And I guess I largely have? But, with re-reads and audio and whatnot, it turns out that 55 of my 68 books have come from my tbr shelves. Not bad… could be better? But at least I’m not in the position of scrabbling around for suggestions, because there are plenty there.

Other commitments

And then there’s book group and podcast reading (it’s hard enough to find things Rachel and I can both read in time, without limiting factor of years!), and occasionally review books and whatnot. It looks like I’m going to get more and more overlaps as the year comes to a close… not to mention whims, like deciding today that I had to start Joy Grant’s biography of Stella Benson, even though it’s (you guessed it) from 1987.

Reading a lot

The 25 Books in 25 Days certainly helped my 2018 reading total, but I do seem to be reading more than previous years. I’ve always been around the 100 mark, so ACOB is a bit of a tightrope walk, but I get the impression I’ll be comfortably over 100 this year. I haven’t added up how many I’m on so far, but hopefully I won’t have to do too much desperate reading on New Year’s Eve.

Anyway, this is a sort of scattergun update. I’m really enjoying it, and I think I’ll get there successfully if I continue at this rate – but I think I’m also looking forward to completely unfettered reading next year.

Six months in, let’s assess where I am with A Century of Books. You may remember that at the three month point I had only read 22, and was a little behind.  Well, at halfway, I have read… 51!  Yes, ironically my Reader’s Block meant turning to Agatha Christie, and I can wolf those down in a couple of days, so she filled plenty of places in the century.

Let’s take a look decade by decade…

1914-1923: 6
1924-1933: 7
1934-1943: 6
1944-1953: 9
1954-1963: 4
1964-1973: 6
1974-1983: 5
1984-1993: 4
1994-2003: 1
2004-2013: 3

How are you getting on, if you’re doing the Century of Books?

Thanks for all your lovely messages yesterday – it now feels mean to make you wait a week before unveiling the Shiny New Books magazine properly, but if you follow us on Twitter we’re giving a few teasers from reviews and features.  Which may or may not be crueller…

You may remember from the last time I did A Century of Books that I gave quarterly updates – and that, by careful planning or complete coincidence, I actually read exactly 25 qualifying books in each quarter.

Well, dear reader, things have gone awry.  I’m doing better than the sidebar counter suggests, but I’ve only read 22.  That’s right, I’m three books down in what should be the easiest part of that year… inauspicious!

Since I’m reading 1914-2013, it’s not so neat to divvy up the decades and see how I’m doing.  But, bear with me… This is how many books I’ve read so far in each span of ten years.

1914-1923: 2
1924-1933: 2
1934-1943: 2
1944-1953: 3
1954-1963: 4
1964-1973: 0
1974-1983: 4
1984-1993: 2
1994-2003: 0
2004-2013: 3

Congratulations to Thomas at My Porch who has finished his Century of Books!  I know that he found it tough going at times, and I’m delighted that another person has joined Claire and me at the finish line – is anyone else still going?

For those who don’t know, A Century of Books is a challenge where you read one book for every year of the 20th century, in as much time as (and in whatever order) you choose.  Claire and I set out to do it in a year, and both completed our century in 2012 (you can read our lists here and here).  I also added in the proviso that I’d review them all, which Claire did too.

And this is advance warning that we’ll both be doing A Century of Books again in 2014!  I’m going to aim to complete in a year again, but I hope others will join in on whatever scheme they set out for themselves.  It’s such a fun challenge – in fact, it’s the anti-challenge challenge, because (for the first nine or ten months anyway) I didn’t even notice I was doing a challenge, since I could just fill in books as I went along in my normal reading patterns.  It’s also incredibly satisfying to look back at the completed list, and see a (very subjective and selective) overview of the century.

Hope you’re interested in participating in 2014!

As I mentioned yesterday, I have finished A Century of Books – and, even better, I think there was only one other person who was trying to get all 100 books read during 2012 (a few others were joining in with longer-term aspirations) and she managed it too.  Well done Claire!  If I could reach to Canada, I’d give you a pat on the back.

So, that means I have my list of 100 books – it’s really fun to see an overview of the 20th century, especially since it’s such a subjective overview.  It’s a Stuck-in-a-Book overview.  There are definitely many entries which wouldn’t make a canonical list – there are plenty which I wouldn’t recommend myself – but it’s still (to me) a really interesting list to have.

If you click on the link up there, you’ll get to Claire’s post about her experiences with A Century of Books.  I agree with her – it’s been great fun, with plenty of surprises along the way.  I wasn’t surprised by how quickly I filled in the interwar years – with the curious exception of 1920, which proved quite elusive.  But I hadn’t realised how tricky the 1900s and 1910s would be – I’d prepared myself to run out of ideas for the 1970s onwards, but they turned out to be rather easier.

I’ll be doing more stats on my whole year’s reading, but I couldn’t resist giving one or two statistics for my 100 books in particular:

— Only 6 re-reads

— 46 fiction by women
— 25 fiction by men
— 21 non-fiction by women
— 8 non-fiction by men

— Of those from the second-half of the century, 24 related to the first-half of the century or earlier – i.e. biographies, adaptations etc.  Simon, you CHEAT!  I perhaps haven’t explored the post-1950 world quite as I might have done…

And let me imitate Claire, and give you some advice, should you wish to try it yourself (and I encourage you to do so!)

Spread it out…
Don’t read all your comfort zone years before the end of March!  If you get to winter and have to read 1900-1915 (or whatever it might be) straight through, you might tire of it all.

Short books are your friend
I love short books all the time, as you might possibly know – but even moreso for this project.  So sometimes I could get through half a dozen years in a week – but then an enormous book would come along and throw things a bit off kilter.  I haven’t told you about Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea yet, and how much that almost ruined my schedule…

Friends are also your friend
As Claire says, it’s much more fun when someone else (at least) is doing the same project – so that you can encourage one another.  I don’t know if anybody is trying A Century of Books within a year for 2013, but there are plenty of people continuing a longer-term project – and if you wait for 2014, Claire and I will probably be doing it all again.

The agony and the ecstasy!
As everyone who’s done (or is doing) A Century of Books is in agreement about one thing – the pain when the books you want to read consistently fall into years which have already been covered!  EVERYTHING was published in 1953: FACT.  (Maybe not a fact.)

Reviews are harder than reading
In normal practice, I often decide not to blog about certain books, or simply forget about them.  That wouldn’t work with A Century of Books, if you wanted a page which linked to all the reviews.  And so I started doing round-up posts with three or four short reviews – that seemed to work a treat.

But don’t meet trouble halfway
It’s not really difficult, though!  A few commenters seemed to think it would be too restrictive.  Well, I can only say that I didn’t find it so – especially for the first ten months or so of the year.  It really is the anti-challenge challenge (so long as you’re used to reading more than a hundred books a year) and embraces every genre, form, author, nationality etc.  What did surprise me was how perfectly the timing ended up – 25 qualifying books finished after three months, 50 after six months, 75 after nine months and, of course, 100 after 12 months.

Enjoy!
I loved doing it, and I’ll be doing the project again – but not until 2014.  Like Claire, I’m missing 19th-century books – and 21st-century books too.  Right now I’m onto Vanity Fair…

Here is the whole list:

1900 – Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
1901 – The Spinster Book by Myrtle Reed
1902 – The Westminster Alice by Saki
1903 – Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw
1904 – Canon in Residence by V.L. Whitechurch
1905 – Lovers in London by A.A. Milne
1906 – The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
1907 – The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit
1908 – The World I Live In by Helen Keller
1909 – The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies by Beatrix Potter
1910 – Reginald in Russia by Saki
1911 – In A German Pension by Katherine Mansfield
1912 – Daddy Long-legs by Jean Webster
1913 – When William Came by Saki
1914 – What It Means To Marry by Mary Scharlieb
1915 – Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
1916 – Love At Second Sight by Ada Leverson
1917 – Zella Sees Herself by E.M. Delafield
1918 – Married Love by Marie Stopes
1919 – Not That It Matters by A.A. Milne
1920 – The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
1921 – The Witch-Cult in Western Europe by Margaret Murray
1922 – Spinster of this Parish by W.B. Maxwell
1923 – Uncanny Stories by May Sinclair
1924 – The Rector’s Daughter by F.M. Mayor
1925 – Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
1926 – Blindness by Henry Green
1927 – Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann
1928 – Time Importuned by Sylvia Townsend Warner
1929 – A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
1930 – His Monkey Wife by John Collier
1931 – Opus 7 by Sylvia Townsend Warner
1932 – Green Thoughts by John Collier
1933 – More Women Then Men by Ivy Compton-Burnett
1934 – Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
1935 – The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen
1936 – Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner
1937 – The Outward Room by Millen Brand
1938 – Dear Octopus by Dodie Smith
1939 – Three Marriages by E.M. Delafield
1940 – One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie
1941 – Country Moods and Tenses by Edith Olivier
1942 – The Outsider by Albert Camus
1943 – Talking of Jane Austen by Sheila Kaye-Smith and G.B. Stern
1944 – Elders and Betters by Ivy Compton-Burnett
1945 – At Mrs. Lippincote’s by Elizabeth Taylor
1946 – Mr. Allenby Loses The Way by Frank Baker
1947 – One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes
1948 – The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner
1949 – Ashcombe: The Story of a Fifteen-Year Lease by Cecil Beaton
1950 – Jane Austen by Margaret Kennedy
1951 – I. Compton-Burnett by Pamela Hansford Johnson
1952 – Miss Hargreaves: the play by Frank Baker
1953 – Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton
1954 – M for Mother by Marjorie Riddell
1955 – The Winds of Heaven by Monica Dickens
1956 – All The Books of My Life by Sheila Kaye-Smith
1957 – Raising Demons by Shirley Jackson
1958 – Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris by Paul Gallico
1959 – Miss Plum and Miss Penny by Dorothy Evelyn Smith
1960 – The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark
1961 – A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
1962 – Coronation by Paul Gallico
1963 – A Favourite of the Gods by Sybille Bedford
1964 – The Garrick Year by Margaret Drabble
1965 – Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson
1966 – In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
1967 – The Joke by Milan Kundera
1968 – A Cab at the Door by V.S. Pritchett
1969 – Sunlight on Cold Water by Francoise Sagan
1970 – Frederick the Great by Nancy Mitford
1971 – Ivy & Stevie by Kay Dick
1972 – Ivy Compton-Burnett: a memoir by Cecily Greig
1973 – V. Sackville-West by Michael Stevens
1974 – Look Back With Love by Dodie Smith
1975 – Sweet William by Beryl Bainbridge
1976 – The Takeover by Muriel Spark
1977 – Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge
1978 – Art in Nature by Tove Jansson
1979 – On The Other Side by Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg
1980 – The Shooting Party by Isabel Colegate
1981 – Gossip From Thrush Green by Miss Read
1982 – At Freddie’s by Penelope Fitzgerald
1983 – Blue Remembered Hills by Rosemary Sutcliff
1984 – The Only Problem by Muriel Spark
1985 – For Sylvia: An Honest Account by Valentine Ackland
1986 – On Acting by Laurence Olivier
1987 – The Other Garden by Francis Wyndham
1988 – Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
1989 – Maestro by Peter Goldsworthy
1990 – The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
1991 – Wise Children by Angela Carter
1992 – Curriculum Vitae by Muriel Spark
1993 – Something Happened Yesterday by Beryl Bainbridge
1994 – Deadline Poet by Calvin Trillin
1995 – The Simmons Papers by Philipp Blom
1996 – Reality and Dreams by Muriel Spark
1997 – The Island of the Colourblind by Oliver Sacks
1998 – The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
1999 – La Grande Thérèse by Hilary Spurling

Happy New Year!

Time for the third and final update on how A Century of Books is going!  Final update, that is, because in three months’ time it’ll all be over…

It is impressive – and unintentional – that at each juncture I have been exactly on target.  After three months I was on 25 books, after six months I was on 50 books, and now – at the nine month mark – I have read 75 titles for A Century of Books (including five which have yet to be reviewed.)   I’ve actually read 107 books so far this year, which leaves rather more duplicates and non-20th-century books than I was anticipating.

As before, here is how I’m doing, decade-by-decade…

1900s: 6
1910s: 6
1920s: 9
1930s: 9
1940s: 8
1950s: 8
1960s: 6
1970s: 8
1980s: 8
1990s: 7

No decade completely finished yet, but none suffering too much neglect either…

For a list of all the links up so far, click here.  More importantly – if you’re doing A Century of Books, are some variant thereof, how’s it going for you?

See you at the end of the year for the final count!  I’m feeling optimistic that I can do this…