There was a spike in blog readership a few days ago. Michael Orthofer included my blog in a post about personal-website/blog year-in-review/reading overviews. I don’t pay a lot of attention to my reading numbers and statistics these days, but prompted by Michael’s post, insomnia, and while trying to decide how to follow up Hans Blumenberg’s brilliant The Laughter of the Thracian Woman, I decided to run some numbers.
In 2019, I read 68 books, precisely my ten-year average. I don’t set reading targets nor particularly care how many books I read, beyond feeling decidedly mortal with a reading window that inevitably gets smaller each year.
There were writers I read more than once in 2019. Those listed 1-7 will continue to be part of my future reading plans.
- Karl Ole Knausgaard (6)
- Enrique Vila-Matas (3)
- Clarice Lispector (2)
- Maria Gabriela Llansol (2)
- Mircea Eliade (2)
- S. D. Chrostowska (2)
- Jon Fosse (2)
- Claudia Rankine (2)
- Virginie Despentes (2)
- Tomas Espedal (2)
The publishers that featured more than twice were (I don’t solicit or accept review copies):
- Dalkey Archive Press (5)
- Fitzcarraldo Editions (4)
- Harvill Secker (6)
- New Directions (3)
This year I am continuing to subscribe to Fitzcarraldo and have also subscribed to Archipelago Books.
Books read were originally written in the following languages:
- English (30) – 44%
- Norwegian (12)
- Spanish (8)
- Portuguese (4)
- Italian (4)
- French (3)
- Romanian (3)
- German (3)
- Polish (1)
Fiction was dominant at 38 books, although these boundaries are wonderfully porous these days, twenty-seven non-fiction (diaries, memoirs, philosophy and literacy criticism) and only three poetry collections.
Publication dates ranged from 1947 to 2019, with all but ten books published after the year 2000. This wasn’t a year for the nineteenth century or earlier.
Fifty-eight percent of the books I read were written by men. My ratio of male-to-female writers has changed markedly over the ten years of this blog, not by any particular design, just exposure to a wider range of writing.
Fifty-two percent of my reading was of writers I read for the first time. There is every year an intention to read more deeply of my literary touchstones, but inevitably I get diverted. I don’t expect that to change. Notably, this year marked my first reading of Mircea Cărtărescu, Hermann Broch, Mircea Eliade, Jon Fosse, Renee Gladman and Ricardo Piglia, each writers whose work I would like to explore further.
If I was compelled to narrow down the year to a single brilliant book, it would be Mircea Cărtărescu’s Nostalgia. I abandon books without guilt, so couldn’t name the year’s worst book.
Visitors to Time’s Flow Stemmed declined by 9% year on year, and down 27% from this blog’s peak in 2013. Comments (335 in total) declined by 28% from 2018 and 48% from a peak in 2017. Of the twenty-two thousand visitors to this blog, most came from America, UK and Canada, followed by India, Australia and Germany. That pattern is consistent over the years. In total visitors came from 156 countries.
Seventy percent of the visitors here came via search, mostly Google, with Twitter referring 18% of visitors. The latter is always a conundrum to me; while I’ve made some enduring friendships on Twitter, its addictive quality represents a serious distraction from reading and reflection. I don’t expect to find resolution anytime soon. My number one external referrer in 2019 was Seraillon (thanks, Scott).
The uncertainty of what a written work knows, what it doesn’t and indeed cannot know is at the centre of S. D. Chrostowska’s Permission. The mystery of the text is enhanced by the inclusion of a number of images reproduced throughout, adding a corporeal element, requiring a reader to look as well as read. Chrostowska, like Barthes, uses images in an attempt, only partly successful, to restore lost connections.
Time's Flow Stemmed 