Thread by @jd_englehart, I don't know if anyone cares, but here we go.My 2020 resolution [...]

I don't know if anyone cares, but here we go.

My 2020 resolution was to read more, and I set a target of 52 books, or 1 per week.

Little did I know that I would spend the vast majority of 2020 in my apartment, in isolation, with time on my hands.

So I ended up reading 88 books (ahem, @DezBryant), or 169% to goal. Here's some stats and takeaways:

First book: "For Whom the Bell Tolls" - Ernest Hemingway

Last book: "The Splendid and the Vile" - Erik Larson

Total # of pages: 36,234

Avg. # of pages per day: 99.5

Longest book: "Napoleon" - Andrew Roberts @ 1,334 pages

Shortest book: "Man's Search for Meaning" - Victor Frankl @ 165 pages

Avg. length of book: 411 pages

I finished 2020 strong (especially around holidays and as things shut down again):

- 15 books/6298 pages in Nov
- 19 books/8098 pages in Dec

Funny enough, March/April were the lowpoint even though lockdowns started:

- 3 books / 776 pages in March
- 4 books / 985 pages in April

The oldest book I read was "Dubliners," first published in 1914. I actually read it while in Dublin, pre-pandemic.

The newest book I read was "Greenlights," by @McConaughey, which was published in October 2020.

Repeated authors:

- Edmund Morris (3): "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt," "Colonel Roosevelt," "Theodore Rex"

- Multiple with 2 books: Yuval Hariri, Mark Bowden, PW Singer/August Cole, Malcolm Gladwell, Philip K. Dick, Amor Towles, Ron Chernow, Sebastian Junger

I read one book twice in 2020:
- "A Gentleman in Moscow" - Amor Towles

I re-read the following books in 2020:
- "Never Split the Difference" - Chris Voss
- "Endurance" - F.A. Worsley
- "From Zero to One" - Peter Thiel
- "But What If We're Wrong?" - Chuck Klosterman

I bought a Kindle early in the pandemic and took advantage of @dcpl to minimize the cost of my new addiction to reading.

Of the 88 books:
- 34 were physical
- 54 were digital

Some of the physical books were picked out of the many @LtlFreeLibrary scattered throughout D.C.

I hit several trends, like early in the pandemic when I couldn't get enough virus #content:

- "The Hot Zone" - Richard Preston
- "World War Z" - Max Brooks
- "The Great Influenza" -John M. Barry

But the overwhelming majority of the books I read in 2020 could be thrown in a "leadership" bucket.

On presidents:
- 3 on Roosevelt already mentioned
- "Washington" - Ron Chernow
- "Leadership in Turbulent Times" - Doris Kearns Goodwin
- "Founding Brothers" - Joseph Ellis

Some other great books on leadership were:

- "Endurance" - about Shackleton's Antarctic expedition

- "The Greatest Generation" - about the normal folks who became heroes during WWII

- "The Road to Character" - profiles in civility

And now to pick my favorite books for 2020.

- "Say Nothing" - history of the Irish Troubles

- "Homicide" - precursor to the greatest TV show ever made

- "The Right Stuff" - early days of NASA program

- "Tribe" - on the decline of human connection

I don't expect I'll hit 88 books again but I do want to stick to my book per week target for 2021.

First up: "Atlas Shrugged," a doozy at 1168 pages!

See my reading list at https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/120380751-james

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