During the course of 2005, I kept track of all the books I read and all the movies I watched. It’s been a fascinating experience, and I’m glad I did it. I can remember now all the little pieces of media that I consumed, and wouldn’t otherwise pay another thought to.

Plus, I get to write an end-of-the-year blog review of all the stuff I read and watched.

This first entry will deal with the books I read. Of course, if you’ve been keeping track, I’ve been placing most or all of these books on the sidebar of my blog here. But I’m sure you haven’t been keeping track, and I have done precious little commentary on the books I read, so you don’t know what I think about them. You’ve really been missing out.

So first, the list. This is the complete list of books that I read from cover to cover and finished during the course of 2005. It does not include tiny children’s books or textbooks (who knows if I actually read any cover to cover) or scriptures (yes, I did comply with President Hinckley’s Book of Mormon challenge). It includes books I read in hard copy form, as well as books I listened to as audiobooks. You’ll notice that in about April, I started noting the date on which I finished the book. The asterisks on a few books indicate that I’d read them all before.

1. The Carousel, by Richard Paul Evans
2. Cod, by Mark Kurlansky
3. Novus Ordo Seculorum, by Forrest McDonald
4. Clinton and Me, by Mark Katz
5. Lost Boys, by Orson Scott Card
6. Legally Blonde, by Amanda Brown
7. By the Hand of Mormon by Terryl Givens
8. Garden of Beasts by Jeffery Deaver
9. Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
10. Love’s Labours Lost by William Shakespeare
11. Darwin’s Cathedral by David Sloan Wilson
12. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
13. Big Media, Big Money by Ronald Bettig and Joanne Lynn Hall
14. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
15. The Baby Name Wizard by Laura Wattenburg
16. Childhood by Bill Cosby
17. 10 Steps to Home Ownership by Ilyce R. Glink
18. The Iliad by Homer (4/5/05)
19. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (5/4/05)
20. Promises to Keep by William Fisher (5/12/05)
21. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine (5/14/05)
22. Big Fish by Daniel Wallace (5/17/05)
23. The Tempest by William Shakespeare (5/17/05)
24. The Latter-day Saint Experience in America by Terryl Givens (5/25/05)
25. Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs (5/26/05)
26. Turnaround by Mitt Romney (6/22/05)
27. Ray in Reverse by Daniel Wallace (6/27/05)
28. Jane Austen by Carol Shields (7/13/05)
29. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling* (7/28/05)
30. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling* (7/30/05)
31. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald* (8/1/05)
32. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling* (8/2/05)
33. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling* (8/5/05)
34. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling* (8/11/05)
35. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling (8/15/05)
36. Wonder, the Rainbow, and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences by Philip Fisher (8/20/05)
37. The Clocks by Agatha Christie (8/30/05)
38. His Excellency by Joseph Ellis (9/8/05)
39. The Culture of Disbelief by Stephen L. Carter (9/27/05)
40. One Soldier’s Story by Bob Dole (9/30/05)
41. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (10/7/05)
42. Dogs, by Raymond Coppinger and Lorna Coppinger (11/1/05)
43. The Happiest Baby on the Block, by Harvey Karp (11/9/05)
44. Letters to a Young Conservative, by Dinesh D’Souza (11/14/05)
45. The Richest Man in Babylon, by George S. Clason (11/15/05)
46. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (12/7/05)
47. Emma by Jane Austen (12/16/05)

Forty-seven books. That’s almost an average of one book a week. It’s interesting to look at the dates I recorded and note some interesting things like the way studying for the bar exam consumed my entire July (the Jane Austen biography was on audiobook, so I only listened to it when I was going places, and I did most of it during June), and then once the bar exam was over, the frenetic reading of Harry Potter books that ensued (The Great Gatbsy was an audiobook that was halfway accomplished on my drive back from the bar exam in Roanoke).

Other interesting things about the books I read this year:

* Only 9 out of the 47 books were audiobooks. I’m actually surprised that number is so low—it seemed like I listened to a lot of audiobooks. It may have something to do with the fact that The Iliad was so dang long. Also, the last audiobook I listened to was The Great Gatsby—the final five months of 2005 was totally devoid of audiobooks, because that’s when I started listening to the Book of Mormon on MP3, which took me nearly till the end of the year. I’ll try to raise that number in 2006.

* An amazing 41 of my books were written in the last 100 years. I would have thought that I read a lot more classic literature than that, but I guess I don’t. Of course, the ancientness of The Iliad probably skews the average age of my reading material into the past, but for the most part, I found myself reading a lot of contemporary stuff. In fact, 35 of these books were probably (I didn’t look them all up) written in the last 20 years. A few were even published in 2005!

* I’m surprised that only 28 of the books I read were acquired from a library (either the Cambridge Public Library, the Harvard libraries, or the Fairfax County Library). I try so hard to get books from the library rather than buying them or even borrowing them that it’s odd to see that I read 19 non-library books. Hm.

* The fiction to non-fiction ratio is 25 to 22 (counting Childhood and The Iliad—books that are presented as true, even though they’re probably somewhat fictionalized—as non-fiction and The Richest Man in Babylon as fiction, even though it’s trying to teach you a non-fiction lesson through the fictional stories). I try to keep a pretty good balance of fiction and non-fiction. I always am telling myself, “I’ve been reading too much fiction—I need a non-fiction book” or vice-versa. Now that I count up the numbers for the first time, I’m pleased with the evenhandedness of my selection.

* What I’m not pleased with is the fact that the two books by Terryl Givens are the only ones I read this year that have to do with Mormonism (I’m not counting The Lost Boys, a novel with Mormon characters). I love reading books about my religion, be it history, doctrine, culture, or something else. An important new year’s resolution for me should be to read more of this type of book in 2006. I could claim that the only problem would be getting a hold of such books from the Fairfax County Library system (since I’m too cheap to buy them). But I own Gospelink 2001, a computer program that has stored a few hundred choice LDS titles on my hard drive. So if I don’t mind reading from a computer screen, there’s no excuse. In 2006, more non-fiction books on Mormonism, and if possible, more fiction books by Mormons (Givens, Card, Evans, and Romney are the only Mormon authors on my 2005 list).

Anyway, that’s the quantitative study of my 2005 reading list. If you have any other comments on these books, I’d be glad to hear them. This post is already way too long and too navel-gaze-y, so I’ll save the qualitative analysis (that is, which books I liked most and least and why) for another post.