Yesterday’s post was a celebration of reading at least a book a day for 365 straight days. I’ll continue though the rigidity will likely wane, but not today where I was able to finish an audiobook and read two additional books. It got me thinking, how many books did I read over 365 days? That answer was 852 which meant I averaged 2.3342 books per day. What were my favorites? See below. How to you find the time? Well, I have my ways. Therefore, a summary post was in order because I like a good listicle. Here are some mini-listicles about “my year of reading a book a day”.

Locations for reading

• Car (audiobooks, people!)
• Wherever I have to wait– an office or a long line for example
• Anywhere in the house from the kitchen table to standing by the stove waiting for my hot water to boil but also most definitely when I’m cleaning or cooking
• The lunch table at work (I often post with the hashtag #literarylunchbox)

Twenty favorites (in no particular order)

• Punching the Air by Zoboi
• You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why it Matters by Murphy
• Poisoned Water: How the Citizens of Flint, Michigan, Fought for Their Lives and Warned the Nation by Cooper
• Witch Hat Atelier by Shirahama
• Skyward by Henderson
• The School of Essential Ingredients by Bauermeister
• All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team by Soontornvat
• The Girl from the Other Side by Nagabe
• My Life in Dog Years by Paulsen
• The Midnight Library by Haig
• That Way Madness Lies edited by Adler
• Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World by Parker
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Baum
• Sigh, Gone: A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In by Tran
• My Life in France by Child with Prud’Homme
• The House in the Cerulean Sea by Klune
• Fighting Words by Brubaker Bradley
• Jane Against the World: Roe v. Wade and the Fight for Reproductive Rights by Blumenthal
• End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy by Swanson
• Up All Night: 13 Stories Between Sunset and Sunrise edited by Silverman
• The Beauty in Breaking by Harper
• Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius by Holiday
• A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Brown
• Chicken Every Sunday: My Life with Mothers Boarders by Taylor
• Fangs by Andersen

But how did you do it?

• Read (and by reading I mean eyes on a page or ears open) every day
• Always have a stack of books in the house or in a queue online
• Sometimes reading won out over straightening up the house, for sure
• Encourage a household of readers (because it’s easier to read yourself when everyone else is doing it too)
• Participating in events like the Dewey’s 24-hour Readathon and the #24in48 readathon

What genre or category do you favor? (but really this is like asking me to pick a favorite child)

• Nonfiction
  • Food memoirs
  • Animals especially histories, discoveries, and celebrations of
• Young Adult short story collections
• Verse novel and graphic novel formats
• Fiction
  • Historical
  • Realistic

Who were your cheerleaders? (whether they knew it or not)

• Stacey Rattner, a school librarian colleague who I often co-present with at conferences with her own blog and the co-host of the pandemic-inspired Author Fan Faceoff with Steve Sheinkin
• My kids, readers in their own right, who read at the table for almost every meal and so many other occasions and places too
• Reading communities big and small

Was there a question that I missed? If there was, ask me in the comments.