Hi  -

Thursdays feel like good days for sending this newsletter. Two weeks ago (Thursday!) was my last day at Wiley. Last week, I had driven all night to relocate my family out of Brooklyn to Upstate NY. Today the sun is shinning, the snow has melted, and I've actually managed to get work done with the support from my amazing family.

Sure, I'm supposed to be celebrating my good friend's birthday today by taking him to see his favorite baseball team play on Opening Day and watching college basketball long into the night - but that's the least of it. We're healthy, employed, and surrounded by immediate family. Sports can (and should) wait.

I had my first spring wedding postponement notice today (I've attended 37 different weddings in my adult life and love weddings and love my friends - but that's a topic for another newsletter). Moments of joy are being delayed as we sit at home in a holding pattern, uncertain of what's ahead for us all. I reached out to that friend to reassure her that it's the right call and waiting to make it later would only make it harder to do.

She said I was the only one to tell her that! Trust yourself and tell others it's OK to change plans. We all have to be understanding now - as that will make when we eventually gather again, in small and large groups alike, even more special.

act one

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?

It took me years to write, will you take a look?

Paperback Writer, The Beatles

My mother likes to tell me that she really started reading when she was nursing me... all those hours confined to a chair, maybe with one arm free. 35 years later, my wife would say the same thing - but she could read on a backlit Kindle in the dark and not even have to hold open the book or turn a page.

I grew up lucky enough to have both parents reading to me at least every night. Scattered memories of living surrounded by books:

• summers at the swimming pool, my mother would read aloud to my friends and I during that lunchtime lull between lessons and free swim (books like Stewart Little and anything by Roald Dahl)
• Scholastic Book Fairs, when I'd mark up my catalog like a librarian's wish list circling dozens of books and then painfully narrowing it down to just a few for them to arrive weeks later and it felt like Christmas (I read every single Hardy Boys and Goosebumps book, lined up numbered in my room)
• sneaking books under my desk in 7th grade, reading sci-fi novels or anything to escape the boredom of school, being constantly reprimanded to put my book away and pay attention (leading to the dream of having my book scrolling in the back of my eyelids every time I closed my eyes - I invented Kindle + Google Glass, I swear!)
• joining the local library book club, reading The Indian in the Cupboard series, being the only person to have finished reading the book, and getting my photo in the local newspaper gesticulating wildly during the lively discussion
• reading books in bed every single night, having to stop only briefly when it was lights out before reading with a flashlight under the covers while still listening for my parents to come back into my room to check that I was asleep, and fooling absolutely no one by faking it each time
• getting summer reading lists from the library, having my parents sign off on every book I recorded and read, and redeeming it at Pizza Hut for free pizza (BOOK IT was a real program!)

There's a million more memories of course, but it's the last one habit that I managed to revive around 2010 when I first got active on GoodReads.com. Sure, I already had an account - but I wasn't obsessively tracking what I was reading until that year for some reason.

Despite being an English Major in college, I wasn't reading much - who had the time? It was college! I was editor in chief of the monthly magazine, writing a weekly newspaper column, performing onstage in at least one theater show each semester, an officer in my fraternity managing our newsletter and webpage, and captain of the rugby team. Somehow I was also supposed to read four books every week for class?

It was my literature-heavy workload in my junior and senior year that prepared me to be able to talk about books I hadn't read. I would skip ahead in the pages during the discussion, pick up on a theme, which I would then vaguely generalize successfully enough to keep up my participation grade. Then I would pick one book to read to write my paper on, staying up the night before it was due to do the entire job. Boom... magna cum laude. It would be these skills that would enable me to be able to market and sell up to 150 new books each year at Wiley... how could I possibly read all of those, who had the time?

I did manage to have the time for lots of other books that I would discover through social media, New York book events, paying attention to book publicity hits, and general industry conversation around Book Expo America, awards, etc. And I would read those books, that I had wanted to read in college and that I could now finally get around to reading on my 2+ hour daily commute from Astoria Queens to Hoboken New Jersey on two 20+ min subway trains. Plus, sometimes over lunch if things were slower at work.

So that's how I managed to read 407 books for pleasure from 2010-2019, all manually recorded on GoodReads (graphs and graphics self-composed in Excel):

act two

OK - before I go too deep into that crazy about of book-reading data, I wanted to shift gears and get into Act Two. We'll dive in further in Act Three.

Right here, I want to tell you where all this is going. I'm hoping you're making the most of this extra time at home and are reading more of the books that have been piling up around you.

I want you to create a GoodReads account and track what you're reading. Do it just for yourself (but go ahead and friend me, so I can keep you accountable).

Use it however you want to use it! BUT, and here's the ask, if there's a book you absolutely love - please go review it on Amazon.

I use GoodReads pretending that the author can't see and read the still public review and almost never give out Five Stars - but I would never post a review on Amazon (which in my mind is for SELLING books, as opposed to GoodReads) that wasn't effusively positive. See my reviews for yourself.

Reviews on Amazon help others find and discover the books that you love and they really really help authors. Take the time right now to find a book you love on Amazon and review it! You don't have to have bought the book on Amazon to review it there. They'll always appreciate an honest positive review. Thanks!

act three

Back to my book reading data... if you think the above graphs prove obsessive, this will only reinforce that:

My 2019 Year in Reading at GoodReads

46 books. 14,455 pages.

17 Fiction. 29 NonFiction.

20 Female Authors. 26 Male.

22 Print. 24 Digital.

21 Library Digital.

*2018

52 books. 12,504 pages.

20 Fiction. 32 NonFiction.

30 Print. 22 Digital.

21 Female Authors. 31 Male.

18 Library Digital.

*2017

47 books/15,472 pages. 18 Fiction. 29 NonFiction.

19 Print. 28 Digital. 16 Female. 31 Male.

25 Library Digital.

*2016

50 books/18,944 pages. 22 Fiction/28 NonFiction.

18 Print/32 Digital. 15 Female/35 Male.

27 Library Digital.

*2015

44 books/14,765 pages. 25 Fiction/19 NonFiction.

30 Print/14 Digital. 10 Female/34 Male.

7 Library Digital.

*2014

39 books/14,316 pages. 18 Fiction/21 NonFiction.

20 Print/19 Digital. 14 Female/25 Male.

12 Library Digital.

Not only do I track every thing I read, but I also REVIEW it on Goodreads like I'm talking to a friend about the book - what I did and didn't like, and would I recommend it. Then every year, I pick my top 3 in fiction and nonfiction, and another 3 I'd also recommend, and record it. You can find those picks at the above links.

But even THAT list is too long, so I cut it down further, picking just ONE favorite fiction and nonfiction book from each year. Here's that list of 20 books (all reviews on my GoodReads)...

Best Books I Read this Decade

20 Recommendations from 407 Read [20%]:

2019 [46 books]:

Favorite Fiction:

Homegoing

Favorite NonFiction:

The Power Broker

2018 [52 books]:

Favorite Fiction:

Severance

Favorite NonFiction:

Bad Blood

2017 [47 books]:

Favorite Fiction:

Americanah

Favorite NonFiction:

Arbitrary Stupid Goal

2016 [50 books]:

Favorite Fiction:

Lonesome Dove

Favorite NonFiction:

Shoe Dog

2015 [44 books]:

Favorite Fiction:

Station Eleven

Favorite NonFiction:

My Salinger Year

2014 [39 books]:

Favorite Fiction:

Shantaram

Favorite Nonfiction:

Going Clear

2013 [46 books]:

Favorite Fiction:

Ready Player One

Favorite NonFiction:

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

2012 [28 books]:

Favorite Fiction:

Leaving the Atocha Station

Favorite NonFiction:

Every Love Story is a Ghost Story

2011 [28 books]:

Favorite Fiction:

The Art of Fielding

Favorite NonFiction:

Homicide

2010 [25 books]:

Favorite Fiction:

The Amazing Adventures is Kavalier & Clay

Favorite NonFiction:

Extra Lives

So if you're looking for something new to read, start from that list (and let me know which of these, if any, are your favorites - or tell me what's missing here that could potentially be a new favorite!). Start tracking what you read and set goals (Goodreads makes this easy!) because it will motivate you to read more. And post reviews on Amazon of the books you love the most.

Think about your fitness tracker. Why wouldn't you have one for reading? What else is a book club if not a group of people that keep you going to the gym?

It's 2020. The least we could all be doing is reading more together.

What are you reading?

Thanks for sticking around. I'm so glad you're here, that we're all here, and we can talk about books. Until next week...

Staying Socially Distant - Peter

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(forward this a friend that you always share book recommendation with! That's essentially what I'm doing!)

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