The end of the project, in numbers

With Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, I am done. There are no readable books in the house bought by or for me that I have not read. And with Christmas round the corner, I am ready for new blood. Anyway, I've been running the stats from 2009 - 2010, and here's the summary. In those 23.5 months:

• I started with 320 unread books
• A further 37 books were bought (excl. Reference)
• Hence the eligible base was effectively 357
• I read 228 of the books
• I threw away 129 books unread
• Hence 36% of the books I hadn't read, I will never read

That last stat is a bit hideous. Essentially it points to my criteria for book acquisition being less stringent than my criteria for reading them; and that's a recipe for disaster. That's changing, and we're not allowing the buildup of such a large backlog again. No more than 25 unread books (c.1%) in the house from now on, especially as there are some pretty good selections of Anna's that I haven't fully excavated.

The project overall has been a triumph though. There have been a stellar set of books over the last two years that I am not sure I would have got round to reading, but were excellent. Of the books of the month, almost all were bought some time ago, and some were real gems. I'd single out:

• Catch 22 (Read Feb 09; bought 1997)
• Trollope's Palisers, but especially Phineas Redux (May 09; bought April 07)
• Kendall's biography of Louis XI (June 09; bought March 06)
• Tremlett's Ghosts of Spain (Sept 09; bought Jun 07)
• Burke (Jan 10; bought Feb 08)
• The Golden Gate (May 10; bought Jan 06)
• Praise of Folly (June 10; bought Sept 02)
• Faulkner, Go down, Moses (Oct 10, bought Jul 07)

Heller and Erasmus spent an impressive amount of time on the shelves unread, but were trumped. In December, I finally read this prize I won for maths in Belgium (M. Willaert, Servir au Congo) - more than 17 years after being given it; it was rubbish.

Otherwise, it's been a triumph. I'm off to read Susan Hill's book about reading all her books now (actually, due to the snow delay, I'm not. I'm downloading free books on the Kindle instead - Mark Twain for now)