Vital Statistics...? [Not really... but interesting ones!] 

Earlier this year I mused on the fact that although the majority of my reading was published after 2000 there is a determined lag before I actually get around to reading anything. Here, prompted by that initial thought experiment, I’ll be looking at my reading that pre-dates 2000. I was curious if there was any pronounced ‘clumping’ or bias towards more modern works. As before this list is derived from books (both fiction and non-fiction) reviewed here between 28th Feb 2013 – when I began regularly noting First Publication [FP] dates - and the Present. 

1990’s: 43 

1980’s: 28 

1970’s: 24 

1960’s: 34 

1950’s: 28 

1940’s: 7 

1930’s: 16 

1920’s: 6 

1910’s: 7 

1900’s: 2 

Pre-1900's: 9 

Although that’s a reasonably long ‘tail’ there’s a quite dramatic drop-off pre-1950's. The ‘blip’ in the 1930’s can probably be explained by a mixture of Agatha Christie novels and other classic crime books. The biggest surprise, and disappointment, for me was the low number of books published before 1900. I honestly thought I’d read more than that. I’ll revisit this in a year and see if the trend continues.