Book a Week 2015 - Overview

Last year, for the first time since I can remember, I made a New Year's Resolution that I actually kept.    In fact I even did better than I planned as I read 53 books in 52 weeks, a whole book more than my target.  Along the way I kept a record of the books, and some information about them, as I wanted to know whether this challenge would encourage me to read different books to the ones I would normally choose.  Also, I do love a spread sheet.

Books by genre

I've split the fiction books up into generic fiction, science fiction, fantasy and detective.  One of the greatest things about this challenge was rediscovering my love of science fiction books - as a teenager I read only science fiction for about 2 years, and I had forgotten how much I enjoy it. I have also split non-fiction into generic non-fiction and self help, using my own arbitrary category system.  I only included one children's book, although I read many, many more with the 6yo and 8yo over the course of the year. The one I included was Matt Haig's A Boy Called Christmas, partly because I read all of it (rather than it being a joint effort between the 8yo and me) and partly because I enjoyed it more than any of the other books I read with the kids last year.

Books by month

I was also interested to see if I read at the same rate through the year.  The chart below shows how many books I finished in each month. As you can see, there is a wide variation - from zero books finished in June to 12 books finished in April.  This mainly reflects the timing of my annual leave during the year, and that in January I deleted Facebook and Twitter from my phone temporarily. June was a very hectic month for various reasons and so reading went out of the window for a bit.

Books by Source

One of the things I really wanted to get out of last year's challenge was to read books that I otherwise would not have come across.  I also resolved that I would try as far as possible to read any book that I was recommended to me by a friend, even if it really didn't appeal to me. When I looked back at the source of the books I read, I was surprised to see that more than a third of them were either gifts, recommended by a friend, or inspired by people I follow on twitter or blogs I read during the year.

When I reflect on the books I enjoyed the most they were mainly from among those that had been recommended to me.

The best books

The best non-fiction book I read was The Unthinkable: Who survives when disaster strikes - and why by Amanda Ripley.  It was recommended to me by one of my friends and is an absolutely fascinating look at how people react to disasters and stressful situations.  In particular it gave me some very interesting insights into how the correct training in medicine can help doctors to overcome their natural response to stressful situations and apply basic principles to ensure they react to emergencies appropriately. 

Among the autobiographies I read, the stand-out one was Matt Haig's Reasons to Stay Alive.  I learned of its existence by following Matt Haig on twitter - so you could say it was recommended to me by the author itself.  It is a brilliant book about surviving, and living with, depression and is one of the books that I will be keeping because I know I will read it again and again.

The best fiction book (well, technically science fiction) was The Martian by Andy Weir.  I read it just after having seen the film and absolutely loved it.  It kept me up until 3am as I could not bear the idea of going to bed without having read the ending.  As is almost always the case, it was much better than the film - although I must say that I really loved the film as well. 

More than any of these books though, one of the books that I read last year changed my life.  That book was Why We Get Fat: And What to Do about It by Gary Taubes.  It was one of many books I read last year about diet, and the one that inspired me to start following a Low Carb High Fat diet. 

Next Year

For next year, I plan to try and read a book a week again, because I enjoyed it so much, but I won't put myself under pressure to do so.  I would also like to continue keeping the spread sheet, as it has been really interesting for me to go back over the year and see which books I read.

If you'd like to have a look at all the books I read in 2015, you can find the complete list on Goodreads

The sun is up

Most mornings now I am woken up by a little person standing by the side of my bed saying "the sun is up mummy".

They are not referring to the actual sun (thankfully, as at this time of year in the UK that would make it 5.15am), but to their Gro-Clock. We bought it 5 years ago when our youngest arrived and her older brother was going through a phase of waking very, very early in the morning.  That, combined with a tiny baby waking often in the night to breastfeed made for an extremely tired household for a while.

In the midst of it all we bought the Gro-Clock to try and persuade our oldest to sleep through the night.   If you've never seen one, it is a back-lit clock with a night setting and a day setting.  You set the time you want the day setting to come on, which is when the 'Sun' comes up, and during the night there is a big star with little stars around the edge.  The stars count down until morning, so that when there is only 1 star left the kids now that it is nearly time to get up.  It's very clever, particularly in a country like the UK where the sun rises at 4.45am in June and 7.50am in December, so that you really do need to know what time it is to know when to get up in the morning.

I'll be honest, it didn't work straightaway, and we ended up paying a sleep consultant to help us (separately, best money I have ever spent) encourage him to sleep through the night.  We persevered with it though, as we liked the simplicity of it, and both kids really liked seeing the Sun come up, even though in the beginning they viewed it more as decoration than instruction.  It also comes with a cute bedtime story book which explains to the kids how it works.

In the last couple of years though, it has really come into its own.  Our oldest is now 7 and wakes up between 6 and 6.30am most days.  However he rarely comes to wake us up before 7am, and sometimes it is as late as 7.30.  He wakes up, sees how many stars are left on the 'Sun Clock' and then either tries to go back to sleep or quietly goes downstairs, feeds the cat and then plays with his toys or reads a book.  He then comes upstairs every so often to check the Clock, and once the Sun is up he comes in to wake us up.

Our youngest does the same - although clearly on the days they both wake up before the Sun is up they don't always manage to stay quiet enough for us to sleep in for a bit.  There was a particularly good weekend a while ago though when the 7yo came into our room at 7.50am and said: "The sun is up, I've fed the cat and given [the 5yo] her breakfast.  Could you come and do my breakfast now?"  The only reason he felt it necessary to wake us was because he didn't want cereal like his sister and thankfully didn't think he should open the baked bean tin himself.

Both kids can now tell the time, but that's hard to do in the dark, so for now we're sticking with the Gro-Clock.  It also got us through jet lag after a recent trip to Australia.  I didn't realise it until a couple of days later when the 7yo said: "I woke up loads of times last night Mummy, once there were still 6 stars left on the clock and once there were 3, but I went back to sleep until there was only 1 star and then I went downstairs'.  How impressive is that?




Note: I have not been sponsored to write this post, but if you click on one of the links and buy a Gro-clock (or something else) from Amazon then I will receive a tiny commission.