Book Reading Milestone for This Year

I feel like my book reading pace has been rather poor.  The problem is that my reading progress is very inconsistent.  I'll do great for a week or so, then I'll quit reading for weeks.  That said, I'm pleased that as of today I've matched the number of books that I read last year:  51 books.

These are my yearly reading totals since I began tracking the number of books that I've read.

2014:  262 books
2015:  231 books
2016:  355 books
2017:  403 books
2018:  315 books
2019:  185 books
2020:  106 books
2021:    60 books
2022:    47 books
2023:    51 books
2024:    51 books+

Since the pandemic, my reading has been sporadic and not what it was in previous years.  I don't know if that will ever change, since I'm under a lot of stress from different fronts.

I find that I cannot read old books at this time.  By "old" books, I mean anything written before 1940.  Those books have a different style, and I don't seem able to tolerate it currently.  This is due to stress, etc. 

Even books from the 1940s up through the 1990s are not to my liking at present.  I just want to read very modern books published since 2000.  I've read quite a few modern young adult books this year.

In fact, checking my list of 51 books, 45 of them have been published since 2000.  Early this year, I published a post that mentioned that each year's reading tells a story.  In 2024, I am focused on modern books, mainly young adult with a few middle grade fantasy books mixed in.

I'm guaranteed to match my total from 2021.  I still have to complete my fourth reading of the Keeper of the Lost Cities series, which I plan to do sometime between now and the release of book 9.5 in early December.  I've already reread books 1 and 2 this year, but I got sidetracked like what always happens when I read these days.  Once I read books 3 through 8, 8.5, 9, and 9.5, I will have read nine more books, equaling my 2021 total of 60 books.

While last year's total was 51 different books, the real total was 71 books.  I didn't count my second and third readings of the Keeper of the Lost Cities books in the total since they were duplicate readings of the same books.  It's possible that I might end up reading as many as 71 books this year, but it's unlikely.  My reading is too sporadic, and I'm likely to have some big gaps in reading in the next 3 1/2 months. 

I'm pleased that I will end up reading at least 60 books by the end of the year, at a minimum.