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I have all the books.

Wait.

I worry that what you heard was “I have a lot of books.”

I have all the books. Do you understand?

And, as you no doubt can tell, I have lots of other shit as well. And three other people live in this house! They have stuff too, even though nearly every single object you can see in these pictures is mine. Except the Pokéballs. Those are the boy’s.

This is the second house in a row where we have eventually decided to convert what was supposed to be the dining room into a library. I am absolutely out of places to put shit and I have been reading at a 175-books-a-year clip for the last couple of years. I still have some space on top of bookshelves, especially if I get rid of some of the statues and Legos (and the statues, honestly, may be on their way out soon) but one way or another I’m no more than two years away from needing to pile shit on the floors if something doesn’t change.

So yesterday, fearing an actual intervention, I ordered this:

along with a $12-a-month subscription to Kindle Unlimited. I’m thinking about instituting a rule that any book by a new author gets bought on digital first. Does that mean I won’t get those books in physical form? Not necessarily; as you can tell, I’m not just a reading enthusiast, I’m a book collector, and those two hobbies feed into each other in obvious and terrible ways. There will be books by new authors that I feel the need to own physically. But in most years at least 30% of my books are by authors new to me– this year, right now, it’s actually just over half. Surely this will end up saving me money as well as essential shelf space, right? That Dinniman book on the cover of the Kindle there is in one of those pictures in hardcover– on the white bookshelves, a couple shelves below the Wheel of Time books– but it was free on KU so I downloaded it anyway, to see if I lose my mind trying to read a thousand-page book on an e-reader. We’ll see.

We can’t move. We got our mortgage rate on this house before the economy exploded. We’ll never see this rate again. I’ve got to do something.

If you’ve been reading for a while, you know this already: at the beginning of this year, I decided to keep track of everything I read in 2013. This started off just as a curious exercise; I am a data nerd by nature, and I like keeping track of things. However, at some point it became clear that I had a good chance of reading 200 books in the year– at which point the list became about reading 200 books this year, and became some sort of odd running contest with myself.

At any rate, once I finish The Return of the King today– probably within an hour of the end of this post– I’m going to start Gone with the Wind, which is over a thousand pages long and thus will probably take me through to the end of 2013, if not much longer than that, since I’m on vacation and all. Gone with the Wind will be the 201st book of the year. This doesn’t count articles, comic books, short stories, and a whole host of other things; while I left my definition of “book” rather vague– basically, it had to be either a novella-sized ebook or something that was bound to qualify, which meant comic issues didn’t count and neither did short stories– amazingly, the 201 books only represents a fraction of the reading I did this year.

I, uh, like to read.

Some numbers: before you look at some of the titles and accuse me of cheating, know that the books averaged 331.621891 pages each, which I feel is a respectable length. The longest book on the list will be Gone with the Wind; the shortest, Batman: the Killing Joke. The shortest that wasn’t a graphic novel was the 89-page Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, way back in January. I read a total of– whoa, weird– 66,656 pages in 2013, which is an average of 182.619178 pages every single day, all year long. 65 of the 201 books were rereads; the rest were new to me. I choose to not attempt to figure out how much I spent on the 136 new books.

I will not, by the way, be doing this again; I suspect in a regular year where I’m not pushing myself to finish stuff and paying attention to numbers I probably read around 150-175 books a year, and my plan for 2014 is to mostly read huge books, so the number will be even smaller than that.

At any rate, here’s the list. Hopefully this will paste in a format that’s actually readable:

	Book	Author	Page count
1	The Emperor’s Soul	Brandon Sanderson	167
2	Wool Omnibus	Hugh Howey	548
3	Throne of the Crescent Moon	Saladin Ahmed	367
4	Legion	Brandon Sanderson	114
5	Lincoln’s Battle with God: A President’s Struggle with Faith and What it Meant for America	Stephen Mansfield	211
6	Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland	Lewis Carroll	89
7	Gun Machine	Warren Ellis	308
8	Dune	Frank Herbert	511
9	The Pilgrim’s Progress	John Bunyan	189
10	Pasquale’s Angel	Paul McAuley	374
11	Crooked Little Vein	Warren Ellis	277
12	Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America’s Most Perilous Year	David von Drehle	379
13	The Signal and the Noise: Why so many predictions fail–but some don’t	Nate Silver	454
14	The Book Thief	Markus Zusak	550
15	The Human Division	John Scalzi	432
16	Ethan Allen: His Life and Times	Willard Sterne Randall	535
17	T. Rex and the Crater of Doom	Walter Alvarez	185
18	Clementine	Cherie Priest	235
19	Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power	Jon Meacham	505
20	The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor	Robert Kirkman and Jay Bonansinga	328
21	The Neon Bible	John Kennedy Toole	162
22	As a Driven Leaf	Milton Sternberg	480
23	Eclipse	John Shirley	278
24	Sandman Slim	Richard Kadrey	388
25	Penny Arcade 8: Magical Kids in Danger	Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik	112
26	The Catcher in the Rye	J.D. Salinger	214
27	Grendel	John Gardner	174
28	Lord Foul’s Bane: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Book 1	Stephen Donaldson	480
29	The Illearth War: Thomas Covenant 2	Stephen Donaldson	518
30	The Power that Preserves: Thomas Covenant 3	Stephen Donaldson	480
31	Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing “Hoax”	Philip Plait	262
32	The Explorer	James Smythe	264
33	Franny and Zooey	J.D. Salinger	202
34	Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America	David Hackett Fischer	902
35	John F. Kennedy	Alan Brinkley	152
36	The Eyes of Willie McGee: A Tragedy of Race, Sex and Secrets in the Jim Crow South	Alex Heard	349
37	Ubik	Philip K. Dick	227
38	Wuthering Heights	Emily Bronte	370
39	Mad Like Tesla: Underdog Inventors and their Relentless Pursuit of Clean Energy	Tyler Hamilton	243
40	How to be Black	Baratunde Thurston	254
41	Embedded	Dan Abnett	430
42	The Lathe of Heaven	Ursula K. Le Guin	175
43	Sunshine	Robin McKinley	405
44	The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks	Jeanne Theoharis	302
45	Omon Ra	Victor Pelevin	154
46	The Gate to Women’s Country	Sheri S. Tepper	315
47	Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War	Charles B. Dew	124
48	Ida: A Sword among Lions	Paula J. Giddings	800
49	Kill the Dead	Richard Kadrey	434
50	Slow River	Nicola Griffith	343
51	A Scanner Darkly	Philip K. Dick	289
52	The Left Hand of Darkness	Ursula K. Le Guin	330
53	Fade to Black	Francis Knight	367
54	The Algebraist	Iain M. Banks	434
55	Whole Wide World	Paul McAuley	399
56	Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam	Nick Turse	370
57	Joseph Anton: A Memoir	Salman Rushdie	633
58	Redemption in Indigo	Karen Lord	180
59	Shine Shine Shine	Lydia Netzer	309
60	The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch	Philip K. Dick	233
61	The Satanic Verses	Salman Rushdie	561
62	Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas	Hunter S. Thompson	204
63	The Wind in the Willows	Kenneth Grahame	165
64	Dragons of Summer Flame	Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman	568
65	Passion’s Howl: Penny Arcade Vol. 9	Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik	120
66	The Great Gatsby	F. Scott Fitzgerald	171
67	Consider Phlebas	Iain M. Banks	514
68	The Second Generation	Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman	434
69	Iron Man: Extremis	Warren Ellis and Adi Granov	150
70	NOS4A2	Joe Hill	692
71	The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War	Andrew J. Bacevich	252
72	Time Out of Joint	Philip K. Dick	232
73	A Rumor of War	Philip Caputo	356
74	Cain	Jose Saramago	157
75	Inferno	Dan Brown	480
76	Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man	Walter Stahr	703
77	The Arabian Nights, Vol. 1	Malcolm C. Lyons	974
78	Declare	Tim Powers	591
79	Lincoln	Gore Vidal	712
80	The Walking Dead: What Comes After	Robert Kirkman	168
81	Joyland	Stephen King	283
82	Dragons of a Fallen Sun	Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman	627
83	Cruddy	Lynda Barry	320
84	The Shining Girls	Lauren Beukes	368
85	Triangle: The Fire that Changed America	David von Drehle	268
86	Gibbon’s Decline and Fall	Sheri S. Tepper	465
87	Who Killed Martin Luther King?	James Earl Ray	277
88	The Dark Crystal	A.C.H. Smith	186
89	The Dispossessed	Ursula K. Le Guin	387
90	The Golem and the Jinni	Helene Wecker	484
91	Blindness	Jose Saramago	326
92	Colder than Hell: A Marine Rifle Company at Choisin Reservoir	Joseph R. Owen	276
93	Slammerkin	Emma Donoghue	410
94	Craven Place	Richard Wright	238
95	The Sealed Letter	Emma Donoghue	397
96	The Lies of Locke Lamora	Scott Lynch	722
97	The Ocean at the End of the Lane	Neil Gaiman	178
98	To Kill a Mockingbird	Harper Lee	281
99	Robinson Crusoe	Daniel Defoe	299
100	The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy	Douglas Adams	225
101	The Restaurant at the End of the Universe	Douglas Adams	256
102	Life, the Universe and Everything	Douglas Adams	232
103	So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish	Douglas Adams	224
104	Mostly Harmless	Douglas Adams	240
105	The Magician’s Nephew	C.S. Lewis	221
106	The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe	C.S. Lewis	206
107	The Horse and his Boy	C.S. Lewis	241
108	Prince Caspian	C.S. Lewis	238
109	The Voyage of the Dawn Treader	C.S. Lewis	271
110	The Silver Chair	C.S. Lewis	257
111	The Last Battle	C.S. Lewis	228
112	On the Road	Jack Kerouac	307
113	Of Mice and Men	John Steinbeck	113
114	In Cold Blood	Truman Capote	343
115	Crucible	Troy Denning	316
116	Math Doesn’t Suck	Danica McKellar	295
117	Kiss My Math	Danica McKellar	331
118	The Thousand Names	Django Wexler	513
119	The Call of the Wild	Jack London	72
120	Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth	Reza Aslan	296
121	Batman: The Killing Joke	Alan Moore & Brian Bolland	64
122	Red Seas Under Red Skies	Scott Lynch	760
123	Grimoire of the Lamb	Kevin Hearne	119
124	Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority	Tim Wise	190
125	The Fault in our Stars	John Green	318
126	Hunted	Kevin Hearne	400
127	Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans will Survive a Mass Extinction	Annalee Newitz	305
128	Kenobi	John Jackson Miller	380
129	Space Prison	Tom Godwin	257
130	And the Mountains Echoed	Khaled Hosseini	404
131	Red Moon	Benjamin Percy	533
132	Terminated	Rachel Caine	304
133	The God Engines	John Scalzi	137
134	An Abundance of Katherines	John Green	227
135	The Warded Man	Peter V. Brett	459
136	Death in the Skies! The Science Behind the End of the World	Philip Plait	326
137	Looking for Alaska	John Green	221
138	Slouching towards Bethlehem: Essays	Joan Didion	238
139	Rosemary’s Baby	Ira Levin	256
140	Paper Towns	John Green	305
141	The Crown Tower	Michael J. Sullivan	375
142	The Rose and the Thorn	Michael J. Sullivan	351
143	The Shining	Stephen King	447
144	Oddly Normal	John Schwartz	300
145	Confederate Emancipation	Bruce Levine	252
146	Doctor Sleep	Stephen King	531
147	Confessions of a Bad Teacher	John Owens	245
148	Reign of Error	Diane Ravitch	397
149	Avengers: Endless Wartime	Warren Ellis, Mike McKone, and Jason Keith	120
150	Dawn	Octavia E. Butler	249
151	Lord of the Flies	William Golding	256
152	The Mallet of Loving Correction	John Scalzi	484
153	Adulthood Rites	Octavia E. Butler	270
154	Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident	Bill Ayers	228
155	Shatterpoint	Matthew Stover	419
156	Imago	Octavia E. Butler	229
157	Blue Remembered Earth	Alastair Reynolds	576
158	Jonathan Livingston Seagull	Richard Bach	127
159	Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah	Richard Bach	192
160	The Sword of Shannara	David Brooks	736
161	Carrie	Stephen King	290
162	Who Wrote the Bible?	Richard Elliott Friedman	299
163	‘Salem’s Lot	Stephen King	427
164	Rage	Stephen King	211
165	Ancillary Justice	Ann Leckie	409
166	Discount Armageddon	Seanan McGuire	352
167	Seven Forges	James A. Moore	398
168	Midnight Blue-Light Special	Seanan McGuire	353
169	Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes	Neil Gaiman	240
170	Sandman: Doll’s House	Neil Gaiman	232
171	Sandman: Dream Country	Neil Gaiman	160
172	Sandman: Season of Mists	Neil Gaiman	192
173	Sandman: Game of You	Neil Gaiman	192
174	Sandman: Fables & Reflections	Neil Gaiman	168
175	Sandman: Brief Lives	Neil Gaiman	168
176	Sandman: World’s End	Neil Gaiman	168
177	Sandman: The Kindly Ones	Neil Gaiman	320
178	Sandman: The Wake	Neil Gaiman	192
179	The Daedalus Incident	Michael J. Martinez	388
180	Fiddlehead	Cherie Priest	366
181	Kabu Kabu	Nnedi Okorafor	260
182	Engraved on the Eye	Saladin Ahmed	142
183	Parasite	Mira Grant	504
184	The Pastel City	M. John Harrison	174
185	The Fellowship of the Ring	J.R.R. Tolkien	398
186	Afrofuturism: The world of black sci-fi and fantasy culture	Ytasha Womack	214
187	City of Bones	Cassandra Clare	485
188	The Two Towers	J.R.R. Tolkien	327
189	Haroun and the Sea of Stories	Salman Rushdie	216
190	The Maltese Falcon	Dashiell Hammett	216
191	Conan the Invincible	Robert Jordan	284
192	Conan the Defender	Robert Jordan	288
193	Conan the Unconquered	Robert Jordan	286
194	Snow Crash	Neal Stephenson	440
195	The Hunger Games	Suzanne Collins	374
196	Catching Fire	Suzanne Collins	391
197	Mockingjay	Suzanne Collins	390
198	Watership Down	Richard Adams	478
199	Nutcracker Sweetest	Delaney Starr-West	102
200	The Return of the King	J.R.R. Tolkien	432
201	Gone with the Wind	Margaret Mitchell	1027