Three years ago, I wrote a couple of blog posts where I reflected on the mix of languages I used when reading books between English, French and Spanish and about the format of the books I read, whether electronic or paper books. In the past two years I have updated the figures in dedicated blog articles and this post, written after having shared last week my 2018 reading list, is just a follow up update of those two tables and a third one:
Reading language
From 2010 to mid-2015 I read mostly in English. From mid-2015 I have started to read more in Spanish than in the past (mainly classics) and in French. In terms of books the mix for 2018 was English 48%, French 26% and Spanish 26%. However, last year I thought that the mix would be better measured in terms of pages read, as the books can vary quite a bit in their length. Thus, in terms of pages: English 45%, French 23% and Spanish 32%. Since then I also compile that bit of information in a different table.
Reading format
In 2018 I did not read any book in electronic format, all were in paper format. As I estimated here the amortization of the e-reader in about 20 e-books read with it, I am still just above half way through achieving that. I already anticipated it in the blog post from last year:
Seeing, the stock of paper books that I have in the shelves, I doubt that I will read many e-books in the near term.
Age of the books
Since 2016, I decided to focus more on reading classics and books that have aged well, i.e., that their impact on society has not faded after having made it to the best selling positions of the literature pages for the current the year. Thus, I try to limit the proportion of books that I read from the last 10 or 30 years. This can be tracked as well:
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