Saturday, July 10, 2010

My Literary Year

A week or so ago, I stumbled across this brilliant idea on some random website. The basic idea is to take all of the books you have read and find the average date of publication. So, I hopped over to my goodreads account, found the date of publication for each of the books recorded there (fiction only), added them all together, and then divided by the total number of books. My literary year is...drumroll please...1878! That isn't too much of a shock since I tend to gravitate towards Victorian lit. To honor my literary year, here is a snapshot of what was happening in the world of literature in the Year of Our Lord, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Seventy Eight:

  • Carl Sandburg is born- January 6
  • Illustrator George Cruikshank dies- February 1
  • Anna Sewell dies- April 25
  • Upton Sinclair is born- September 20
  • Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native is published
  • Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is published
  • Oscar Wilde receives the Newdigate Prize
  • Guy de Maupassant becomes an employee of the Ministry of Public Instruction
So, what is your literary year? What do you think that says about your reading habits? What amazing things happened in your literary year? Though this little exercise can be a bit time consuming (and confusing if you don't use something like goodreads or shelfari), it is still a lot of fun. Go ahead and give it a try!

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