Those of you who know me know I've been keeping statistics on books I've read, movies I've watched, writing I've published, and running I've done for the past twenty years. See above post for this year's, but there are the twenty-year stats. Reflections on thost statistics, if you're interested, are below the stats.
Number of Books Read: 1225
Best Books I Read: Empire Falls; Motherless Brooklyn; Watchmen; How to Be Alone; Life of Pi; Six Degrees of Separation; The Blind Assassin; The Plot Against America; Cloud Atlas; Plainsong; Gilead; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time; V for Vendetta; Black Swan Green; The Discomfort Zone; Everyman; The Poet of Tolstoy Park; The Road; Middlesex; Saturday; The Kite Runner; The Omnivore’s Dilemma; The Remains of the Day; Arthur & George; The Yiddish Policeman’s Union; Interpreter of Maladies; The Shipping News; March; Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality; The Year of Magical Thinking; The Hours; A Summons to Memphis; The Uncommon Reader; Blindness; Elephant Rocks; A Mercy; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Serena; The Elegance of the Hedgehog; Never Let Me Go; Donkey Gospel; The Story of Edgar Sawtelle; A Short History of Women; A Person of Interest; Ararat; Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions; Let the Great World Spin; Native Guard; Different Hours; Letters To a Young Poet; Missing You, Metropolis; The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet; Hardheaded Weather; The Undertaking; Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Blood Dazzler; The Deleted World; The Family Fang; The Art of Fielding; Angels in America; NW; Art & Fear; Eventide; All the Light We Cannot See; Everything I Never Told You; Memory Wall; Here I Am; Homegoing; The Underground Railroad; A Raisin in the Sun; Clybourne Park; American War; How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe; Disgraced; Sing, Unburied, Sing; The Power; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark; Home Fire; Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race; The Leavers; Four in the Morning; A Place for Us; Heavy: An American Memoir; Ruined; Heads of the Colored People: Stories; Red Clocks; The Reckonings; Little Fires Everywhere; The Testaments; Appropriate/An Octoroon; What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker; Make It Scream, Make It Burn; Educated; The Refugees; Homegoing; Normal People; The Glass Hotel; The Niceties; Station Eleven; The Other Americans; Utopia Avenue; Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching; Black Glass; Children of Gebelawi; A Children’s Bible; My Time Among the Whites; Girl, Woman, Other; The Vanishing Half; The Overstory; honorable mention for The Age of Surveillance Capitalism for its critique of all the tech companies I hate; Brown; Klara and the Sun; How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America; Make Your Home Among Strangers; Hamnet; How Beautiful We Were; Homeland Elegies; Pew; Sissy; Seek You; Cloud Cuckoo Land; Foster, Small Things Like These, My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Fine: A Comic About Gender, Four Thousand Weeks, Batman: Earth One, vols. 1 and 2, Wintering, IN., Sabrina; Running While Black;
Worst Books I Read: The Kreutzer Sonata; The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym; Special Topics in Calamity Physics; A Man Without a Country; Oblivion; The Sea; The Gathering; Generation A; Wolf Hall; American Notes and Pictures From Italy; Brain Bugs; Fire to Fire; For the Confederate Dead; What the Best College Students Do; We Are What We Pretend to Be; The 50 Funniest American Writers; Flaubert’s Parrot; The Soul Thief; Psalm Sonnets; Forty Stories; The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories; Melville: His World and Work; Fall Higher; Ilustrado; Bad Star; Proxies; A Public Faith; A Philosophy of Walking; The Clothing of Books; Beatlebone; A Doubter’s Almanac; The Autograph Man; The Idiot; Always With Us: What Jesus Really Said About the Poor; American Pastoral; White Flights; The Art of the Wasted Day; Semicolon, Manifesto, Batman: Rebirth, Book 2; Run and Hide; Acting Class; The Puzzler; Mecca;
Most Disappointing Books: Til We Have Faces; Summerland; Specimen Days; Housekeeping; The Crying of Lot 49; A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius; An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England; The Lost Books of The Odyssey; Teacher Man; Farther Away; Blood Meridian; Both Flesh and Not; Brave New Worlds; Neuromancer; When I Was a Child I Read Books; What I Talk About When I Talk About Running; Like Life; The Art of Fiction; Are You My Mother?; The Storytelling Animal; The Goldfinch; Tenth of December; At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches; The Street of Crocodiles; Citizen: An American Lyric; Brick Lane; Slade House; The Best Day the Worst Day; Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven; The American Claimant; What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours; I Am Sorry To Think I Have Raised a Timid Son; Swing Time; Underground Airlines; The Mothers; Do Not Say We Have Nothing; A Horse Walks Into a Bar; Safe House; The Left Hand of Darkness; The Fire Next Time; Sorry Please Thank You; The Ministry of Utmost Happiness; Freshwater; Less; Call Them By Their True Names; We Were Eight Years in Power; The Friend; The First Person and Other Stories; The Best American Essays 2018; Lot; Mislaid; Her Body and Other Parties; Vox; Bowlaway; Magical Negro; Many Alarm Clocks; Sag Harbor; Negroland; Black Ink; Thick and Other Essays; Apeirogon; Happiness; Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts; Thinking Inside the Box; At Night All Blood is Black; The Everlasting; South to America; The Puzzler; Semicolon; Manifesto; Batman: Rebirth, Book 2;
Average Read per Year: 61.25
Average Read per Month: 5.1
Average Read per Week: 1.18
Number Read in Worst Year: 40 (2012)
Number Read in Best Year: 94 (2022!)
Number of Movies Watched: 1559
Number Watched by Myself: 880 (56.5%)
Number Watched with Courtney: 506 (32.5%)
Number Watched with Courtney and Steve: 36 (2.3%)
Number Watched with Steve: 47 (3%)
Number Watched with DJ: 19 (1.2%)
Other People I Watched Movies With: Mark (1); Mandi (1); Allison (11); David S. (7); David C. (1); Sheri & Candace (1); Diane (6); various classes or student groups (9); students in Cambridge (4); various children and/or their parents (4); Courtney’s family (20); co-workers, with Courtney (1); various friends, with Courtney (8); co-workers (4); church (5); DJ and Steve (1); DJ and Lindsay (1)
Average Watched per Year: 77.95
Average Watched per Month: 6.5
Average Watched per Week: 1.5
Number Watched in Worst Year: 33 (2022)
Number Watched in Best Year: 106 (2017)
Best Movies I Saw: Adaptation; Bowling for Columbine; The Hours; The Pianist; The 25th Hour; Groundhog Day; Donnie Darko; The Godfather; The Godfather, Part II; The Matrix: Reloaded; Joe and Max; Bend It Like Beckham; Northfork; Lost in Translation; Mystic River; The Matrix: Revolutions; The Station Agent; Love Actually; Annie Hall; The Quiet American; Summer of Sam; Say Anything; The Triplets of Belleville; Calendar Girls; Super-Size Me; Napoleon Dynamite; Hero; Garden State; Million Dollar Baby; Hotel Rwanda; Strictly Ballroom; High Fidelity; The Iron Giant; Good Night, and Good Luck; The Stone Reader; Syriana; A History of Violence; Saint Ralph; Brokeback Mountain; Thank You for Smoking; Moulin Rouge!; Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang; The Departed; Rocky Balboa; Children of Men; Do the Right Thing; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Memento; The Usual Suspects; Pump Up the Volume; What Would Jesus Buy?; Lars and the Real Girl; There Will Be Blood; Michael Clayton; The Princess Bride; The Visitor; No Country for Old Men; The Lives of Others; The Dark Knight; Australia; JCVD; Wall-E; Synecdoche, NY; Slumdog Millionaire; Gran Torino; The Wrestler; Gone Baby Gone; The Soloist; The Brothers Bloom; Frost/Nixon; (500) Days of Summer; District 9; Inglorious Basterds; Princess Mononoke; The Matrix; 12; Inception; The Town; The Fighter; Black Swan; The King’s Speech; The Social Network; 127 Hours; Winter’s Bone; Midnight in Paris; Super 8; Moneyball; Finding Forrester; The Artist; A Better Life; Jeff, Who Lives at Home; Rise of the Planet of the Apes; Moonrise Kingdom; Angels in America; Looper; Argo; Flight; Lincoln; Silver Linings Playbook; Footnote; Django Unchained; Casablanca; Cloud Atlas; Mud; The Way, Way Back; The Truman Show; The Usual Suspects; Gravity; Slumdog Millionaire; 12 Years a Slave; Billy Elliott; Dallas Buyers Club; Good Will Hunting; Shakespeare in Love; Frank; The Imitation Game; Selma; Brokeback Mountain; Boyhood; Still Alice; American Sniper; Rudderless; Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure; Mr. Holmes; The Walk; The Martian; Spotlight; Mad Max: Fury Road; Carol; 99 Homes; The Stanford Prison Experiment; Sing Street; 45 Years; Hell or High Water; Loving; Fences; La La Land; Nightcrawler; The Founder; The Class; Brigsby Bear; Close Encounters of the Third Kind; E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial; 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days; The Disaster Artist; Empire Records: Remix! Special Fan Edition; The Shape of Water; Stand By Me; The Post; I, Tonya; Wonder Woman; A Fantastic Woman; Do the Right Thing; Gook; Avengers: Infinity War; Tully; Lean on Pete; A Quiet Place; Lucky; The Square; First Reformed; Won’t You Be My Neighbor?; BlackkKlansman; The Wife; Three Identical Strangers; Beats Per Minute; Boy Erased; Creed II; Your Name.; Blindspotting; The Matrix; Love Actually; Vice (honorable mention to Dave Made a Maze, which was one of the strangest movies I’ve seen in a long time, and I enjoyed it immensely); Shoplifters; The Favourite; Roma; If Beale Street Could Talk; Disobedience; Colette; I Think We’re Alone Now; What They Had; Guardians of the Galaxy, vol. 2; The Rider; Avengers: Infinity War; Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool; A Separation; The Princess Bride; The Last Black Man in San Francisco; Spider-Man: Far From Home; Pulp Fiction; Stan & Ollie; Bad Times at the El Royale; Do the Right Thing; Trial by Fire; Joker; Wild Rose; Harriet; Parasite; Transit; Jojo Rabbit; Knives Out; Ford v. Ferrari; Marriage Story; Honey Boy; Love Actually; Little Women; Can You Ever Forgive Me?; Promising Young Woman; Wonder Woman; Saint Ralph; The Blues Brothers; How to Build a Girl; Mr. Jones; V for Vendetta; Wildlife; Weathering With You; The Village; The Karate Kid; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Black Panther; An Education; Clemency; Get on the Bus; Full Metal Jacket; Da 5 Bloods; Clockers; The Brand New Testament; Private Life; Paddleton; High Fidelity; Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; Portrait of a Lady on Fire; Her Smell; Pain and Glory; 1917; Atlantics; Just Mercy; Dolemite is My Name; Luce; honorable mention to Sorry We Missed You as a great critique of the gig economy; The Hurt Locker; News of the World; The Dig; Judas and the Black Messiah; The Courier; Minari; The Father; The Trial of the Chicago 7; Sound of Metal; Another Round; Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (twice); The Mauritanian; Undercover Brother; Hope Gap; I Am Not a Witch; Bodied; Roots (2016); Moonlight; Pig; CODA; Queen and Slim; Mogul Mowgli; Spencer; The Power of the Dog; The Matrix: Resurrections (I’m torn here; whenever I watched it (twice), I didn’t think it would make this list, but I just kept thinking about it, which is always a good sign); honorable mention for Free Guy, which was much better than it had any right to be; Don’t Look Up; Oscar-Nominated Shorts (Live Action); The Batman; The Last Dragon (in the theatre!!); Donnie Darko (in the theatre!!); Emergency; Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (in the theatre!!); Official Competition; Star Wars (in the theatre!!); The Empire Strikes Back (in the theatre!!); Ghostbusters (with the Nashville Symphony!!); Banshees of Inishirin; She Said; The Wonder; Glass Onion;
Worst Movies I Saw: Storm Riders; Lost Highway; Mars Attacks!; Reindeer Games; The Ladykillers; Mulholland Drive; Requiem For a Dream; Finding Neverland; What the Bleep Do We Know?; The Ice Harvest; Ghost Rider; Superbad; Religulous; Horrible Bosses; Promised Land; Hyde Park on Hudson; Epic; Frozen; Despicable Me 2; The Bling Ring; Palo Alto; Lucy; Inherent Vice; Tomorrowland; Jupiter Ascending; Man from U.N.C.L.E.; Spectre; Alvin and the Chipmunks: Road Chip; Knight of Cups; Atomic Blonde; Damsel; Aquaman; Men in Black International; Never Goin’ Back; Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker; The Other Guys; Beetlejuice; The Devil Has a Name; Jungle Cruise; Funny Pages; Oscar-Nominated Shorts (Animated);
Most Disappointing Movies: 24 Hour Party People; Reservoir Dogs; My Own Private Idaho; The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou; Superman Returns; Idiocracy; TMNT; True Grit; Cedar Rapids; I Love You, Philip Morris; Ed Wood; To Rome, With Love; The Dark Knight Rises; God Bless America; The Bourne Legacy; Jesus Henry Christ; The Art of Rap; Iron Man 3; Man of Steel; Life is Beautiful; Dom Hemingway; The Grandmaster; John Wick; Force Majeure; The Goonies; Risky Business; The Lego Batman Movie; Free Fire; Hanna; Atomic Blonde; Kingsmen: The Golden Circle; Downsizing; The Bookshop; The Lighthouse; Fast Color; Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker; Avengers: Endgame; The Souvenir; Sword of Trust; The Lego Movie 2; Columbus; High Flying Bird; Ad Astra; Give Me Liberty; The Assassin; Puzzle; Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me; The Sisters Brothers; Crooklyn; Beetlejuice; School Daze; First Cow; WW84; Boogie; A Quiet Place, Part II; All is True; The Sparks Brothers; Black Widow; Legally Blonde; The French Dispatch; Doctor Strange; Elvis; Thor: Love & Thunder; Nope;
Movies I Watched Multiple Times: (500) Days of Summer (2); Across the Universe (2); Annie Hall (2); Argo (2); Avengers: Infinity War (2); Bartleby (2); Be Cool (2); Benny and Joon (2); Black Panther (2); Black Swan (2); Brokeback Mountain (2); Captain America (2); Catch Me If You Can (2); Chinatown (2); Cloud Atlas (6); Coffee and Cigarettes (2); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (3); Dear White People (2); Do the Right Thing (3); Donnie Darko (3); Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (3); Finding Forrester (2); Fruitvale Station (2); Garden State (2); Ghostbusters (3); Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2); High Fidelity (4); I Heart Huckabees (2); In Good Company (3); Ip Man (2); Jungle Fever (2); Krush Groove (2); Live Free or Die Hard (2); Love Actually (7); Midnight in Paris (2); Monty Python and the Holy Grail (2); Moulin Rouge! (4); Mrs. Henderson Presents (2); Napoleon Dynamite (2); Northfork (2); O Brother, Where Art Thou?; Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (2); Pirates of the Caribbean (2); Pulp Fiction (2); Pump Up the Volume (2); Reality Bites (2); Rocky Balboa (6); Roll Bounce (3); Romeo + Juliet (2); Saint Ralph (5); Saved! (2); Say Anything (2); Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (6); Sing Street (2); Slumdog Millionaire (2); Snow Piercer (2); Star Trek: Into Darkness (2); Star Wars: The Force Awakens (3); Star Wars: The Last Jedi (3); Strictly Ballroom (6); Super-Size Me (2); Thank You for Smoking (2); The Brothers Bloom (2); The Dark Knight (2); The Grandmaster (3); The Illusionist (2); The Last Dragon (4); The Matrix (5); The Matrix: Reloaded (3); The Matrix: Revolutions (4); The Matrix: Resurrections (2); The Princess Bride (4); The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2); The Usual Suspects (2); The Way, Way Back (2); Undercover Brother (5); Wonder Woman (3)
Number of Academic Presentations: 17
Number of Academic Publications: 46
Number of Creative Publications: 234 (26 essays and 208 poems)
Number of Books Published: 7 (2 chapbooks of poems; 3 full-length poetry collection; memoir; critical book)
Number of Poetry Readings/Interviews: 22
Number of Races Run: 34 (21 5Ks; 1 4-mile; 9 10Ks; 8 Half-Marathons; 2 Marathons)
Fastest 5K: 21:45 (2006 Independence Dash)
Fastest 10K: 43:57 (2021 Gallatin Shamrock Run)
Fastest Half-Marathon: 1:41:08 (2021 Middle Half)
Fastest Marathon: 3:46:03 (2011 Chickamauga Battlefield)
I started keeping this statistics because I felt I was watching too many movies and not reading enough books (and not writing as much as I would like). I complained that I didn’t have enough time to read and write, but then I saw how many movies I had watched (something like 150 or so in the year before I started keeping statistics, as best as I could calculate without such a list, anyway). My goal was to average no more than two movies a week, while reading (again, on average) a book a week. Based on these statistics, I’ve not only been able to keep that up, I’ve moved the average number of books much closer to the average number of movie I read/watch every year. The side benefit is that I also had more time to write, which led to some solid years of production (and some publications, to boot). Anybody who knows me knows that I’m a fan of intentionality; keeping this list shows me the effect it can have.
Another side benefit is that I found myself being more selective about what I was both reading and watching. If I knew I was going to be lucky to read 50 or 60 books in a year, then I didn’t want to waste 8-10 hours reading something just because I felt I should. When I taught Contemporary Literature, I sometimes had to slog through some books I really, really didn’t enjoy (I’m looking at you, Wolf Hall), but I worked hard to select books that were worth my time. The same was true when it came to movies. Not surprisingly, then, the number of books/movies on the bad and disappointing lists steadily went down. And, of course, those two lists probably say more about me than they do the works on them. I can’t produce literature or movies like the people who produced those works, so I always feel a bit bad about putting anything on that part of the list, but, still, I reacted how I reacted.
It's nice to see, as well, how much writing I’ve produced. I would have never guessed I would have nearly 50 academic publications, as I wanted to be a teacher, not a researcher in any way. However, I always felt that I should be practicing scholarship in my discipline if I was trying to teach my students how to do so. Similarly, I’ve never had any career goals when it comes to creative writing (that’s not my career; teaching is), but it’s still nice to see that I’ve been able to publish much more there than I would have ever thought.
My running statistics are checkered, thanks to a continuous battle with tendinosis. Whenever I get in decent shape and run a solid race, I end up getting injured. Thanks to good physical therapists and sports medicine doctors, though, the past couple of years have been enjoyable and successful. I ran my fastest 10K and half-marathon in 2021, when I was 51. I’m recovering from an injury again, but I’ve taken less time off of running and gotten back in shape quicker than in previous years. I’ll work to keep injury at bay and hope to run more (and faster, if possible) in the coming years.
Best Books I Read: Empire Falls; Motherless Brooklyn; Watchmen; How to Be Alone; Life of Pi; Six Degrees of Separation; The Blind Assassin; The Plot Against America; Cloud Atlas; Plainsong; Gilead; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time; V for Vendetta; Black Swan Green; The Discomfort Zone; Everyman; The Poet of Tolstoy Park; The Road; Middlesex; Saturday; The Kite Runner; The Omnivore’s Dilemma; The Remains of the Day; Arthur & George; The Yiddish Policeman’s Union; Interpreter of Maladies; The Shipping News; March; Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality; The Year of Magical Thinking; The Hours; A Summons to Memphis; The Uncommon Reader; Blindness; Elephant Rocks; A Mercy; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Serena; The Elegance of the Hedgehog; Never Let Me Go; Donkey Gospel; The Story of Edgar Sawtelle; A Short History of Women; A Person of Interest; Ararat; Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions; Let the Great World Spin; Native Guard; Different Hours; Letters To a Young Poet; Missing You, Metropolis; The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet; Hardheaded Weather; The Undertaking; Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Blood Dazzler; The Deleted World; The Family Fang; The Art of Fielding; Angels in America; NW; Art & Fear; Eventide; All the Light We Cannot See; Everything I Never Told You; Memory Wall; Here I Am; Homegoing; The Underground Railroad; A Raisin in the Sun; Clybourne Park; American War; How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe; Disgraced; Sing, Unburied, Sing; The Power; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark; Home Fire; Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race; The Leavers; Four in the Morning; A Place for Us; Heavy: An American Memoir; Ruined; Heads of the Colored People: Stories; Red Clocks; The Reckonings; Little Fires Everywhere; The Testaments; Appropriate/An Octoroon; What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker; Make It Scream, Make It Burn; Educated; The Refugees; Homegoing; Normal People; The Glass Hotel; The Niceties; Station Eleven; The Other Americans; Utopia Avenue; Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching; Black Glass; Children of Gebelawi; A Children’s Bible; My Time Among the Whites; Girl, Woman, Other; The Vanishing Half; The Overstory; honorable mention for The Age of Surveillance Capitalism for its critique of all the tech companies I hate; Brown; Klara and the Sun; How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America; Make Your Home Among Strangers; Hamnet; How Beautiful We Were; Homeland Elegies; Pew; Sissy; Seek You; Cloud Cuckoo Land; Foster, Small Things Like These, My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Fine: A Comic About Gender, Four Thousand Weeks, Batman: Earth One, vols. 1 and 2, Wintering, IN., Sabrina; Running While Black;
Worst Books I Read: The Kreutzer Sonata; The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym; Special Topics in Calamity Physics; A Man Without a Country; Oblivion; The Sea; The Gathering; Generation A; Wolf Hall; American Notes and Pictures From Italy; Brain Bugs; Fire to Fire; For the Confederate Dead; What the Best College Students Do; We Are What We Pretend to Be; The 50 Funniest American Writers; Flaubert’s Parrot; The Soul Thief; Psalm Sonnets; Forty Stories; The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories; Melville: His World and Work; Fall Higher; Ilustrado; Bad Star; Proxies; A Public Faith; A Philosophy of Walking; The Clothing of Books; Beatlebone; A Doubter’s Almanac; The Autograph Man; The Idiot; Always With Us: What Jesus Really Said About the Poor; American Pastoral; White Flights; The Art of the Wasted Day; Semicolon, Manifesto, Batman: Rebirth, Book 2; Run and Hide; Acting Class; The Puzzler; Mecca;
Most Disappointing Books: Til We Have Faces; Summerland; Specimen Days; Housekeeping; The Crying of Lot 49; A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius; An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England; The Lost Books of The Odyssey; Teacher Man; Farther Away; Blood Meridian; Both Flesh and Not; Brave New Worlds; Neuromancer; When I Was a Child I Read Books; What I Talk About When I Talk About Running; Like Life; The Art of Fiction; Are You My Mother?; The Storytelling Animal; The Goldfinch; Tenth of December; At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches; The Street of Crocodiles; Citizen: An American Lyric; Brick Lane; Slade House; The Best Day the Worst Day; Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven; The American Claimant; What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours; I Am Sorry To Think I Have Raised a Timid Son; Swing Time; Underground Airlines; The Mothers; Do Not Say We Have Nothing; A Horse Walks Into a Bar; Safe House; The Left Hand of Darkness; The Fire Next Time; Sorry Please Thank You; The Ministry of Utmost Happiness; Freshwater; Less; Call Them By Their True Names; We Were Eight Years in Power; The Friend; The First Person and Other Stories; The Best American Essays 2018; Lot; Mislaid; Her Body and Other Parties; Vox; Bowlaway; Magical Negro; Many Alarm Clocks; Sag Harbor; Negroland; Black Ink; Thick and Other Essays; Apeirogon; Happiness; Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts; Thinking Inside the Box; At Night All Blood is Black; The Everlasting; South to America; The Puzzler; Semicolon; Manifesto; Batman: Rebirth, Book 2;
Average Read per Year: 61.25
Average Read per Month: 5.1
Average Read per Week: 1.18
Number Read in Worst Year: 40 (2012)
Number Read in Best Year: 94 (2022!)
Number of Movies Watched: 1559
Number Watched by Myself: 880 (56.5%)
Number Watched with Courtney: 506 (32.5%)
Number Watched with Courtney and Steve: 36 (2.3%)
Number Watched with Steve: 47 (3%)
Number Watched with DJ: 19 (1.2%)
Other People I Watched Movies With: Mark (1); Mandi (1); Allison (11); David S. (7); David C. (1); Sheri & Candace (1); Diane (6); various classes or student groups (9); students in Cambridge (4); various children and/or their parents (4); Courtney’s family (20); co-workers, with Courtney (1); various friends, with Courtney (8); co-workers (4); church (5); DJ and Steve (1); DJ and Lindsay (1)
Average Watched per Year: 77.95
Average Watched per Month: 6.5
Average Watched per Week: 1.5
Number Watched in Worst Year: 33 (2022)
Number Watched in Best Year: 106 (2017)
Best Movies I Saw: Adaptation; Bowling for Columbine; The Hours; The Pianist; The 25th Hour; Groundhog Day; Donnie Darko; The Godfather; The Godfather, Part II; The Matrix: Reloaded; Joe and Max; Bend It Like Beckham; Northfork; Lost in Translation; Mystic River; The Matrix: Revolutions; The Station Agent; Love Actually; Annie Hall; The Quiet American; Summer of Sam; Say Anything; The Triplets of Belleville; Calendar Girls; Super-Size Me; Napoleon Dynamite; Hero; Garden State; Million Dollar Baby; Hotel Rwanda; Strictly Ballroom; High Fidelity; The Iron Giant; Good Night, and Good Luck; The Stone Reader; Syriana; A History of Violence; Saint Ralph; Brokeback Mountain; Thank You for Smoking; Moulin Rouge!; Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang; The Departed; Rocky Balboa; Children of Men; Do the Right Thing; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Memento; The Usual Suspects; Pump Up the Volume; What Would Jesus Buy?; Lars and the Real Girl; There Will Be Blood; Michael Clayton; The Princess Bride; The Visitor; No Country for Old Men; The Lives of Others; The Dark Knight; Australia; JCVD; Wall-E; Synecdoche, NY; Slumdog Millionaire; Gran Torino; The Wrestler; Gone Baby Gone; The Soloist; The Brothers Bloom; Frost/Nixon; (500) Days of Summer; District 9; Inglorious Basterds; Princess Mononoke; The Matrix; 12; Inception; The Town; The Fighter; Black Swan; The King’s Speech; The Social Network; 127 Hours; Winter’s Bone; Midnight in Paris; Super 8; Moneyball; Finding Forrester; The Artist; A Better Life; Jeff, Who Lives at Home; Rise of the Planet of the Apes; Moonrise Kingdom; Angels in America; Looper; Argo; Flight; Lincoln; Silver Linings Playbook; Footnote; Django Unchained; Casablanca; Cloud Atlas; Mud; The Way, Way Back; The Truman Show; The Usual Suspects; Gravity; Slumdog Millionaire; 12 Years a Slave; Billy Elliott; Dallas Buyers Club; Good Will Hunting; Shakespeare in Love; Frank; The Imitation Game; Selma; Brokeback Mountain; Boyhood; Still Alice; American Sniper; Rudderless; Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure; Mr. Holmes; The Walk; The Martian; Spotlight; Mad Max: Fury Road; Carol; 99 Homes; The Stanford Prison Experiment; Sing Street; 45 Years; Hell or High Water; Loving; Fences; La La Land; Nightcrawler; The Founder; The Class; Brigsby Bear; Close Encounters of the Third Kind; E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial; 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days; The Disaster Artist; Empire Records: Remix! Special Fan Edition; The Shape of Water; Stand By Me; The Post; I, Tonya; Wonder Woman; A Fantastic Woman; Do the Right Thing; Gook; Avengers: Infinity War; Tully; Lean on Pete; A Quiet Place; Lucky; The Square; First Reformed; Won’t You Be My Neighbor?; BlackkKlansman; The Wife; Three Identical Strangers; Beats Per Minute; Boy Erased; Creed II; Your Name.; Blindspotting; The Matrix; Love Actually; Vice (honorable mention to Dave Made a Maze, which was one of the strangest movies I’ve seen in a long time, and I enjoyed it immensely); Shoplifters; The Favourite; Roma; If Beale Street Could Talk; Disobedience; Colette; I Think We’re Alone Now; What They Had; Guardians of the Galaxy, vol. 2; The Rider; Avengers: Infinity War; Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool; A Separation; The Princess Bride; The Last Black Man in San Francisco; Spider-Man: Far From Home; Pulp Fiction; Stan & Ollie; Bad Times at the El Royale; Do the Right Thing; Trial by Fire; Joker; Wild Rose; Harriet; Parasite; Transit; Jojo Rabbit; Knives Out; Ford v. Ferrari; Marriage Story; Honey Boy; Love Actually; Little Women; Can You Ever Forgive Me?; Promising Young Woman; Wonder Woman; Saint Ralph; The Blues Brothers; How to Build a Girl; Mr. Jones; V for Vendetta; Wildlife; Weathering With You; The Village; The Karate Kid; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Black Panther; An Education; Clemency; Get on the Bus; Full Metal Jacket; Da 5 Bloods; Clockers; The Brand New Testament; Private Life; Paddleton; High Fidelity; Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; Portrait of a Lady on Fire; Her Smell; Pain and Glory; 1917; Atlantics; Just Mercy; Dolemite is My Name; Luce; honorable mention to Sorry We Missed You as a great critique of the gig economy; The Hurt Locker; News of the World; The Dig; Judas and the Black Messiah; The Courier; Minari; The Father; The Trial of the Chicago 7; Sound of Metal; Another Round; Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (twice); The Mauritanian; Undercover Brother; Hope Gap; I Am Not a Witch; Bodied; Roots (2016); Moonlight; Pig; CODA; Queen and Slim; Mogul Mowgli; Spencer; The Power of the Dog; The Matrix: Resurrections (I’m torn here; whenever I watched it (twice), I didn’t think it would make this list, but I just kept thinking about it, which is always a good sign); honorable mention for Free Guy, which was much better than it had any right to be; Don’t Look Up; Oscar-Nominated Shorts (Live Action); The Batman; The Last Dragon (in the theatre!!); Donnie Darko (in the theatre!!); Emergency; Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (in the theatre!!); Official Competition; Star Wars (in the theatre!!); The Empire Strikes Back (in the theatre!!); Ghostbusters (with the Nashville Symphony!!); Banshees of Inishirin; She Said; The Wonder; Glass Onion;
Worst Movies I Saw: Storm Riders; Lost Highway; Mars Attacks!; Reindeer Games; The Ladykillers; Mulholland Drive; Requiem For a Dream; Finding Neverland; What the Bleep Do We Know?; The Ice Harvest; Ghost Rider; Superbad; Religulous; Horrible Bosses; Promised Land; Hyde Park on Hudson; Epic; Frozen; Despicable Me 2; The Bling Ring; Palo Alto; Lucy; Inherent Vice; Tomorrowland; Jupiter Ascending; Man from U.N.C.L.E.; Spectre; Alvin and the Chipmunks: Road Chip; Knight of Cups; Atomic Blonde; Damsel; Aquaman; Men in Black International; Never Goin’ Back; Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker; The Other Guys; Beetlejuice; The Devil Has a Name; Jungle Cruise; Funny Pages; Oscar-Nominated Shorts (Animated);
Most Disappointing Movies: 24 Hour Party People; Reservoir Dogs; My Own Private Idaho; The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou; Superman Returns; Idiocracy; TMNT; True Grit; Cedar Rapids; I Love You, Philip Morris; Ed Wood; To Rome, With Love; The Dark Knight Rises; God Bless America; The Bourne Legacy; Jesus Henry Christ; The Art of Rap; Iron Man 3; Man of Steel; Life is Beautiful; Dom Hemingway; The Grandmaster; John Wick; Force Majeure; The Goonies; Risky Business; The Lego Batman Movie; Free Fire; Hanna; Atomic Blonde; Kingsmen: The Golden Circle; Downsizing; The Bookshop; The Lighthouse; Fast Color; Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker; Avengers: Endgame; The Souvenir; Sword of Trust; The Lego Movie 2; Columbus; High Flying Bird; Ad Astra; Give Me Liberty; The Assassin; Puzzle; Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me; The Sisters Brothers; Crooklyn; Beetlejuice; School Daze; First Cow; WW84; Boogie; A Quiet Place, Part II; All is True; The Sparks Brothers; Black Widow; Legally Blonde; The French Dispatch; Doctor Strange; Elvis; Thor: Love & Thunder; Nope;
Movies I Watched Multiple Times: (500) Days of Summer (2); Across the Universe (2); Annie Hall (2); Argo (2); Avengers: Infinity War (2); Bartleby (2); Be Cool (2); Benny and Joon (2); Black Panther (2); Black Swan (2); Brokeback Mountain (2); Captain America (2); Catch Me If You Can (2); Chinatown (2); Cloud Atlas (6); Coffee and Cigarettes (2); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (3); Dear White People (2); Do the Right Thing (3); Donnie Darko (3); Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (3); Finding Forrester (2); Fruitvale Station (2); Garden State (2); Ghostbusters (3); Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2); High Fidelity (4); I Heart Huckabees (2); In Good Company (3); Ip Man (2); Jungle Fever (2); Krush Groove (2); Live Free or Die Hard (2); Love Actually (7); Midnight in Paris (2); Monty Python and the Holy Grail (2); Moulin Rouge! (4); Mrs. Henderson Presents (2); Napoleon Dynamite (2); Northfork (2); O Brother, Where Art Thou?; Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (2); Pirates of the Caribbean (2); Pulp Fiction (2); Pump Up the Volume (2); Reality Bites (2); Rocky Balboa (6); Roll Bounce (3); Romeo + Juliet (2); Saint Ralph (5); Saved! (2); Say Anything (2); Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (6); Sing Street (2); Slumdog Millionaire (2); Snow Piercer (2); Star Trek: Into Darkness (2); Star Wars: The Force Awakens (3); Star Wars: The Last Jedi (3); Strictly Ballroom (6); Super-Size Me (2); Thank You for Smoking (2); The Brothers Bloom (2); The Dark Knight (2); The Grandmaster (3); The Illusionist (2); The Last Dragon (4); The Matrix (5); The Matrix: Reloaded (3); The Matrix: Revolutions (4); The Matrix: Resurrections (2); The Princess Bride (4); The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2); The Usual Suspects (2); The Way, Way Back (2); Undercover Brother (5); Wonder Woman (3)
Number of Academic Presentations: 17
Number of Academic Publications: 46
Number of Creative Publications: 234 (26 essays and 208 poems)
Number of Books Published: 7 (2 chapbooks of poems; 3 full-length poetry collection; memoir; critical book)
Number of Poetry Readings/Interviews: 22
Number of Races Run: 34 (21 5Ks; 1 4-mile; 9 10Ks; 8 Half-Marathons; 2 Marathons)
Fastest 5K: 21:45 (2006 Independence Dash)
Fastest 10K: 43:57 (2021 Gallatin Shamrock Run)
Fastest Half-Marathon: 1:41:08 (2021 Middle Half)
Fastest Marathon: 3:46:03 (2011 Chickamauga Battlefield)
I started keeping this statistics because I felt I was watching too many movies and not reading enough books (and not writing as much as I would like). I complained that I didn’t have enough time to read and write, but then I saw how many movies I had watched (something like 150 or so in the year before I started keeping statistics, as best as I could calculate without such a list, anyway). My goal was to average no more than two movies a week, while reading (again, on average) a book a week. Based on these statistics, I’ve not only been able to keep that up, I’ve moved the average number of books much closer to the average number of movie I read/watch every year. The side benefit is that I also had more time to write, which led to some solid years of production (and some publications, to boot). Anybody who knows me knows that I’m a fan of intentionality; keeping this list shows me the effect it can have.
Another side benefit is that I found myself being more selective about what I was both reading and watching. If I knew I was going to be lucky to read 50 or 60 books in a year, then I didn’t want to waste 8-10 hours reading something just because I felt I should. When I taught Contemporary Literature, I sometimes had to slog through some books I really, really didn’t enjoy (I’m looking at you, Wolf Hall), but I worked hard to select books that were worth my time. The same was true when it came to movies. Not surprisingly, then, the number of books/movies on the bad and disappointing lists steadily went down. And, of course, those two lists probably say more about me than they do the works on them. I can’t produce literature or movies like the people who produced those works, so I always feel a bit bad about putting anything on that part of the list, but, still, I reacted how I reacted.
It's nice to see, as well, how much writing I’ve produced. I would have never guessed I would have nearly 50 academic publications, as I wanted to be a teacher, not a researcher in any way. However, I always felt that I should be practicing scholarship in my discipline if I was trying to teach my students how to do so. Similarly, I’ve never had any career goals when it comes to creative writing (that’s not my career; teaching is), but it’s still nice to see that I’ve been able to publish much more there than I would have ever thought.
My running statistics are checkered, thanks to a continuous battle with tendinosis. Whenever I get in decent shape and run a solid race, I end up getting injured. Thanks to good physical therapists and sports medicine doctors, though, the past couple of years have been enjoyable and successful. I ran my fastest 10K and half-marathon in 2021, when I was 51. I’m recovering from an injury again, but I’ve taken less time off of running and gotten back in shape quicker than in previous years. I’ll work to keep injury at bay and hope to run more (and faster, if possible) in the coming years.