my reading year stats

It’s been a great reading year. Once again, I achieved my reading challenge to read and review at least 100 books, which I managed by reading 168 books with 128 reviews written, though 25 have yet to be published. I DNF’d 7 books.

I have read 100 books by female authors and 70 by men – the sharp-eyed among you will have notice that adds up to 170, but there were two books in this year’s list with joint authorship – How To Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone and Oracle’s War by David Hair and Cath Mayo.

In a related challenge I set myself the task of reading at least two books a month by female authors previously unknown to me in the Increasing Discoverability Challenge, as set out by Jo Hall. I managed to read 40 books in this category, which is 24% of my 2019 reading list, while 13% of books were by male authors I hadn’t previously read, which means that 37% of the books I read last year were by authors new to me. I’m reasonably happy with that – it means I am continuing to expand my reading experience, rather than only sticking with authors I know and like. But I do note that last year I read more books in this category, particularly by male authors previously unknown to me. I really don’t want this ratio to drop any lower next year.

I decided to cut back requesting review copies from Netgalley, though I still enjoy reading and reviewing arcs and have also occasionally taken review copies from writing colleagues. During 2019, I read and reviewed 61 new releases and managed to read 98 books on my TBR pile, which I’m really pleased about. However my determination to read more library books hit a wall – I only managed 9. Partly it’s because I don’t enjoy reading print books all that much these days. But partly, I decided to join a Reading Challenge – and I discovered during this year that I’m rubbish at keeping these going. So come 2020, other than my ongoing Discovery Challenge, I’m not going to sign up for any more, as they act as a deterrent rather than an impetus.

As you can see, I read more ebooks than anything else. But as I continue to add more audiobooks, I expect this number to rise during 2020. That pitifully small number of print books is dire though, and I really need to knuckle down and read more as we have several large shelves full of unread books. It is one of my reading targets for the coming year – to read more of our own paperbacks.

In 2019 I read 56 science fiction books, 104 fantasy books, 21 crime adventures, 2 contemporary fiction, 9 historical books, 3 non-fiction books. Science fiction includes sub-genres such as space opera, colony adventures, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic, time travel, alternate history, military, futuristic crime, literary and steampunk. Fantasy includes sub-genres such as epic, urban, swords and sorcery, musket and magic, sand and sorcery, underworld, historical, grimdark and coming of age. This is a big shift from last year’s figures, when I’d read more science fiction than anything else. The reason for this shift is that the Audible reading list I’d inherited from Frankie was heavily skewed to fantasy reads and I decided to work my way through those books I thought I’d enjoy. I expect this bias to still impact on next year’s reading stats.

I announced last year that I wasn’t going to bother including children’s books as a category as I had miserably failed to read more books. However, because I have been working through Frankie’s Audible collection, which were all children’s books, the number I’ve read this year has been far more respectable. While my YA reading numbers were constant last year and the year before, in 2019 my numbers of YA reads have tanked – and I’m not really sure why.

I have read 30 books by small presses and self-published authors, which is only 18% of my 2019 reading list – far fewer than in 2018. Again, I think this has been skewed by my enthusiasm for Audible books, which are mostly produced by traditional publishers. I would like to read more Indie books next year.