2021 reading round-up

[lizbee]

2021 was the year I stopped using GoodReads, being optimistic that I'd get signed to an agent and be further on the way to becoming a Real Proper Author.

That didn't happen, but moving to a more private spreadsheet gave me a chance to start tracking other metrics, like author gender and race, which I didn't want to do with an audience.



Total books read: 95
By genre and audience:

Contemporary (adult): 2
Contemporary (YA): 7
Contemporary (MG): 5
Contemporary (JF): 2

I think we can safely say that adult contemp is not my genre -- I am trying to branch out, but 100% of those books were by Liane Moriarty.

However, there's some pretty great stuff happening in contemp realism YA and MG, and that's also where a lot of the diversity in my year's reading appeared.

Fantasy (adult): 1
Fantasy (new adult): 1
Fantasy (YA): 7
Fantasy (MG): 4

It's weird to realise how much fantasy is also not my genre. That one adult fantasy? The Abigail novella in the Rivers of London series. And one hundred percent of those YA fantasies were by Leigh Bardugo.

Historical fiction (adult): 2
Historical fiction (YA): 1
Historical fiction (MG): 2

I don't wanna scare anyone, but two-thirds of those historical novels for younger readers were set in the 1990s. I mean, yes, that's two out of three -- The Year the Maps Changed by Danielle Binks and Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas. But still, that seems like too many. The '90s were, like, last week, right?

Horror (YA): 2

This is more horror than I've read in whole decades...

Mystery (adult): 7
Mystery (YA): 1

First, more people should write YA mystery. (YA thrillers are booming, thanks to Tess Sharpe and Ellie Marney, and I love them both, and obviously there's a lot of overlap, but still.)

Second, murder mysteries are good and I like them. Apparently this is problematic nowadays, but I ... do not care.

Romance (new adult): 1
Romance (YA): 2

I keep trying to read romance, and this year ... I found one I did not hate. And two that I didn't love, but didn't think were necessarily bad, I just have trouble caring about the love lives of characters I've barely met.

Science fiction (adult): 25
Science fiction (YA): 1

SUFFICE TO SAY that between rereading the last four Expanse novels and then the entire Vorkosigan series up to A Civil Campaign, I had a bit of a year for space opera.

And that was by far the highlight. Especially realising that Amos Burton is a younger, sexier version of Sergeant Bothari, which I feel is some real galaxy brain nerding right there.

I also read some Ann Leckie, reread A Memory Called Empire ahead of A Desolation Called Peace, grimaced through Foundation, and read three Star Trek tie-in novels. Two were by Una McCormack, who sadly remains The Only Good Star Trek Novelist Currently Working.

I also read 16 works of non-fiction, all written for adults. By topic:

Business: 1
Feminism: 1
History: 5
Medicine: 1
Politics: 3
Space: 2
Sport: 4
True crime: 2

My spreadsheet didn't allow for multiple topics, so I'm just gonna flag that the business, feminism, medicine, some of the history, and politics, all overlap with true crime.

The real surprise here was how much sports non-fiction I read. It turns out I don't hate sports, I'm just often more interested in the social and business side than the ball kicking. Except ice hockey, that is legit amazing, it's a compelling mixture of TREMENDOUS GRACE and also PUNCHING.

Target audience stats:

Adult: 57
New Adult: 3
YA: 22
MG: 11
JF: 2

I know "new adult" is not meant to be a thing anymore, but I don't know what else to call a novel with the style of YA but focusing on the lives of college or university students.

I decided in 2021 that I wasn't going to keep up with YA and MG releases -- I'd just take a year off and see what happened. And then I wound up rereading a lot of adult fiction as well.

Author stats:

Australian authors: 29 (30%)
Authors of colour: 13 (a lousy 13%)
Women: 75 (78%)

So if there's one thing I don't need to worry about, it's reading enough women. On the other hand, now that I know how few authors of colour I read when I'm not making an effort, I ... need to make an effort! I'm going to aim for two books by an author of colour per month for 2022 and see how that works out -- I know my local library has a really excellent collection of fiction by African diaspora authors, so I'll start there.

Finally, the nerdiest numbers:

Rereads: 17
Kindle purchases: 31
Library loans: 34
Hardcopy purchases: 31

I have a mental flowchart which determines how I get a book:

1. Is the author local? Buy or borrow in hardcopy (Australian authors get a small amount for every physical loan from a library ... but not for ebooks).
2. Is this something I'm likely to come back to? Buy in electronic form ... unless I've reread it so many times or love it so much that it's worth expending some shelf space.
3. Do I need it now? Buy in electronic form, but feel bad about it.

Basically I try to minimise my purchasing of physical books, and as you can see, that's really working out for me...

Comments

[laurenthemself]

I read 37 books and seven were by Seanan. I think that's the only meaningful stat!

[lizbee]

I think that is beautiful.

[laurenthemself]

I feel safe with her because I know she will write many many horrendous things, and I know I have to read her mermaid books with care because her loving descriptions of the ocean depths messes my thalassophobia, but I know she won't write sexual assault.

[lizbee]

That's totally fair -- I was genuinely shocked in my Bujold reread at how much sexual assault there was. Not in a titillating way, and I think she was trying to be thoughtful about it in the context of the 1980s, but it was surprising how much it jumped out at me, when I took it for granted in my teens.

[delphi]

I don't wanna scare anyone, but two-thirds of those historical novels for younger readers were set in the 1990s.

...I know the math on that checks out, but it still feels wrong.

Two were by Una McCormack, who sadly remains The Only Good Star Trek Novelist Currently Working.

Aw, damn - this is disheartening to hear. I've been on a Trek novel binge since finding her work, and while I've read some stuff I find fannishly engaging, and one series I'm digging so far, I keep hoping to stumble on a treasure trove of more books like hers. I read a ton of Trek novels in the '90s, pretty much stopped at Andrew Robinson's A Stitch in Time, and then returned only to find out that the beta canon world really hadn't gone to the interesting places I'd expected it to over the course of twenty years.

[lizbee]

Yeah, the beta canon has been ... well, beta in terms of quality and also acting like "canon".

Interestingly, that whole storyline has just been wrapped up in what sounds like a clusterfuck of an Avengers: Endgame rip-off, and we're seeing a return to standalone adventures set within series' runs. Which delights me!

Save that the first of these, Shadows Have Offended by Cassandra Rose ... someone ... was very bad. I mean, it involved a HEIST on BETAZED and WORF AND TROI FIGHTING CRIME while Picard DOES DIPLOMACY and Beverly, separately, MAKES FIRST CONTACT and also Worf wears Georgiou's feathered cape from Disco's season 1 finale -- and this was all boring. (And Picard was OOC in a really annoying way.)

Scuttlebutt tells me that the publisher doesn't offer enough money to attract experienced authors, so they're mostly working from an increasingly small pool of professional tie-in writers. Which is a real shame! Especially with Prodigy out, they should have had a whole line of middle grade tie-ins out before Christmas.

[delphi]

Aside from A Stitch in Time, I'd mostly been reading Peter David's New Frontier series when I lost the habit of picking up tie-in novels, and those were popular enough that I blithely assumed that was going to be the future of the beta canon. With a huge gap between TV shows and then the explosion of ebooks, I really thought I'd come back to find a dozen series featuring original crews, or a comedic trilogy about cross-cultural misunderstandings on Earth in the years after first contact, or a series about the Vulcan Science Academy.

And there's a little of that, at least. I was really excited by the premise of the Department of Temporal Investigations, but so far it looks very light on tropey fun or engaging writing. I'm meaning to check out Starfleet Corps of Engineers series, and I'm really hopeful about the rest of the IKS Gorkon books (the introductory TNG novel having been a ton of fun, even if the writing was just on the better side of competent). But it's definitely the minority compared to the drier, more political, more conservative stories that seek to make the Star Trek universe feel smaller than it should be.

The scuttlebutt you mention makes sense, and while the last set of novel submission guidelines I found seems out of date, I understand that it's still largely a case of "main canon characters only, unless you're eventually invited to do otherwise," "temporary original [het] love interests only," no permanently changing the lives of even minor canon characters, no 'missing scene' adventures from past series unless invited, no more biographical books unless invited—just 'current timeline' missions.

It's a pity that Paramount seems to have been so fixed on keeping the books canon-compliant. Because...I mean, it's Star Trek. The core fanbase who'll buy books are people picky enough about canon to always be drawing lines around it anyhow, so why not let the world of the books and comics get wild and creative? If they did, they'd probably have a lot of fannish writers happily working for cheap if it means getting to write about that one niche species they love or putting together the science vessel crew of their dreams.

Maybe, in light of loosening up a little with Lower Decks and Prodigy, we'll see better moving forward?

[kelly_chambliss]

Fascinating list, Liz (though I am still reeling at the notion that the 1990s might qualify as "historical" fiction.)

My apologies if you've already discussed them and I missed it because I suck at keeping up with people's journals -- have you read Leckie's "Ancillary" series? Novik's Scholomance books?

I was sort of obsessive about reading ST: Voyager pro-fic back in the day, but I don't think I've read Trek fic since the String Theory books. (Which was when. . .2006 or so? Yeah, ancient times now. Someone's probably already written "historical novels" set then.)

With a few exceptions, in my old age, I find myself moving more and more away from fiction and more towards history and biography. Not sure why. . .maybe because the world seems to have gone over to the bat-shit side these last few years, and I'm trying to make sense of it? I dunno. But I do have list of fiction titles I'd like to get to.

I'm intrigued by your "new adult" category. I've noticed a bit of that myself lately -- books about 20-somethings that nonetheless read like YA (or have a lot of YA tropes). Not sure what to make of it, though I have a few ideas. (I'm thinking at the moment of Emily Danforth's Plain Bad Heroines, which in the main I really liked [but of course have quibbles with]. I know that Danforth's first works were actual YA, but PBH is not, at least not in theory. Yet so many of the tropes are there, like the heroine's loyal, endlessly-supportive POC sidekick BFF or the "dysfunctional parents" plot, etc.)