2023 reading round-up
Dec. 31st, 2023 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizbee2021 reading round-up
2022 reading round-up
So first of all, after two consecutive years of reading exactly 95 books, this year I cracked 100. Yes, one of them was a four-issue Star Trek comic that took me all of 20 minutes to read. That's not the point.
This year I imported my Google spreadsheet into Notion, a planner/productivity app I mainly use for keeping to-do lists. This was a mistake, mainly because Notion's spreadsheeting functionality is not amazing. For 2024 I've gone fully old-school with a paper reading journal, which is probably going to be very annoying come the end of the year when I'm doing this round-up...
Anyway. The stats.
Total books logged: 100
DNFs: 3 (all abandoned at more than 60%, so I didn't take them out of my list)
By target audience (age)
Adult - 78
Young Adult - 17
Middle Grade - 7
And my favourite category, by genre and audience
Contemporary (adult): 3
Contemporary (YA): 2
Contemporary (middle grade): 4
All the middle grade contemps were graphic novels -- America has really exciting stuff happening in that space, especially from diverse authors. I hope Australia is following suit, and I would pay money to attend some sort of "how to write a graphic novel script" course.
Both YA contemps were from Latina authors -- that Queens Public Library membership paid off.
Fantasy: (adult): 5
Fantasy (YA): 7
Fantasy (middle grade): 2
I read 12 different fantasy authors this year, and ten are friends, friends-of-friends or people with whom I am loosely acquainted.
Historical fiction (that isn't historical mystery)
Adult: 3
YA: 3
MG: 0
I'm gonna be honest. I like my historicals best when there's a crime happening.
Historical mystery
Adult: 18
YA: 1
MG: 0
The standout genre of the year, mainly thanks to my Barbara Hambly reread, but also my attempt at Steven Saylor, and also I read an early Andrew Taylor.
I'm gonna be honest: I watched Interview with the Vampire and hated it quite a lot, but it really made me want to start another Hambly re-read. So far I am resisting the urge.
Contemporary mystery
Adult: 4
YA: 1
MG: 0
The standout was the sole YA entry, The Black Queen by Jumata Emil.
I don't dislike contemporary crime fiction, but my overall feeling is that historical mysteries tell us something about a society, and a contemporary story can do that, but it's a lot harder.
I also read two contemporary thrillers (which I see as a genre which overlaps with mystery but has different narrative priorities). They were both enjoyable but not life-changing. Which is, in fairness, a lot to ask of a novel.
Science fiction
Adult: 9
YA: 0
MG: 0
Not a big year for SF, and most of it was a Murderbot reread. (I love those books, but man, it was a bold and interesting choice by Tor to release them without editing. Please don't tell me there was an editor involved, that would be very upsetting to hear.)
Non-fiction: 24
Okay, maybe this was the year of non-fiction. Mostly but not entirely histories, a couple of biographies. Largely American. I'm going to make an effort to read more Australian non-fiction in 2024, but I am braced for disappointment.
Author stats
Australian authors: 24% (down from 26% last year, but not a massive swing)
Authors of colour: 29% (a steady improvement from last year's 24%, but we can still do better)
Women: 62% (slightly down from last year, but I read more works by Men of Colour than in previous years so I'm not mad about it)
Non-binary authors: 2% (doubling last year's total...)
The really nerdy stats
Rereads: 18
Library loans: 50
Ebooks: 75
Library books are well up on last year, which is great -- I justified the US$50 it cost to join the Queens Public Library by saying I'd buy fewer book, and I guess it worked out!
TV stats
In my last round-up, I said I was going to create a similar spreadsheet for TV tracking. I did that, but only recently realised I should have tracked number of episodes watched, so I could go, "Oh yes, I've watched X number of TV shows this year."
Suffice to say I've watched 46 complete seasons of TV this year, including eight full-length seasons of 20 episodes or more. Most were in English; one each were in French and German. Most were American, a significant proportion were British, and only three were Australian. Shout out to my one Canadian series. I DNFd a handful, but the only one that stands out was Deadloch, which wasn't bad, but I sometimes deal with Northern Territory police brutality matters at work, so a comedy about a hilariously incompetent NT cop wasn't ever going to work for me.
2022 reading round-up
So first of all, after two consecutive years of reading exactly 95 books, this year I cracked 100. Yes, one of them was a four-issue Star Trek comic that took me all of 20 minutes to read. That's not the point.
This year I imported my Google spreadsheet into Notion, a planner/productivity app I mainly use for keeping to-do lists. This was a mistake, mainly because Notion's spreadsheeting functionality is not amazing. For 2024 I've gone fully old-school with a paper reading journal, which is probably going to be very annoying come the end of the year when I'm doing this round-up...
Anyway. The stats.
Total books logged: 100
DNFs: 3 (all abandoned at more than 60%, so I didn't take them out of my list)
By target audience (age)
Adult - 78
Young Adult - 17
Middle Grade - 7
And my favourite category, by genre and audience
Contemporary (adult): 3
Contemporary (YA): 2
Contemporary (middle grade): 4
All the middle grade contemps were graphic novels -- America has really exciting stuff happening in that space, especially from diverse authors. I hope Australia is following suit, and I would pay money to attend some sort of "how to write a graphic novel script" course.
Both YA contemps were from Latina authors -- that Queens Public Library membership paid off.
Fantasy: (adult): 5
Fantasy (YA): 7
Fantasy (middle grade): 2
I read 12 different fantasy authors this year, and ten are friends, friends-of-friends or people with whom I am loosely acquainted.
Historical fiction (that isn't historical mystery)
Adult: 3
YA: 3
MG: 0
I'm gonna be honest. I like my historicals best when there's a crime happening.
Historical mystery
Adult: 18
YA: 1
MG: 0
The standout genre of the year, mainly thanks to my Barbara Hambly reread, but also my attempt at Steven Saylor, and also I read an early Andrew Taylor.
I'm gonna be honest: I watched Interview with the Vampire and hated it quite a lot, but it really made me want to start another Hambly re-read. So far I am resisting the urge.
Contemporary mystery
Adult: 4
YA: 1
MG: 0
The standout was the sole YA entry, The Black Queen by Jumata Emil.
I don't dislike contemporary crime fiction, but my overall feeling is that historical mysteries tell us something about a society, and a contemporary story can do that, but it's a lot harder.
I also read two contemporary thrillers (which I see as a genre which overlaps with mystery but has different narrative priorities). They were both enjoyable but not life-changing. Which is, in fairness, a lot to ask of a novel.
Science fiction
Adult: 9
YA: 0
MG: 0
Not a big year for SF, and most of it was a Murderbot reread. (I love those books, but man, it was a bold and interesting choice by Tor to release them without editing. Please don't tell me there was an editor involved, that would be very upsetting to hear.)
Non-fiction: 24
Okay, maybe this was the year of non-fiction. Mostly but not entirely histories, a couple of biographies. Largely American. I'm going to make an effort to read more Australian non-fiction in 2024, but I am braced for disappointment.
Author stats
Australian authors: 24% (down from 26% last year, but not a massive swing)
Authors of colour: 29% (a steady improvement from last year's 24%, but we can still do better)
Women: 62% (slightly down from last year, but I read more works by Men of Colour than in previous years so I'm not mad about it)
Non-binary authors: 2% (doubling last year's total...)
The really nerdy stats
Rereads: 18
Library loans: 50
Ebooks: 75
Library books are well up on last year, which is great -- I justified the US$50 it cost to join the Queens Public Library by saying I'd buy fewer book, and I guess it worked out!
TV stats
In my last round-up, I said I was going to create a similar spreadsheet for TV tracking. I did that, but only recently realised I should have tracked number of episodes watched, so I could go, "Oh yes, I've watched X number of TV shows this year."
Suffice to say I've watched 46 complete seasons of TV this year, including eight full-length seasons of 20 episodes or more. Most were in English; one each were in French and German. Most were American, a significant proportion were British, and only three were Australian. Shout out to my one Canadian series. I DNFd a handful, but the only one that stands out was Deadloch, which wasn't bad, but I sometimes deal with Northern Territory police brutality matters at work, so a comedy about a hilariously incompetent NT cop wasn't ever going to work for me.
