STAT TIME, SQUIDERS
My favorite time of the year. My spouse thinks I’m crazy.
If you recall last year, I missed, uh, 43 or something when I was keeping track of how many books I’d read, resulting in me only reading 49 instead of 50. Quite upsetting, but not enough for me to fix how I count (manually, over at Dreamwidth, which is essentially LiveJournal but not owned by the Russians). I checked before I did my stats this year, and I’d forgotten, oh, 37 or something, and had gone from 46 to 38, so. I can’t be trusted.
(Actually, going back, I can’t find either error. So apparently I copied something weird when I did my final count. Yay.)
Anyway.
Books Read in 2023: 51
Change from 2022: +2
Of those*:
13 were Mystery
11 were Fantasy
7 were Nonfiction
6 were Romance
3 were Science Fiction
3 were General Literature
2 were Horror
1 was a short story collections
1 was a biography
1 was Historical Fiction
1 was Magical Realism
1 was Memoir
1 was Folktales
*Some genre consolidation was done here. YA or MG titles went into the general genre. All subgenres of fantasy or romance, for example, also went into the general genre. And things like Science Fiction or Fantasy Mystery went into SF or Fantasy respectively.
New genre(s)**: biography, folklore, historical fiction, magical realism, romance
Genres I read last year that I did not read this year: heist, middle grade, children’s, self-help, metaphysical, Gothic
**This means I didn’t read them last year, not that I’ve never read them.
Genres that went up: mystery, nonfiction, general literature
Genres that went down: fantasy, science fiction, short story collections, memoir
Mystery and fantasy are consistently my two highest genres. Fantasy makes sense–it’s my favorite, it’s what I write, it’s what I read. Mysteries are, like, brain candy. They’re a nice break and they don’t require too much brain power. Science fiction is normally number 3 but apparently I slacked this year. Whoops.
General literature is, like, any story that doesn’t fit into an obvious genre. And nonfiction includes some weird stuff like aliens and ghosts that are arguably not real but good story research. (And also normal nonfiction.)
16 were my books
35 were library books
This is almost exactly the same breakdown as last year. And the books of “mine” I’m reading tend to be ebooks. I really need to get through some physical books around here. They’re taking over. I also need to stop requesting so many books from the library because then they take preference over other books.
(Says the woman who has a book ready to be picked up at the library.)
39 were physical books
12 were ebooks
This is the same breakdown as the year before as well. I go through phases where I read a bunch of ebooks and then I forget all about them and don’t touch them for months on end.
Average rating: 3.51/5
Top rated:
Legends & Lattes (fantasy – 4.4)
The Easy Life in Kamusari (general literature – 4)
Lavender’s Blue (mystery romance – 4)
Red, White & Royal Blue (romance – 4)
The Valley and the Flood (magical realism – 4)
Not my normal genres this year, for the most part. Average rating is down a bit too.
Honorable mentions of 3.9: Keeper of Enchanted Rooms (historical fantasy), We Have Always Been Here (science fiction)
Most recent publication year: 2023
Oldest publication year: 1983
Average publication year: 2017
Books older than 1900: 0
Books newer than (and including) 2018: 37
Wow. I read a lot of newer books this year. I mean, I read 15 books from 2023 alone.
The first book I read this year was A Merry Murder by Kate Kingsbury (historical mystery) and the last was Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett (fantasy).
And now, on to 2024! I finished my first book yesterday (the Christmas mythology one I told you guys about on Tuesday) and have started the DNA one, as well as an ebook that seems to be a romance set in Germany? I don’t know, sometimes I just pick up random books for whatever reason. Read broadly, as they say.
See you next week!
