A belated 2012 Reading Challenge post

[bodlon]

Sooner or later I need to post about my Epic Birthday Adventure, but I find myself experiencing a woeful lack of photos from the person(s) who had iPhones handy. Soon? Soon.

Still, even more belatedly, I've been meaning to post some thoughts about the books I read last year. Because, ah, I read a few, and Goodreads helps me keep track of them. They also have a feature that allows readers to sign up for yearly reading challenges.

Last year, I started with a 24 book goal, but bumped it up to 36, and then finally 48. I finished out the year with 50 books finished in 2012. Considering the current size of my physical "to read" stack (which has about 50-60 books in it at any given time), I feel reasonably good about that.

But, you know, I get curious when I have a stack of data in front of me. So I looked at the list of books I read in 2012 and decided I wanted to know what I could learn from it.

- In 2012, 28 of the 50 books I read (56%) were works of fiction.
- In 2012, 34 of the 50 books I read (68%) were written by men.
- The author I read most in 2012 was Seanan McGuire (6 books), with Alan Moore and George R.R. Martin tying for second place (4 books). Suzanne Collins came in third place (3 books).
- Most of my non-fiction reading pertained to spirituality, with history and natural history coming in tied for second place, and all three topics having significant crossover.
- Most of my fiction reading was series fiction (October Daye, A Song of Ice and Fire, The Hunger Games, Magic Ex Libris, Princesses, Promethea).

I was surprised by some of this. I knew the fiction/non-fiction ratio would be pretty close, but I was surprised by the gender gap. Somehow I got to the end of the year thinking this would have been a lot more even. I haven't run numbers for things like race and sexuality -- some of that info simply isn't available -- but at a glance 2012 was relatively short on LGBTQ and PoC where my reading habits were concerned. I think I may try and remedy some of this in 2013.

I also hadn't really thought of myself as someone who primarily reads series fiction, but either 2012 was unusual -- hello, mainlining three series in 2012! -- or this was just something I didn't know about myself. I'm fine with that, obviously, but somehow it was a surprise. Don't ask me how. It's not like I thought I'd read a bunch of stand-alone books or something.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com