News

02
Jan

Super Dorky 2014 Reading Stats

Happy New Year! I’m going to try to do a post tomorrow about my 2015 goals, but I thought I’d tackle my super dorky 2014 reading stats today.

I fell way short of my goal to read 75 books, reading only 56.

Of those 56, the breakdown was:

  • 11 nonfiction
  • 3 NA romance & 1 contemp adult romance
  • 4 MG (2 of them graphic novel memoirs)
  • 38 YA – and within YA, I read more contemp this year than anything else – which makes sense as I prepare to write MILBOURN FALLS!

As far as how I read:

32 were books (19 books – 7 of the books were library books, 13 were ARCs) – 57%

24 ebooks (11 ebooks, 8 egalleys, 5 full ms critiques I read on my computer) – 43%

21 advance copies total – 8 egalleys, 13 ARCs – 38% of my total reading

  • of the 21 advance copies, I bought or will buy 11 (only 52% – but I’m trying to be a bit more selective in what I buy, because I’m rapidly running out of shelf space – drat having a rowhouse with limited space!)

debuts: 15 or 27%

second books: 7 or 13% (This is a little better than I did last year, but I would like to do still better in 2015)

keepers (4 or 5 star reads) 33 out of 46 (not counting research books or mss) 72%

non-white protagonist: 16 out of 48 (not counting nonfiction): 33%

If you’re looking for diverse reads, I recommend Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes (MG), Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley, Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan, The Secret Sky by Atia Abawi, The Girl of Fire & Thorns trilogy by Rae Carson, The Winner’s Curse by Marie Rutkoski, Spellcaster & Steadfast by Claudia Gray, and Last Will & Testament by Dahlia Adler (NA)

LGBTQ protagonists: 4 out of 48 (8%)

I recommend them all: Every Day by David Levithan, Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley, Dark Metropolis by Jaclyn Dolamore, and Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan (Note: Every Day & Dark Metropolis have multiple narrators – well, sort of; Every Day is hard to explain)

I also count El Deafo as a diverse read, as the protagonist is deaf.

So…44% of my fiction had diverse protagonists – which is much better than last year’s 19%, but still not exactly reflecting the world around me.

READING GOALS FOR 2015

1. Read 100 books! I did that in 2009 and it was so good for me creatively.

2. Last week I inventoried my books and realized I have 140+ books that I haven’t read. This is kind of a problem, space-wise and financially. I end up donating bags and bags of books – half of which I’ve never even read. So now that I work at a library, I think I should be a little more selective about which books I buy – though I still love having shelf copies of my favorite books!

3.  Review more (though I’ll only be reviewing books I can recommend). This is one of my SMART goals for work – I’m going to get to write some reviews for DCPL online.

4.  Read more backlist. I’d love it if half of my reading every month consisted of books that came out before 2015. There are so many series and second books I want to catch up on!

5. Continue to read books by diverse authors. I’d love it if at least 50% of the books I read in 2015 have diverse protagonists.

6. Read more MG. I have a few MG ideas floating around in my head that I’d like to tackle someday, for one; and I’m also working as a children’s library associate and would like to be able to do better reader advisory for the 12 and under set.

If you made it this far – what about you? What did your reading year look like? What are your reading goals for 2015?

2 Responses

  1. Erin E.

    I can never find the time to go to a bookstore, and I'm TERRIBLE at returning library books, so I end up re-reading my favorites. I actually prefer that, because when the book is suspenseful, I read it REALLY fast and then I end up with nothing to read, and I probably will miss something in the first read. Most of my books I've read about 2-4 times, others, about 10-20.

  2. I love this detailed breakdown of what you read! Thanks for sharing all of your statistics and recommendations. I'd like to read 100 books again this year as well, and since I definitely share your problem with collecting scores of unread books, I'm going to try to curb that with the Off the Shelf challenge. (If you haven't heard of it, here's the 2014 link, which I hope they update to 2015 soon: http://bookishardour.com/off-the-shelf/). Happy Reading!

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