I felt this year like I didn’t read that many books, but it turns out that I read almost exactly as many books (and put in almost exactly as many hours of reading time) as I had by this time last year. So I guess I’m pretty much holding steady on that. In total, I read 137 books this year and put in about 593 hours. As the title notes, this is just my eleven month statistics since, obviously, December hasn’t really happened yet.
Looking at my book list in broad strokes, I’m seeing more contemporary literature than normal. Normally, I’m not too big on reading fiction published in the last twenty years, but this year, I read novels by Jonathan Dee, Jonathan Franzen, Jenny Ofill, Donna Tartt, and Edward St. Aubyn. There are also way more YA novels than there usually are. I really liked books by Tim Tharp, Leila Sales, and, especially, Siobhan Vivian. I think her book The List was one of the most purely enjoyable YA novels I read this year and it was a complete surprise to me, since I plucked it randomly off Amazon.
I also read lots of Japanese literature, including a number of works by Tanizaki and by Yasunari Kawabata, and a bunch of Ancient Greek and Roman writers (Suetonius, Tacitus, Plutarch, Herodotus, and Seneca). Oh, and I went through a period where I read a number of 18th and 19th century French novelists as well. I thought that was going to be a bigger thing than it was, actually, but I ended up really enjoying de Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons and Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. The latter was unbelievably fun.
I’ll go into more detail on specific books in subsequent posts, but here I’m giving some summary statistics. Mostly, this year’s statistics were pretty in line with my overall stats, except that I read more female authors this year. The percentage of books that I read which were by women was about 34% this year, as compared to 25% across the last five years.
| Genre | Number | % Overall | 2014 | % This Year |
| Novel (All Genres) | 545 | 53.38% | 76 | 55.47% |
| Novel | 385 | 37.71% | 54 | 39.42% |
| Nonfiction | 232 | 22.72% | 38 | 27.74% |
| Memoir | 73 | 7.15% | 12 | 8.76% |
| Stories | 47 | 4.60% | 3 | 2.19% |
| Crime | 49 | 4.80% | 6 | 4.38% |
| Play | 40 | 3.92% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Graphic Novel | 40 | 3.92% | 3 | 2.19% |
| Speculative Fiction | 34 | 3.33% | 4 | 2.92% |
| Young Adult | 40 | 3.92% | 10 | 7.30% |
| Magazine | 17 | 1.67% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Poetry | 13 | 1.27% | 1 | 0.73% |
| Thriller | 13 | 1.27% | 2 | 1.46% |
| Chicklit | 10 | 0.98% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Paranormal | 9 | 0.88% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Epic | 7 | 0.69% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Children’s | 5 | 0.49% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Total | 1021 | 137 | ||
| Ethnic / National / Identity | # of Bks | # of total | 2014 | % This Year |
| British | 165 | 16.16% | 14 | 10.22% |
| French | 81 | 7.93% | 5 | 3.65% |
| Greek | 29 | 2.84% | 1 | 0.73% |
| Queer | 24 | 2.35% | 3 | 2.19% |
| Russian | 46 | 4.51% | 4 | 2.92% |
| German | 22 | 2.15% | 1 | 0.73% |
| African-American | 17 | 1.67% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Japanese | 29 | 2.84% | 7 | 5.11% |
| Jewish | 19 | 1.86% | 4 | 2.92% |
| Indian | 13 | 1.27% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Asian-American | 10 | 0.98% | 0 | 0.00% |
| African | 10 | 0.98% | 1 | 0.73% |
| Austrian | 8 | 0.78% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Carribean | 6 | 0.59% | 1 | 0.73% |
| Latin American | 6 | 0.59% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Canadian | 5 | 0.49% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Hungarian | 4 | 0.39% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Roman | 7 | 0.69% | 3 | 2.19% |
| Czech | 3 | 0.29% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Spanish | 9 | 0.88% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Australian | 2 | 0.20% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Hispanic | 2 | 0.20% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Iranian | 2 | 0.20% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Irish | 2 | 0.20% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Pakistani | 2 | 0.20% | 1 | 0.73% |
| Polish | 3 | 0.29% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Bangladeshi | 1 | 0.10% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Belgian | 1 | 0.10% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Byzantine | 1 | 0.10% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Chinese | 1 | 0.10% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Egyptian | 1 | 0.10% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Icelandic | 2 | 0.20% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Korean | 1 | 0.10% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Lebanese | 2 | 0.20% | 1 | 0.73% |
| Medieval | 1 | 0.10% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Native American | 1 | 0.10% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Swedish | 1 | 0.10% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Total | 539 | 52.79% | 46 | 33.58% |
| # of Bks | # of total | 2014 | % This Year | |
| Female | 235 | 23.02% | 47 | 34.31% |