Oh yes BookRiot podcast listeners, it’s time for Stats Corner. (But please do not march me down to Methodology Lane. Methodology is not my strong point!)
This past year bookish media has focus much of its attention on gender bias in the reporting of books. With that in mind, I wanted to see if there was gender and other biases in the books I choose to read. I like to believe that I read widely, but will the numbers bear that out? The data has been collected from my first 100 book reviews here at 52 Books or Bust.
Male Vs. Female
Looks like I’m fairing better than the New York Times!
Fiction Vs. Non-Fiction
I am not a natural born non-fiction reader, so this isn’t looking half bad to me. Notably, of my non-fiction choices 5 were books about books, and 4 were about food.
Countries
This was a little bit more difficult to quantify. Authors tend to be global citizens, so how do you classify a individual born in India, educated in England and now living in the United States? I did the best I could. I am surprised, however, at how little Canadian literature I read, and how much British literature I read.
And as an interesting aside 23/100 books were by visible minorities, or what my dad would call ‘ethnic’ (cringe). Way to go multiculturalism!
52 books or bust 
This is really interesting. It makes me curious about my own and everyone else’s stats. Do a lot of bloggers do this?
I haven’t seen many people do this, but I’m sure its out there. I was inspired by Sarah Says Read and of course, Book Riot. If you haven’t listened to their podcast, do it.
Yay, you did it! You totally rock on female authors.
Quantifying authors was kind of hard… I basically just kind of looked at their heritage or skin color, since that’s how most of the US labels people anyways and the point (for me, in 2014) is to read more authors that wouldn’t be considered white. I should try to break it down by country some day though… I’m sure my Canadian stats are really low.
I think I’m going to add a visible minority section. Mostly b/c I read a lot of them and it makes me look cultured.
Ooo, these are interesting stats. I wonder what would happen if I looked at my stats!
Congrats on 100 reviews! I’m always interested in blogging stats 🙂
I’ve not heard of the Book Riot podcast so will try that! As for stats – I’d be the last person to pick you up on methodology! At the end of this year I’m planning on two stat reviews – the percentage of my blog posts with swearing in them (as my mother reads them and still says – “you know swearing’s not clever!”) and the distribution of my use of superlatives – I think I am a “terrific” man but am keen to see the split between that and “wonderful”, “magnificent” and “shite”!
I think i use the words intriguing and compelling way too often. I would hate to chart their usage. And you must listen to BooK Riot. They do a lot of industry insider stuff, but they also make me laugh.
GREAT STATS!!!
I read ZERO Non-fiction.
I love the author pie chart. 🙂
ENJOY your week.
Elizabeth
Silver’s Reviews
My Spread The Love Post
Good job on 19% NF! That’s not bad at all! 😀
Thanks for linking up to the Spread the Love Linky Party!!! I pinned this, too! 😀