As you all know, 2015 was not a banner year for me. Reading was down, reviewing was down, writing was down. I even forgot my blog’s 3rd anniversary. What is happening to me? Continue reading
stats
2014: The Numbers
This post is so woefully overdue that I almost wasn’t going to write it. Then I thought, hey, what’s the use of all this data just sitting here all by itself? I know there are numbers nerds out there, so I’m going to share.
Total books read
This is down from 2013, which was at 101. Do I have excuses? You bet i do! Do you care? Probably not.
The gender break down: Not bad, if I do say so myself!! And more female authors read than the year before. But am I giving male authors a fair chance?
The genre breakdown: Yowzers! Not a great split. And when you look at the gender breakdown of the authors, it’s even more depressing. Only 40% of the non-fiction I read was by women. Ponder to yourselves what that may mean. I think it means I don’t read many memoirs and that so-called serious books tend to be written by men, and yes, there is a problem with that.
Author’s Nationality: Looks like I read a lot of Americans this year. Again. But I also read many more Brits, and that was one of my goals now that I’m living permanently in the UK. And you can see that CanLit suffered as a result.
I also made up the category of Global. There were quite a few authors I read this year that truly are global citizens. For example, born in India, went to university in the US, and divides their time between the UK and India.
Where in the world my reading took me: Unfortunately, this neat little map does not show how much I read set in each country. So, for example, it looks like I did a lot of Russian reading, when in fact I read only one book set there. Australia, on the other hand, fared quite well in my reading in 2014.
Map Legend: 10%, 27 of 263 Territories
Maroon
Where my reading took me
Stats Corner: My first 100 reviews
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 