2017 Reading Year

My 2017 reading year was pretty decent! I didn’t have hard goals made so I don’t have anything to really compare my outcomes to, but I think I did okay!
Overall I read 60 books! I am pretty happy with having read 60 books, that was my Goodreads goal and I achieved it with a whole month of no reading and two shitty reading months!
Starting with what I wanted to do better on, 76% (when you don’t include books with 2 authors, gotta figure out a better way to deal with multiple authors) of the books I read were written by white authors. With the way my TBR shelf breaks down, I am not sure anything better than 60% is economically plausible for me but I am going to make a greater effort to get below 75%! I think I have done better than I have done in the past, but I could always do better!
Again the multiple authors per book thing was an issue at times with my gender tracking. Including double authors, I read 50 female authors and 18 male authors, just looking at books it’s 45:15. This doesn’t bother me in any type of way, I read a good chunk of YA, and a lot of YA is female.
One factor I did want to diversify was the intended age group a book was targeted to. I think I did a pretty good job! I read 8 books I categorized as being for any age, 28 for adults, 3 in the New Adult category, 20 in Young Adult, and 1 Middle-Grade book. I should have read a few more MG books, just because I enjoy them, but none of this is objectionable to me.
An area that changed a lot from the past was the amount of nonfiction I read. This is mostly due to my interest in books on Scientology and memoirs of all types, plus some history or texts for classes. I read 18 nonfiction books this year, I am pretty jazzed about this. I assume this will grow in 2018, nonfiction is pretty kick ass. I can’t wait to see what subjects I will be obsessed with this year.
The genre breakdown for this year has also been interesting! I read: 9 Contemporary, 21 Fantasy, 1 General Fiction, 2 Historical Fiction, 8 Memoirs, 1 Tell-All (I separate this from Memoir because it was written by an ass-hole), 9 other Nonfiction, 2 Romance, and 7 Science Fiction books! I am pretty good with this!
Another interesting data point from this year was that half the books I read were by people I had read before, and the other half I had not read before. That was just fun happenstance.
I drive a lot. A lot, a lot. So when my podcasts dried up for the day I decided to actually use their code for an Audible trial, and I was pretty hooked on them. I ended up listening to 20 books solely on audiobook, and 13 going between audiobook and text. 11 were paired with a hardcover book, and 2 with a paperback. So lots of audio for me. I read one book that was an ebook, it’s not really my jam because I don’t use my mego old iPad for ebooks, and my phone has games and Twitter. Of the 27 books, I read only in physical text 1 was a graphic novel (no idea why this is so low, gotta hop back on the bandwagon), 12 paperback, and 14 hardcover.
Because I didn’t read any books under 100 pages I did my page number brackets the easier way and not the correct way. I grouped them by what hundreds they were in and it’s just for me so it’s not a big deal. 2 books between 100 and 199, 13 in the 200 equivalent, 19 in 300, 13 in 400, 4 each in 500, 600, and 700, and 1 in the 800 bracket. I am planning on focusing much more on reading larger books in 2018. I want to defeat some books that are bricks.
27 books I read were part of series, and 33 were not. Have no goal related to this except that I do wanna finish some ongoing series I have not read yet.
I am a pretty generous rater, every book I open I desperately want to be a 5 star book, I read wanting to be entertained and to completely fall in love with a book. So I am a bit of a softie, and I pick what I read pretty well. The internet is a wonderful thing and it allows me to find books I will probably love. With that aside, I gave 1 book a 1 star rating, 3 and 3 star ratings, 22 4 star ratings, and 34 5 star ratings. Of the 34 five star ratings 13 I starred as being exceptional, and 3 as being truly the best I have read. Starring books is only done for books that are not rereads. Just so I don’t have 7 books I give a million additional stars to because I reread Harry Potter every year.