What's with today, today?

Onto the final post in this short series! Where we find out: who are the writers of these books? Well, for starters, they are mostly women. Overall, 60% of the books I read were written by women (and that doesn't count those that were written by both men and women). But I had a hypothesis that this had changed over time- that I started off reading more books by men but now a large majority of the books I read are written by women. Time to test it out with a graph! And the graph shows that is broadly true (for reference, the 'other' category includes books written by a combination of genders, books were the authors gender is unknown, and non-binary authors). In 2003 61% of the books I read were written by men- and for the next 5 years it hovered around 50/50. In 2010 the proportion written by women started to climb, and many years after that it's hovered around 60% women (though there were a few 50/50 years in 2012, 2016 and 2017). The most gender-unbalanced year was 201...

Now for the interesting bits- what were the actual books that I read? What were they like? It's hard to summarise of course, but I'll do my best. Genre Probably surprising no-one, 90% of the books I read were fiction. Or 89% if you exclude poetry. I wasn't sure which genre would end up top though- I was a big fantasy reader, read an increasing number of murder mysteries (though still love fantasy!) as well as literary fiction, and generally like to read a bunch of different things. I classified the books by genre- but some things fit in more than one category, so they're not mutually exclusive. And some things are hard to define! Genre boundaries are slippery. But this is what I came up with. Feel free to disagree with these categories. Literary fiction, Crime and Fantasy are practically tied at the top there, with literary fiction just ahead. Literary fiction is perhaps the hardest genre to define (it can get contentious!) but I'm interested that it came out on top...

 I realised last year that I started keeping a record of the books I read way back in 2003- which means that 2023 marked 20 years of tracking my books! Also equalling my whole adult life. I started writing them down in the back of my year planner, then added them to my blog as well, and then moved from pen and paper to Librarything and then Goodreads. Sadly in the pen and paper era I managed to completely lose 2009, so now at the end of 2023 (technically now we are in the start of 2024 I know) I have 20 years worth of lists. I thought that I should mark the occasion somehow, and what better way than to put all those books into a spreadsheet and run some numbers? Maybe make a few graphs? Can't think of anything better! The numbers So this is the big question, I guess, how many books did I manage to read in 20 years? I think this needs a little introduction... So way back in 2003 I really wanted to keep track of which books I had read and hadn't read. But it seemed vain to me to ...

Happy new year to all! As is tradition, here's a round up of last year's reading. It's a pretty long list (for me) this year, 75 books, but the numbers feel a little arbitrary- this includes a couple of books I read to my kids, but not the super short ones, where is the cut off line anyway? And as always it doesn't include re-reads. I don't think I had many re-reads, apart from getting to read The Secret Garden, Ballet Shoes and The Borrowers to the kids. Excited for even more to come! Shortest book Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada, a novel made up of a series of short and very strange vignettes about a man and his best friends, also their relationships and the main character's struggle to have a baby. But also aquariums, weasels, snow storms and soup. It's an unsettling book but also in a way mundane. Longest book   Stories from the Little Beach Street Bakery: An Omnibus Edition by Jenny Colgan. A cozy romance comfort read that I enjoyed very much-...

In summary, I read 72 books in 2022- the highest number since 2014. I have officially reached pre-child reading levels. I feel that must mean I've been neglecting other aspects of my life. But oh well, because what a lot of good books I've gotten to read!  Longest book All Clear by Connie Willis. I love her time travel books and read her duology set in WWII in England, Blackout and All Clear , this year. She does write pretty chunky books! Great if you love immersive and detailed historical settings, but can mess with the pacing. She maintains the tension throughout the whole 800 pages of All Clear  (and Blackout as well), though. Shortest book Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire is a brief novella based on a school for children who have been to fairytale worlds and then returned, and have to cope with the real world. A fascinating concept, and I've been wanting to read it for a while, though in the end I had mixed feelings about it. It's a strange book that doe...

 Well, once again that was a year. But the worse the years get, the more books I read, so here's what I read in 2021. 56 new books all up, almost back to pre-kid reading levels!  Longest book Caliban's War by James A. Corey part of an epic sci-fi series ('The Expanse' series). My friend recommended these and ended up buying me the first one so that I would read it- they are a lot of fun! And occasionally irritating. But mostly very fun. Shortest book And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou. Ironically I think this took me longer to read- I'm pretty sure I started it in 2020. But it's a poetry collection so I dipped in and out. I'm glad to have read it. Iconic. Oldest Book this is also And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou (1978). I read mostly pretty recent books this year. Newest book I think this goes to The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik, September 2021. The cliffhangers in this series are intense, it's a must read as soon as it comes out! Reading themes I we...

Well it's good to be finished with 2020 isn't it? I read a lot more again in 2020 (42 books)- it was a good year to get lost in a good book. On top of these new books, I also reread the Harriet Vane and Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy Sayers, for comfort reading. Shortest book Little Witch Academia (176 pages) vs Longest Book The Mirror and the Light (883 pages). Oldest book if I counted rereads it would be Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers (1930), other The Riddle-Master of Hed by Patricia McKillip (1976), while the newest book is close to a tie between A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik and Piranesi by Susanna Clark, both published in September 2020. Reading themes  In the middle of the year I read a couple of non-fiction books which I roughly categorised as about 'the North'- Names for the Sea by Sarah Moss (a British writer writing about Iceland) and Findings by Kathleen Jamie (a Scottish writer writing largely about Scotland). Other than that I found myself readi...