I started 119 books this year and finished 114. All the stats are for the books I finished.
average read per month: 9.5
average read per week: 2.2
number read in worst month: 5 (Sep)
number read in best month: 15 (Jun)
number unfinished: 5
percentage by male authors: 60%
percentage by female authors: 40%
percentage of authors of color/non-Western: 22%
fiction as percentage of total: 61%
non-fiction as percentage of total: 39%
percentage of total liked: 91%
percentage of total ambivalent: 8%
percentage of total disliked: less than 1%
A few books hit my best list. That book about eggs from last year was great. I also read one about the history of postal mail and a personal memoir about hippies in Vermont. I read a lot of genre fiction but only one really stuck with me, a time travel novel. I keep feeling like there must be a diminishing number of good ones in that microgenre left. For 2019 I’m going to be tweeting my booklist (and also keeping track online, same as always, since 1997) just so I can notice trends and show off nice book covers. The one thing I don’t really track now is what format I am reading in (I still have a good mix of paper and ebook) and I’m curious about that. This list was heavily weighted towards a (white, male-authored) genre fiction thriller series that I finished in the early part of the year when I was still having some of 2017’s “bad year.” Not that 2018 was amazing, but it was better, maybe, and I read more widely and more interestingly. Hoping to keep that up in 2019.
Previous librarian.net summaries: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004. My always-updated booklist lives at jessamyn.info/booklist and it has its own RSS feed.