The Sword and Laser discussion
2017: The Year in Review
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Mod
My reading continues to drop, but it's still way up from before I found Goodreads.
For anyone really curious about my year, I did a review, including my full top 10 reads, and the complete output of my application with both then numbers and some comments on them: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
These were my 5 star reads:
1) Assassin's Fate - 5 Stars - (My Review)
2) Oathbringer - 5 Stars - (My Review)
3) Sins of Empire - 5 Stars - (My Review)
And here's a sampling of the numbers:
Total Books: 81
Rereads: 6
********************
* Format Breakdown *
********************
Total AUDIO_BOOK Count: 53 (65.43%)
Total BOOK Count: 10 (12.35%)
Total EBOOK Count: 7 (8.64%)
Total GRAPHIC_NOVEL Count: 11 (13.58%)
*******************
* Genre Breakdown *
*******************
Total FANTASY Count: 47 (58.02%)
Total HISTORICAL Count: 3 (3.70%)
Total NONFICTION Count: 3 (3.70%)
Total SCIFI Count: 26 (32.10%)
Total THRILLER Count: 2 (2.47%)
***************************
* Author Gender Breakdown *
***************************
Total MALE Count: 61 (75.31%)
Total FEMALE Count: 18 (22.22%)
Average Rating: 3.75
Total 2 Count: 4 (4.94%)
Total 3 Count: 17 (20.99%)
Total 4 Count: 55 (67.90%)
Total 5 Count: 5 (6.17%)
Decade Published:
Total 1960 Count: 1 (1.23%)
Total 1970 Count: 1 (1.23%)
Total 1980 Count: 5 (6.17%)
Total 1990 Count: 5 (6.17%)
Total 2000 Count: 11 (13.58%)
Total 2010 Count: 58 (71.60%)
Additional Stats:
Number of Books: 28
Total Pages: 9396
Longest Book: OathbringerOathbringer (The Stormlight Archive, #3) - 1243 pages
Shortest Book: Lumberjanes, Vol. 6: Sink or Swim - 112 pages
Average Pages: 335.57
Number of Books (Excluding Graphic Novels): 17
Total Pages (Excluding Graphic Novels): 7804
Average Pages (Excluding Graphic Novels): 459.06
Number of Audiobooks: 53
Total Audio Hours: 926
Longest Book: A Memory of Light - 42 hours
Shortest Book: The Dispatcher - 2 hours
Average Hours: 17.47
My breakdown will be vastly different, since I read one novel and 274 graphic novels. But I will try to post later today, since I plan on reading a few more sometime today.
Mod
I know I'm probably missing something obvious, but why the discrepancy in the figures below. 2 books written by robots? ;-)
Rob wrote: "Total Books: 81
Total MALE Count: 61 (75.31%)
Total FEMALE Count: 18 (22.22%)"
Those are amazing stats! I never keep track of things and my shelves aren't organized in a way that allows me to do much with them. Maybe I'll try some day. I read 101 books but that's almost entirely audio books (I'm a truck driver) and includes the 30 page Drive (ebook) so that one doesn't really count.
Mod
I see. The statistician in me would have added a 3rd category for that.
Total MIXED AUTHORS count 2 (2.47%)
But it's your list. Your rules. :-)
Mod
I see. The statistician in me would have added a 3rd category for that.
Total MIXED AUTHORS count 2 (2.47%)
But it's your list. Your rules. :-)"
For some reason I never thought of that. New feature for next year!
Troy wrote: "Those are amazing stats! I never keep track of things and my shelves aren't organized in a way that allows me to do much with them. Maybe I'll try some day. I read 101 books but that's almost entirely audio books (I'm a truck driver) and includes the 30 page Drive (ebook) so that one doesn't really count."Drive totally counts (because Expanse)! Certainly it counts by the Goodreads book counter, and because you drive long haul. ;-)
I read a total of 182 books this year.Book types:
Print: 30 (16%) // last year was 59 (33%)
Ebooks: 52 (29%) // last year was 91 (51%)
Graphic novels: 100 (55%) // last year was 30 (17%)
Short fiction: 38 (21%) // last year was 60 (33%)
(Note: I don't track individual short stories that aren't part of a collection/anthology/magazine or at least novella length & published on its own.)
Translated: 44 books (24%) // last year was 7 (4%)
Rereads: 1 (1%) // last year was 11 (6%)
Nonfiction: 12 (7%) // last year was 5 (3%)
I read 100 unique authors (last year was 99).
Written/edited/contains a woman author: 64 (35%) // last year was 95 (53%)
(Note: The comic books killed me on this, I was actually about even before these guys ruined it--I read graphic novels that were 82% written by men. If I ignore the comic books, I was actually at 56% by women.)
I set a goal of 75 books and met that goal, starting and/or finishing more three-book series than I have in the past. I also have a bunch of short stories and comics in my total count of 118 because Expanse shorts and comics by James S.A. Corey; and Ben Aaronovitch, whose Peter Grant/Rivers of London tales in prose and comic book format are a favorite.Of those 3-book series, I recommend the Alchemy wars by Ian Tregillis (he's a past S+L author)
https://www.goodreads.com/series/1259...
also the Paradox series by Rachel Bach
https://www.goodreads.com/series/1121...
the Bone Street Rumba series by Daniel José Older
https://www.goodreads.com/series/1298...
for 2018 I'll be finishing some more 3-book series and whatever S+L tosses our way
Happy New Year
I read 27 books this year. That's down about 10 from last year mainly because of 2 books that while not bad didn't really grab me in a way that made me want to read for extended periods.My average rating was 3.4.
Number of pages was 9578.
My 5 star books were:
Bite Me
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
Artful
Babel-17
Doomsday Book
Armada
My only 1 star book was Gods from Outer Space.
I read 78(!) books this year, by far the most i've read in a year. Really enjoyed most of what I read, with some exceptions.5-star reads:
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
The Stars Are Legion
Seven Surrenders
The Library at Mount Char
Borne
Ice
1-star reads:
Ready Player One
Not going to bother with a genre breakdown because I looked at my 5-star books and realized i have no idea what genre they all are.
Author Gender Breakdown:
Female Authors: 40 (53%), Avg Rating 3.55
Male Authors: 36 (47%), Avg Rating 3.16
Longest Book: Kushiel's Dart, 1015 pages
Shortest Book: A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers, 18 pages
My Year in BooksThe breakdown includes:
FORMAT
5 audiobooks
13 e-books
52 dead tree books
GENRE
8 nonfiction
23 fantasy
16 science fiction
6 literary fiction
3 historical fiction
8 YA fantasy
1 YA thriller
1 horror
1 romance
1 Christian fiction (at the request of a friend)
2 thriller
AUTHOR
21 written by male authors
49 written by female authors
Average rating awarded was 3.6
My 5 star reads:
Lincoln in the Bardo - my review
History of Wolves - my review
New Moon - my review
All the Crooked Saints - my review
A Conjuring of Light - my review
A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life - my review
Strange the Dreamer - my review
Homegoing
You Are Here: An Owner's Manual for Dangerous Minds
The Towers, the Moon
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures
105 books— 27 Science Fiction
— 58 Fantasy
— 5 history
— 5 memoir
— 8 art
— 1 photography
— 1 hypertext
54 real books
— 27 by women
— 25 by men
— 2 by both
41 graphic novels
— 3 by women
— 25 by men
— 13 by both
8 art books
— 2 by women
— 4 by men
— 2 by both
1 hypertext novel (by man)
1 photography book (by man)
94 books read, exceeding my goal of 70 by 24. This was mainly due to reading quite a few short books. My total page count was 22,330 and beat last years total so I still did better than previous years. Excluding the 34 audio books that comes out to an average of 372 pages per book.Average rating was 3.29 which about what I expect from the way I rate books on GR.
Break down for 2017:
5 stars - 3
4 stars - 34
3 stars - 45
2 stars - 22
1 star - 1
There were a couple of Did Not Finish books but I don't include them in any stats.
Gender and racial breakdown - I don't differentiate. A good book is a good book no matter who wrote it.
Personal goals not on Goodreads anywhere:
Read books from Physical Bookshelf - 32
Books from booksclubs - 12
Classics - 5
Finish a series - 5
New authors - 29
Brendan wrote: "I read 78(!) books this year, by far the most i've read in a year. Really enjoyed most of what I read, with some exceptions.5-star reads:
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
[book:The Stars A..."
I really enjoyed Borne! And I LOVED The Library at Mount Char! I definitely gave it 5 stars, but it wasn't a 2017 read for me, otherwise it would be in my post as well :)
65 books read, 21,307 pages, or an average of 328 pages per book, not bad considering there were several graphic novels mixed in.15 ***** reviews - amazing for me as I usually don’t give those out easily, so I guess I found a bunch of great books this year!
42 **** reviews - much more normal for me to give a 4 star review for books I really like. I think the book has to go way over the top for 5
5 *** reviews - finished, thought it was OK, but there was some flaw that made it not especially enjoyable for me
3 ** reviews - really wasn’t happy with the book, but it wasn’t so bad I could Lem it.
No * review as I would just walk away from anything that bad!
I finished 60 books for the year, scrambling to finish my challenge. Only one new 5* book for me. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
I reread 7 books (mostly to my son, with one a S&L pick).
My favourite recent release book was The Stone Sky. Brilliant, nearly, very nearly a 5*.
Most disappointing book Pilot X (sorry Tom) and The Vorrh (someone trying to do literary fantasy and going off the rails).
Author Breakdown: M: 73.3% W: 26.7% (need to do better)
Average Page Length: 411
(as my son pointed out today not a good measure as they all have different page size and font :-()
Genre:
SF: 16
Fantasy: 33
Thriller: 3
Non Fiction: 5
Literature: 3
Mod
Only one new 5* book for me. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. "
How have you not read that by now? Rhetorical question ;-)
I devoured Mark Twain books when I was a kid. That is by far my favourite, and yes, definitely 5 Stars :-)
So many ways to slice and dice the year's reading ...I managed 54 books in 2017, which I feel is approaching an upper limit for what I can fit in any given year.
A number of those were novellas or similar, but I've given up trying to track that in any meaningful way. 24 were primarily consumed as audiobooks, which is a key factor in how many I managed to get through.
Slightly disappointed not to have recorded any 5 star reads this year - except for one re-read of a book I already knew and loved. A couple that I notionally rated at 4.5, but had to call 4 for Goodreads purposes.
I did a male/female author breakdown, just for interest, after it coming up on a different podcast. Roughly an 80%/20%, male/female split - which would ideally be a bit more balanced, but I'm not going to radically re-work my 'to be read' list based on one year's snapshot.
New authors to me. (Thanks for the idea, AndrewP. I though that was in interesting stat to count.) I read 13 authors for the first time. Several of those because they were Sword & Laser picks. Looking forward to some more good recommendations this year.
I feel a spreadsheet coming on to help me track some of these stats as I go in 2018.
Happy New Year to you all!
Mod
Hmm. I wonder how hard it will be to add code for "new authors to me" to my GoodReads app. I'll have to cross reference all my books with the read date, then account for things like reading a new author more than once in the same year (like I did with Peter V. Brett last year)
Plus, there are already issues with re-reads. Even though Goodreads has finally added multiple read dates to books, when you export to CSV it only includes the most recent. If I reread a book and the read date on the export changes it will probably screw up my list.
I'm already thinking about adding some additional author stats (unique author count, top 5 authors read). I had meant to do that this year, but forgot. Maybe I'll add it in the next few months and re-run my 2017 data.
FYI - some of my stats, like New Authors, I track using a manual process, not through Goodreads. A note with checkboxes in Evernote works for me. I create a new reading goals note each year.The large number of new authors I read can be attributed to book clubs and Audible or Kindle daily deals :)
Mod
The l..."
Yeah, but I'm a Software Engineer with a customized GoodReads statistics application, so why do by hand what I can over-engineer? ^_^
Hi All! Long time lurker.This thread prompted me to look more closely at my 2017 read list.
64 total read
48 Audible
8 Kindle
8 Dead Tree
24 Fantasy
35 Science Fiction
3 History
2 Classics
I have been trying (with mixed results) to diversify my reads since the majority of my top authors are old-school (or old white guys). I read 22 authors for the first time in 2017 accounting for 28 books. 15 books this year were written by female authors and 10 books were written by people of color.
My most read authors at 5 books each were Octavia E. Butler (why did I wait so long to read Butler??) and Troy Denning (because I have a massive backlog of old D&D books from the 90's). Favorite book I read was Nexus.
Overdrive is the main reason for me trying new authors.As for Mark Twain, If you have not read the 3 volumes of his Autobiography you are missing out. His will stated the it not be published until 100 years after his death. There was a cleaned up version released in the 1950s or so, but these versions are the best. Plus the audio of the books are great,
It didn’t occur to me to count “New to me” authors or debut authors. Probably because series typically only comprise a small portion of my reading, so I’m constantly trying out new writers. Although I did have both this year, including getting into a couple new series.
Trike wrote: "It didn’t occur to me to count “New to me” authors or debut authors. Probably because series typically only comprise a small portion of my reading, so I’m constantly trying out new writers. Althoug..."Ya, same here. New authors and debut authors comprise the bulk of my reading. Not a series guy.
These were my 5 star reads:1)Different Seasons by Stephen King
2)Star Wars Thrawn by Timothy Zahn
3)Star Wars Dark Circle by Christine Gold
4)Prince Caspian (Narnia 2) by C.S Lewis
5-6)Daemon 1-2 by Daniel Suarez
7-10)Dark Tower 1, 3-4, 4.5 by Stephen King
11)Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick
12)American Gods by Neil Gaiman
13)Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
14)Doctor Who the Stone Rose
Total Books: 105
Total Comic Books (I don't count Graphic Novels)-3,041
Total Doctor Who Audio Dramas- 185
Total AUDIO_BOOK Count: 79
Total EBOOK Count: 26
Total FANTASY Count: 19
Total SCIFI Count: 34
Total THRILLER/HORROR Count: 37
TOTAL EU (Star Wars and Doctor Who) Count- 9
TOTAL OTHER Count- 4
The Sword and Laser
Books mentioned in this topic
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (other topics)Doomsday Book (other topics)
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (other topics)
Kushiel's Dart (other topics)
Ice (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Troy Denning (other topics)Octavia E. Butler (other topics)
Ben Aaronovitch (other topics)
Peter V. Brett (other topics)
Ian Tregillis (other topics)
More...
What were your top reads this year? Plus I LOVE looking at numbers, especially comparing various things year to year. Share some fun stats about your reading as well if you're so inclined!