The annual reading report, part 2
Continuing from yesterday´s post:
Breakdown by genre:
This is by dominant genre, so that, for example, the urban fantasy novels I read all go in the romance category, because they are romances first and foremost, although they happen to take place in fantasy/alternative reality setting, whereas the Discworld books go in the fantasy category even if they are all also detective stories, because fantasy is the dominant genre.
Crime, mystery and thrillers: 54 (31,2%), down by 10,65%
Romance: 49 (28,3%), up by a staggering 21,15%
Fantasy, sci-fi, fairy tales, myths and supernatural: 20 (11,6%), up by 6,5%
Miscellaneous fiction: 32 (18,5%) up by 1,65%
Non-fiction: 18 (10,4%), down by 16,6%
My reading seems to have been more homogeneous in 2010 than it was in 2009, which I blame on the decrease in my reading of non-fiction, down to 10% from 27%.
I did not read enough travelogues and ex-pat memoirs to warrant a separate category in 2010, but I plan to remedy that in 2011, when the travelogues I accumulated in 2010 become eligible for the TBR challenge.
Authors:
I haven‘t tallied the number of books by the gender of the authors before, but I thought it might be interesting to take a look. Such numbers can, however, never be completely accurate, since for one reason or another authors sometimes assume noms de plum belonging to the other sex, or they have names or pseudonyms that are gender neutral.
Several books were by more than one author, including some short story anthologies, so I counted by the number of books rather than the number of authors.
10 (5,8%) anthologies with short stories by both genders ended up in a mixed category. As for the rest:
Female author(s): 107 (61,85%)
Male author(s): 56 (32,35%)
This is nearly twice as many books by women than by men, which actually surprised me (in a nice way). I'd had the impression that I read more books by men than by women.
Author list by number of books read:
As usual, Nora Roberts takes the trophy for the most books read by one author, with Lynn Viehl coming a close second and Jennifer Crusie a close third.
Nora Roberts: 11
Lynn Viehl: 9
Jennifer Crusie: 7
Terry Pratchett: 7
Georgette Heyer, Ngaio March and Ellis Peters: 6 each
J.K. Rowling, Hugleikur Dagsson: 5
Agatha Christie: 4
Edward Gorey, Lori Foster: 3 (the last books I shall ever read by Foster unless someone can point me in the direction of romances by her that do not have virgin heroines)
Dorothy L. Sayers, Halldór Laxness, Jane Feather, Julia Quinn, M.R. James, Sharyn McCrumb, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir: 2 each.
Of course, if I were to count all the little Gorey books collected in those three above-mentioned anthologies, he would win hands down with 47 books in total.
Publishers:
In my last annual report I switched to counting imprints rather than publishing houses, since smaller publishers are continually being swallowed up by bigger ones and what is a publishing house today may tomorrow be one imprint among many belonging to a big publishing house. I did count all the imprints bearing variations of the Penguin and Signet names as one.
As in 2009, Penguin won, but only by 1 book.
Penguin: 10
Signet: 9
St. Martin‘s Press: 8
Jove: 7
Bloomsbury: 6
Berkley Books, Fontana/Collins, Harper Collins, Project Gutenberg, Silhouette Books, Victor Gollancz, Vintage: 5 each, and
15 others with 2 books each, and
47 with 1 book each
Furthermore there were 6 self-published books, all of them e-books.
Breakdown by genre:
This is by dominant genre, so that, for example, the urban fantasy novels I read all go in the romance category, because they are romances first and foremost, although they happen to take place in fantasy/alternative reality setting, whereas the Discworld books go in the fantasy category even if they are all also detective stories, because fantasy is the dominant genre.
Crime, mystery and thrillers: 54 (31,2%), down by 10,65%
Romance: 49 (28,3%), up by a staggering 21,15%
Fantasy, sci-fi, fairy tales, myths and supernatural: 20 (11,6%), up by 6,5%
Miscellaneous fiction: 32 (18,5%) up by 1,65%
Non-fiction: 18 (10,4%), down by 16,6%
My reading seems to have been more homogeneous in 2010 than it was in 2009, which I blame on the decrease in my reading of non-fiction, down to 10% from 27%.
I did not read enough travelogues and ex-pat memoirs to warrant a separate category in 2010, but I plan to remedy that in 2011, when the travelogues I accumulated in 2010 become eligible for the TBR challenge.
Authors:
I haven‘t tallied the number of books by the gender of the authors before, but I thought it might be interesting to take a look. Such numbers can, however, never be completely accurate, since for one reason or another authors sometimes assume noms de plum belonging to the other sex, or they have names or pseudonyms that are gender neutral.
Several books were by more than one author, including some short story anthologies, so I counted by the number of books rather than the number of authors.
10 (5,8%) anthologies with short stories by both genders ended up in a mixed category. As for the rest:
Female author(s): 107 (61,85%)
Male author(s): 56 (32,35%)
This is nearly twice as many books by women than by men, which actually surprised me (in a nice way). I'd had the impression that I read more books by men than by women.
Author list by number of books read:
As usual, Nora Roberts takes the trophy for the most books read by one author, with Lynn Viehl coming a close second and Jennifer Crusie a close third.
Nora Roberts: 11
Lynn Viehl: 9
Jennifer Crusie: 7
Terry Pratchett: 7
Georgette Heyer, Ngaio March and Ellis Peters: 6 each
J.K. Rowling, Hugleikur Dagsson: 5
Agatha Christie: 4
Edward Gorey, Lori Foster: 3 (the last books I shall ever read by Foster unless someone can point me in the direction of romances by her that do not have virgin heroines)
Dorothy L. Sayers, Halldór Laxness, Jane Feather, Julia Quinn, M.R. James, Sharyn McCrumb, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir: 2 each.
Of course, if I were to count all the little Gorey books collected in those three above-mentioned anthologies, he would win hands down with 47 books in total.
Publishers:
In my last annual report I switched to counting imprints rather than publishing houses, since smaller publishers are continually being swallowed up by bigger ones and what is a publishing house today may tomorrow be one imprint among many belonging to a big publishing house. I did count all the imprints bearing variations of the Penguin and Signet names as one.
As in 2009, Penguin won, but only by 1 book.
Penguin: 10
Signet: 9
St. Martin‘s Press: 8
Jove: 7
Bloomsbury: 6
Berkley Books, Fontana/Collins, Harper Collins, Project Gutenberg, Silhouette Books, Victor Gollancz, Vintage: 5 each, and
15 others with 2 books each, and
47 with 1 book each
Furthermore there were 6 self-published books, all of them e-books.
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