Though I have many other accomplishments in the past year to be proud of, my amount of reading is not one of them. Last year, I set a record for most books read in a single year; this year I set a record for least. Not riding the bus and starting a new job will do that to you, I guess. Since 2003, my per-month average has been 12.8; in a full seven months this year, I fell below that, reading only 10.1 books per month. We'll see what next year brings!
What kinds of books did I read this year? Here's a chart: (I only broke out series/authors if I read more than one of that series/author)
| SERIES/GENRE/AUTHOR | # OF BOOKS | BOOKS/ MONTH | % OF ALL BOOKS |
| Doctor Who | 15 | 1.3 | 12.4% |
| Star Trek | 10 | 0.8 | 8.3% |
| Media Tie-In Subtotal | 25 | 2.1 | 20.7% |
| The Expanse | 3 | 0.3 | 2.5% |
| H. G. Wells1 | 3 | 0.3 | 2.5% |
| Other SF&F | 35 | 2.9 | 28.9% |
| General SF&F Subtotal | 41 | 3.4 | 33.9% |
| The Transformers | 20 | 1.7 | 16.5% |
| Legion of Super-Heroes | 2 | 0.2 | 1.7% |
| Other DCU Comics | 2 | 0.2 | 1.7% |
| Marvel Comics | 3 | 0.3 | 2.5% |
| Calvin and Hobbes | 3 | 0.3 | 2.5% |
| Brian K. Vaughan | 3 | 0.3 | 2.5% |
| Other Comics | 6 | 0.5 | 5.0% |
| Comics Subtotal | 39 | 3.3 | 32.2% |
| James Bond by Ian Fleming | 2 | 0.2 | 1.7% |
| Victorian Literature | 1 | 0.1 | 0.8% |
| Other Literature | 4 | 0.3 | 3.3% |
| General Literature Subtotal | 7 | 0.6 | 5.8% |
| Other Nonfiction2 | 9 | 0.8 | 7.4% |
1. This actually includes both science fiction and literature by Wells, but I can't be bothered to separate them back out for the purposes of this report.
2. Nonfiction connected to a particular series or author (e.g., Calvin and Hobbes or H. G. Wells) is included in that series or author's count.
Last year I read over 85 comic books; this year, fewer than 40. Adding in 45 comic books would put me right back in the average range, so a big part of my decrease is that fact that since moving, I haven't resumed my ILL-based comics reading. I am pretty disappointed to realize how little non-genre fiction I am reading these days. Can I blame the Hugos?
As always, I picked the best book of each month as a "Pick of the Month." I fed all twelve of these into Preference Revealer, so here they are ranked from twelfth-best to best:
12. Leviathan Wakes: Book One of The Expanse by James S.A. Corey
11. Otherworld Barbara Vol. 1 by Moto Hagio
10. Black Bolt: Hard Time by Saladin Ahmed
9. The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book by Bill Watterson
8. The Vision by Tom King and Gabriel Walta Hernandez
7. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Book One by Emil Ferris
6. Terra Ignota, Book III: The Will to Battle: A Narrative of Events of the year 2454 by Ada Palmer
5. The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
4. No Time to Spare: Thinking about What Matters by Ursula K. Le Guin
3. Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, Volume 10 by James Roberts, Alex Milne, et al.
2. "The Busiest Man in England": A Life of Joseph Paxton, Gardener, Architect & Victorian Visionary by Kate Colquhoun
And the "Pick of the Year":
1. In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan
I'm somewhat skeptical of how this list shook out, to be honest, but In Other Lands is definitely the best book I read all year. The full list of "Picks" going back to 2009 is here.
Lastly, here's my usual graph of my reading trends over time:
I hope I can improve some aspects of this next year... but I am very doubtful!
You can compare this to previous years if you're interested: 2007/08, 2008/09, 2009/10, 2011/12, 2012/13, 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17. (I didn't do ones for 2010/11 and 2013/14.)
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