Reading Roundup Year in Review, 2019/20

The first month my reading record (now 78 pages long!) covers is September 2003, and so my "reading year" runs from September to August. In a nice bit of synchronicity it almost lines up with the academic year, as that has historically had much more impact on my life than the calendar year. (Well, it's not quite synchronicity; I think I started tracking my reading because I had moved into the dorms and needed to know what books to take with me.)

As you can see, it was my worst year ever... by some margin! Over forty books below my previous record low; just over half as many as in the previous year. I can blame a lot of things, but probably 1) parenthood, 2) the pandemic, and 3) a couple very long, very bad books are the core of it. And a lack of diligence on my part. Too much wasting time on my phone when I could be wasting time reading a book!

Here's how my reading this year broke down by category: (I typically only break out a series or author if I read more than one in the past year)

SERIES/GENRE/AUTHOR	# OF BOOKS	BOOKS/ MONTH	% OF ALL BOOKS
Star Trek1	3	0.3	3.8%
Doctor Who1	12	1.0	15.2%
Media Tie-In Subtotal	15	1.3	19.0%
Discworld	6	0.5	7.6%
The Expanse	4	0.3	5.1%
Ursula K. Le Guin	2	0.2	2.5%
Other SF&F	25	2.1	31.6%
General SF&F Subtotal	37	3.1	46.8%
DC Universe Comics	4	0.3	5.1%
Other Comics	8	0.7	10.1%
Comics Subtotal	12	1.0	15.2%
James Bond by Ian Fleming	2	0.2	2.5%
Victorian Literature	2	0.2	2.5%
Other Literature	4	0.3	5.1%
General Literature Subtotal	8	0.7	10.1%
Nonfiction Subtotal	7	0.6	8.9%

1. Comic books in series that are predominantly not comics I don't count under my "Comics" category, but under the series's main designation.

General science fiction and fantasy dominated my reading this year-- but it's not so much that I read more of (in 2018/19, I read 47 books in that category) as that I read less of everything else. The Hugos got me back on track reading-wise after a number of very fallow months. As a result, a number of categories do worse in raw numbers than last year but better in percentages.

Here's a graphical sense of how this year compares with previous ones: 

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, 2017/18, 2018/19. (I didn't do ones for 2010/11 and 2013/14.)