Hmmmm.... This breakdown is interesting.
It certainly looks like I read a lot of J-Fic/YA this year. But those numbers skew things a bit. Several of those books were either sf, fantasy or horror, so had they not been in the J-Fic/YA category, the genre numbers and percentages would look a little different. But that's how I chose to do it.
Also the definitions of "sf," "fantasy" and "horror" are somewhat fluid. Is Lucius Shepard fantasy or horror? What about Howard Waldrop? Is he sf or fantasy?
But no matter how you look at it, it would seem I'm reading more "non-genre" fiction, which includes "literary" and classics. I'm certainly not abandoning genre, but I think I'm just being more selective in what I read from genre.
Consider also that if I see something interesting on audio, I'm more likely to give it a try than if I saw the print version of the book. I suppose I'm more agreeable to taking a chance on an audiobook, although I can't really give a good reason why.
Other Nerd Stats:
Of the 115 books I read in 2008, I own 41 (or 35%) of them. More on this in a future post.
Well, this is embarrassing:
Books written by men - 80%. Wow. Sorry, ladies. I'll do better in 2008.
Only 13% of the books I read were written by non-American writers. Again, embarrassing.
Only 2% were works translated into English. Man...
Needless to say, I'll work on these three deficiencies in 2009.
2 comments:
I hear you on having your reading list unintentionally dominated by white males (although I do tend to read a lot of translated stuff).
I've been putting together a reading list for my prelim exams and ideally I would like to reach a balance between men and women and Western and non-Western writer, but it's hard. Part of me thinks that my list leans towards men because I am exposed to so much more men's writing, but I also wonder if I connect more with a white male perspective because, you know, I'm white and male. That's not saying that white men are better writers, but I also don't feel like I should have to make excuses for what I like.
Having said that, I find women writers to be either okay or absolutely phenomenal. If I compiled a list of writers I really like, I think men would dominate; if I compiled a list of authors I adore, I think it would almost be even.
I'm going to make more of an effort in 2009 to read translated works. I heard a statistic the other day that about 2% of the books coming from U.S. publishers are translations, so I guess I'm right at the national average. (Seems that percentage was much higher in other predominantly English-speaking countries - no big surprise there...)
I'm sure the abundance of literature by white males is pretty heavy in academia, although it's certainly not confined to that arena. But yeah, you and I both relate to white dudes, since....we're white dudes. What can we do? (No operations in my future...)
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