Wow, so, definitely met the standing 100+ books goal with 120 unique books last year.

In addition, there were 2 books that I started prior to this year and finished, one that’s part of a mystery series, another non-fiction history of Haitian voodoo.

I gave up on 5 books entirely. Of these, 3 were by authors I’ve read before and enjoyed, including one adaptation from a book I enjoyed originally and one sequel.

As of Jan. 1, I had 5 books still in progress (note that of the 2 started in 2009, 1 I’ve given up on and 1 is completed, but that’s for a year from now). The 3 remaining are from previous years. Maybe this will be the year I actually plow through Ulysses.

I got pretty haphazard about tracking reading with the boy this year. Ultimately, I just started noting books that I would/have read on my own as well. I’m just not up for keeping track of 40 Scooby Doo chapter books.

As for the rest of the analysis:

• 15 of these were rereads, and that doesn’t count that I read 1 book twice.

• 83 were books in series of various kinds.

• In terms of genre, 39 were fantasy (as defined personally), 37 were YA, 19 sci-fi, 22 involved vampires, werewolves or other staples of urban fantasy (I categorized these differently, because Anita Blake just feels different to me than, say, Mists of Avalon), 11 were mysteries

• In terms of form, 5 were short works (usually short stories), 17 were graphic novels and 4 were non-fiction (and 1 of those was a graphic novel)

• Looking at authors, only 8 books were written by authors identified as non-white, 26 total were new to me (accounting for roughly 38 books read) and approximately 58 distinct authors represented overall.

Every year I tend to beat myself up for the fact that I read a lot of genre fiction and not a lot of “classics” or books that are generally heralded as books of substance. But screw that. I read for entertainment and what entertains me are stories about vampires and fictional societies where magic exists in some form and dystopic alien worlds and mysteries where I can lose myself for a while. I could whip out my hairshirt about the fact that I don’t really enjoy biographies and non-fiction much outside of humorous pop-cult essays, but really, why bother. I still read more than probably 90% of the population and I’m teaching my kid to value reading for its own sake and am continuing to discover new sub-genres and authors that I thoroughly enjoy. So, go me. Or something like that.