Last year I managed to read 44 novels, 4 history books and 5 'other' (one psychology book, two graphic novels, one collection of fairy tales, and one short book on Arthurian myths).
Of the novels I read 22 were by men and 21 by women. One book was an SF collection with mixed authors.
Going through my list I've had some trouble categorizing things, so I've categorized them here where I've linked their reviews on my review pages.
science fiction = 24
steampunk/weird west = 3
fantasy = 12
urban fantasy = 3
horror = 2
I should note that none of the urban fantasy took place in the modern day, though the books in question don't quite fit in other categories either.
I didn't do so well with the non-Western works. I read one book by a Japanese man (All You Need is Kill), one by a South African woman (Black Dog Summer), and one by a Norwegian man (172 Hours on the Moon).
While I read several books with POC protagonists, I only managed a few by writers of colour. So again, I could do better there.
My reading resolutions for this year are mainly to get rid of some of the backlog of books on my shelves. I cleared out several titles last summer and fall, but there are a lot more I need to get through. This may mean fewer reviews, as reading 50 pages of several books to see if I like them takes time that I could otherwise spend reading a review title, so I'll have to see how my timing works out. I may start a 'your mileage may vary' series, where I mention books I've tried that for one reason or another just didn't grab my interest, so you know what I'm up to and can decide if the books are of interest to you (the reason I put down a book may be what makes you pick it up).
The down side of this, of course, is that there aren't many non-Western or POC authored books there, so I'll have to pick my other reads carefully if I want to increase those numbers. I'm enjoying the different perspectives I get from them on SF/Fantasy and the world itself.
There were several books that came out last year that I really wanted to read and didn't have time for. I'm hoping to sneak a few of those in.
My January schedule has already been booked with reviews of books I received copies of in December or earlier. I've only one of those left to read, after which I'll likely read a few older titles with sequels coming out soon.
So many books to read, so little time.
Speaking of time, I'll try to make a buffer of history based posts for Fridays so there are fewer gaps. While those posts are fun to do - and I learn a lot by doing them (hence why I'm doing them) - each one takes at minimum 3+ hours. The cathedral posts take longer, mainly because I've been modifying/correcting my floor plan and sculptural program diagrams, which is very time consuming. But I'd like to finish off the French cathedrals I took pictures of last summer, do more medieval plant posts, and maybe start a feature (when I'm really pressed for time) where I simply show a picture or two from my collection (I've been to a lot of museums and medieval, etc. sites so that could be fun). I also want to get through more of my history book collection - which keeps growing.
Here's a toast to 2016, may it be a wonderful year with a lot of good books and good times.
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