Friday, January 10, 2020

All About 2019 Books

I usually do a year-end post going over my favorites of the year, but honestly this year was a little on the quiet side - didn't see many movies, only took 1 trip, so it seemed fitting to focus the details on my favorite topic for my year-end review - BOOKS!

I finished the year with 94 books read, down a little from last year when I read 106 books. 2018 was my highest number of reads ever and that was largely due to the POPSUGAR book challenge I was 'competing' to finish against Allison. We tried again this year and we both petered out. I did get 40 of the 50 prompts though - how many did you get, Allison?

Stats: I decided to do some stats on my books which will impact some of my goals for 2020, here's what I tracked:
  • Fiction vs. Nonfiction - 81 books {86%} were Fiction - honestly I'm surprised I had as many Nonfiction books as I did!
  • Author/Character a Person of Color - 18 books {19%} - I'm pretty pleased with this as I was loosely aiming for 1/month, but I'll be looking to up this in 2020.
  • Female vs. Male author - Only 8 books {9%} were written by men - I don't really care about this stat other than I'm not surprised/found it amusing.
  • Topic I'd like to focus more on - I read 4 books {4%} specifically about Race, I'd like this to continue to grow.
  • Chick lit, Romance, and YA - these categories represented 44 books {47%} of my reading - I also categorized Fiction {more general in nature or sci-fi, suspense, LGBTQ, etc.}, Nonfiction, and Historical Fiction - I'm kind of surprised this wasn't more, ha?
  • World War Historical Fiction - 5 books {5%} were about WW1 or WW2 - am I losing some steam on this subject?
Any of this surprising to anyone? Any other ways I should be tracking my reading? I thought this was really interesting and look forward to seeing how 2020 shakes out!

Favorites:
Now, onto my favorite books of the year! I honestly don't think I have a single favorite, instead I have a handful that I really loved that could all easily be in that top slot.

The New Jim Crow and White Fragility - these 2 books had the most impact on how I view the world and have made an impact on how I want to raise our children in relation to race. I do not want children passive in their white supremacy and want us to be an active family in antiracism work.

The Time Traveler's Wife - From page 1, I was in love with this book. The way the story was told and unfolded was beautiful. I had such big emotions throughout the whole experience and wish it had been twice as long.

Daisy Jones and the Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid can do no wrong in my book. I would love to peak inside her brain and see how it works. Every book she has written has been fabulous, and this one had the added bonus of being so different style too. It's written like an interview which made it fast to read but I quickly figured out the 'personality' of the characters even told in this style. I ate it up and loved every minute.

Where the Crawdads Sing - This seemed to be the 'it' book of 2019 and it exceeded all expectations I had for it. It was such a wonderful story that unfolded beautifully. I was bereft when it ended, I can't think of any other way to describe it. 

The Gown - Jennifer Robson is another author that writes with a golden pen. So far all her books have had a WW1 or WW2 aspect, so it's an added bonus for me touching on my favorite historical topic. This one ALSO added in some royal aspects and a modern-day love story. It was a delicious treat for me.


6 comments:

Kelly Bruneman said...

I am so impressed by you!!

Erika said...

Oooh love this so much!! I need to analyze my books like this!! I am surprised that only 5 of your books were World War!!! Maybe you need to double check your math?!?! Surely not! OK now I'm going to waste some time analyzing my books, too! Ha!

Kathryn Bagley said...

You amaze me with how much your read and the fact you remember everything!!

Erika said...

I'm sure you were just holding your breath while I calculated. Ha!! OK. Here are my stats.

82 books total

Fiction- 76 (93%0; Nonfiction- 6 (7%)
Authors- 12 male (15%), 70 female (85%), 14 of them POC (17%)
**it was my book club's goal to read more from authors of color in 2019, and I know that will be a continuing goal for us, so that helped me here!
**also maybe my math is not good here, because like I read several books by Jasmine Guillory (author of color) but I counted her each time, so...whatever. Maybe it's actually fewer individual authors of color, but books written by authors of color is still 14, haha.

World War books- 7 (9%), possibly 8 or 9 though because several books that spanned multiple generations of families had sections that took place during a war, but if right off the bat I didn't think of them as WW books, then I just didn't count them.

Anyway. This was fun!! :)

Emily said...

Congrats on a great year of reading. How do you track your book stats? I’m imagining a database or spreadsheet of books while makes my inner nerd smile. I absolutely agree with you on White Fragility and the New Jim Crow; both books impact how I want to raise my kids! Daisy Jones and the Six was such a very fun book; definitely a top 10 of 2019!

Natasha said...

Oh, I love this post. Which you probably knew already. I should totally track my stats but I don't have the re-energy to recap 2019 right now. I should make up Emily's dream spreadsheet going forward so I can have this all on hand for 2020 :)