Total books: 237 this year, 259 last year - more than 2006 or 2007, less than any year since. More active weekends, plus devoting some commuting time to watching Doctor Who and Game of Thrones episodes.
Total page count: ~68,000 pages this year, ~77,800 last year, ~88,200 in 2011
Diversity: 71 (30%) by women this year, 65 (25%) by women last year - compares with 22% in 2011, 23% in 2010, 20% in 2009, 12% in 2008 and I don't seem to have counted previously. This year's total augmented by 10 Agatha Christie novels.
11 (5%) by PoC this year, 12 (5%) by PoC last year - compares with 5% in 2011, 9% in 2010, 5% in 2009, 2% in 2008. Could do better.
Most books by a single author:
2012: Jonathan Gash (11), Ursula Vernon (6), Ian Rankin (5), Alison Plowden and Justin Richards (4 each); though the Ursula Vernon and Alison Plowden books could be considered as component parts of a single work in each case.
2013: Agatha Christie (10), followed by Terrance Dicks (7), Jonathan Gash (6), Philip Sandifer (5), Cressida Cowell, Gary Russell, Ian Rankin and Neil Gaiman (4 each).
Non-fiction
2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | |||||
46 | 19% | 53 | 20% | 69 | 23% | 66 | 24% | 88 | 26% |
Best of 2012: The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance, by Edmund de Waal - brilliant story of heirlooms, Proust, the Holocaust and Japan.
Best of 2013: A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf - wish I'd read it when I was an undergraduate, a fundamentally important essay about literature and gender.
Non-sfnal fiction
2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | |||||
44 | 19% | 48 | 19% | 48 | 16% | 50 | 18% | 57 | 18% |
Best of 2012: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Brontë - I came to it late, but much my favourite Brontë novel - seems somehow a bit more in balance than her sisters' books.
Best of 2013: The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston - brilliant collection of this unjustly obscured writer, not done any favours by its publisher.
Non-Whovian sff
2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | |||||
65 | 27% | 62 | 24% | 78 | 26% | 73 | 26% | 78 | 23% |
Best of 2012: Among Others, by Jo Walton - like most of the Hugo and Nebula voters, I found that
papersky had somehow got inside my head and shared my memories.Best of 2013: The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss - I don't usually go for big fantasy epics, but this somehow got to me.
Doctor Who fiction
2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | |||||
72 | 30% | 75 | 29% | 80 | 27% | 71 | 26% | 70 | 19% |
Best of 2012: Shada, the long awaited novelisation by Gareth Roberts from Douglas Adams' script.
Best of 2013: I'm going to cheat here. Although I enjoyed a lot of the Who,Torchwood and Sarah Jane fiction I read this year, pride of place goes to Philip Sandifer's TARDIS Eruditorum series of books (vol 1, vol 2, vol 3, vol 4) which were tallied above with non-fiction, but are setting a new standard for Who criticism. (Honorable mention along the same lines to Graham Sleight's The Doctor's Monsters.)
Comics
2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | |||||
30 | 13% | 21 | 8% | 27 | 9% | 18 | 6% | 28 | 8% |
Best of 2012: Digger, by Ursula Vernon - a deserving winner of the Hugo.
Best of 2013: The Blue Lotus, by Hergé - the master of the genre finds his stride.
Making up the numbers were two poetry collections, Paul Muldoon in 2013 and Walt Whitman in 2012.
What do I need to round this off? Oh yes, a poll...
