2019 Year in Review - SciFi/Fantasy Reading, Part 1: Basic Summary

2019 was Year 3 of this blog as a dedicated (mostly) book review blog, and year 4 really of my return to reading Science Fiction and Fantasy.  The Genre has never been better, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either a bitter old man or a person with an agenda and isn't worth listening to.  As in the prior two years, I'll be doing a 3 part recap series of the books and novellas I read over the past year, as follows:

Part 1 (This post) will be a quick summary of what I've read and how that worked out.
Part 2 (To be posted tonight): Will go over my favorite works of the past year.
Part 3 (To be posted tomorrow): Will go over the works I would recommend NOT reading or that I couldn't finish for various reasons. 

So let's begin:



I managed to read 182* books this year and 21 novellas, basically the same output as in last year (182 and 21).  I'd hoped and was on pace to hit 200 books at one point, but hitting that # would require me to put aside other interests of mine - or to hit a perfect storm of books that I couldn't put down in my list and not hit many books that I find it hard to get through - so I don't think it's possible for me in my lifestyle.   I anticipate reading less this year for various reasons incidentally, but I was happy with my reading totals overall.  I should add that 36 of these books were read in Audiobook format, so roughly 3 per month (I half finished one book in audiobook before the year was over by the way). 

*If you've noticed on twitter my running thread of books finished, you may note I mentioned only 181 on that thread.  The extra book I read actually half on 12/31 last year and half on 1/1: I didn't count it in the thread as a result, but I didn't count it in last year's books, so I guess I'm counting it here.  

Okay, so last year, of the 182 books I read, 43 were written solely by male* authors (24%), while the rest were written either by a mix of gendered authors, female authors, or authors identifying as some other or no gender.  This year, my 182 books featured.....44 male authors, so more or less the same gender breakdown.  I actually read just 1 male author in the first 23 books I read this year (in January) but it all evened out a bit as time went on - and I no longer even try to read women vs men these days, so I doubt it's likely to change much....this is just the natural result of my book finding process.

*To the extent I can tell, and I usually try to go by the author bios at the end of books, but that's not foolproof, and of course authors can change their preferences as time goes on.  But as this count is meant to ensure I'm reading diversity, I'm okay with the approximate.  

Moving away from gender, I managed last year to read 51 books by People of Color (POC).  I do make a conscious effort to read non-white authors (or at worst authors from non-Western backgrounds), and this year I managed to read 70, a substantial improvement.  38% POC is still not as good as it could be, but it's progress, and again another sign that anyone saying that POC don't write genre fiction....or that they don't write good genre fiction, are utter idiots and should be disregarded.  People of Color have to get through greater barriers still in the genre to get their work out, and it is well worth your time to search them out, because you will be rewarded (and so will they, as they rightfully deserve) and maybe publishers will see the shift and the barriers will lower.  Well, one can dream at least. 

For a more specific breakdown, and again, this is very much me attempting to determine messy concepts like race from author bios/pictures, so very likely to not be fully accurate, my breakdown of this is as follows:
112 books solely by White Authors
1 Book by Multiple Authors of Color and 1 White Author
5 Books by Authors from Pacific Island/Filipino Authors
2 Books by Native Authors
1 Book by a Middle Eastern author
5 Books by Indian authors
11 Books by Hispanic/Latin authors
24 Books by Black authors
21 Books by Asian (other than the above) Authors

Again, these categories are very likely to be inaccurate, but work mainly for me to try and get a diverse background of authors.  And again, this has been a very rewarding pursuit for me, and for any others, as it has resulted in me finding a lot of very good, and just as importantly, very different books and perspectives than the standard white authors that people think about when they think about the genre, with all the different themes and concepts involved. 

Anyhow, that's part 1 of this recap.  Later today, I'll post Part 2, my post on my favorite books of the past year, so check back later for that.