2019 reading year in review

[luzula]

Here are some statistics about my reading, for my own navel-gazing pleasure. In 2019 my goal was to read unread books from my bookshelves (or try them out and get rid of them if I didn't like them), and I did this with 32 books. Previous goals: read more non-fiction (2018), reread more books (2017), read fewer American books (2016). Next year's goal: haven't decided yet.

Total number of books read (including novel-length fic): 86
Down from 95 last year and 114 the year before that, no idea why.

Books by new-to-me authors: 38

Book authors by gender (judged by name, so I guess there could be mistakes)
Female authors: 45
Male authors: 34

By language read in:
English: 66
Swedish: 19

By original language:
English: 63
Swedish: 18
French: 1
Arabic: 1
German: 1
Chinese: 1

By author's country of origin:
USA: 39
Sweden: 18
UK: 13.5
Syria: 1
Canada: 1
Swaziland: 1
Turkey: 1
Germany: 1
France: 1
Nigeria: 0.5

Genre (roughly; some were hard to categorize):
non-fiction: 25
SF: 19
fantasy: 20
historical: 13
YA: 5
romance: 9 (about half of these are fanfic)

12 of the books were audiobooks.
One of them was a graphic novel.
Two of them were rereads.
39 out of the 61 fiction books passed the Bechdel test.

Favorite new-to-me books in 2019. Links go to my book posts.
The Flight of the Heron (1925) by D K Broster (Gloriously slashy historical novel set in 18th century Scotland. ♥ ♥ ♥ )
Twitter and Tear Gas: the Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (2017) by Zeynep Tufekci (Very interesting analysis of social movements before and after the Internet.)
An Ever-Fixed Mark AMarguerite (2017) (A trope-deconstructing Pride and Prejudice soulmark AU.)
Expeditionen: en kärlekshistoria (2013) by Bea Uusma (The author is a fandom-of-one for the Andrée polar expedition and tries to find out the cause of death of the expedition members.)
Playing Against the House: The Dramatic World of an Undercover Union Organizer (2016) by James D. Walsh (A journalist goes undercover as a salt.)
A Memory Called Empire (2019) by Arkady Martine (...everyone knows about this.)
Av kött och blod (2013) by Henrik Johansson (Workplace organizing + murder mystery via golem.)
Women of the Copper Country (2019) by Mary Doria Russell (Very Bechdel-test-passing historical novel about a strike in a copper mine in Michigan.)
Child of a Hidden Sea (2014) + the two next in the series "Hidden Sea Tales" by A M Dellamonica (Fun portal fantasy featuring a scientifically-minded protagonist using critical thinking to solve various mysteries, also there is swashbuckling.)
The Lie Tree (2015) by Frances Hardinge (Uh, I don't know that I can describe this in one sentence. But it's great!)

I'm never sure how to categorize series here—I also read some books in The Comfortable Courtesan series by L A Hall, which would certainly have made it here, but I already included that series in last year's post.

Comments

[feroxargentea]

Thank you for the book recs! Your judgement is generally worth trusting :)

[luzula]

Thank you, I'm glad you think so! : )

(You should read Flight of the Heron so I can have more people to squee with! I think you'd enjoy it--I mean, it's a historical book which is epically slashy and also has lots of lovely nature and landscapes.)

[feroxargentea]

Heh, it does sound like my cup of tea, and it's on my birthday list already!

[luzula]

Yay! : )