Specifics should be taken with a grain of salt. Goodreads and my spreadsheet aren't exactly aligned on what I read. In the middle of the summer I added another layer of questions to my form in order to help organize books for consideration in my classroom. Sometimes I guess or estimate. But the overall trends and patterns are quite clear.
I read mostly books I like. 3.5 and above is a solid 75% of the chart. This is due to two factors: 1) I'm easy to please and b) I know what I like. With over a thousand books on my TBR, there's no reason for me to pick up a book I'm feeling "meh" about.
Still a library girl. There's not much real difference between "classroom library" and "bought new." If I buy a book, read it, and THEN put it in the library, it's "bought new." If I bought it earlier, put it in the library, and then read it, it's "classroom library."
This is very much a function of my job. I've never shied away from YA and even MG, but I used to fit in a lot more adult work as well, from mystery series to literary fiction.
I'm mildly surprised at how balanced this is. Especially considering this next one.
I guess women are still more likely to write male protagonists than the other way around. Shocker.
Aaaand I'm still reading about a bunch of straight white people. (The reason why the chart has those last three categories is that there's an "other" option and clearly I described it differently each time I chose it. Same basic reason why "animals," "shepherd/poodle" and "wombat" are listed separately as well.)
Every year I say I'm going to read more non-white authors and more non-American ones, and every year I read about 80% white American authors. Sheesh.
This is one where the totals might not equal 100%, since I could and did mark multiple choices per book. (I think I just answered my own internal question about why some of these are bar graphs and some are pie charts.) I think if you'd surveyed me throughout my life, the exact percentages might have changed, but you would have always seen a blend of contemporary, historical fiction, fantasy, and mystery, with a splash of sci fi, and most of my nonfiction in the biography/memoir area.
There are other areas I'm not bothering to evaluate here, which means I will probably edit them out of my form for 2018. I'll share a blank version here for anyone who'd like it.
I love stats posts so much! I’m going to work on mine today. I’m betting I mostly read books by white American people. I guess I’ll try again to fix that this year.
ReplyDeleteAj @ Read All The Things!
I love the graphs! I've been using a google spreadsheet for a few years now - I need to figure out how to turn those into graphs soon! If all goes well, maybe you'll see a stats post soon :)
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