On Reading | 2017 (so far).

Last December, I wrote a post about my reading plans for 2017. In a nutshell, I wanted to continue reading more diversely in terms of genre (30% non-fiction) and author gender and nationality and I wanted to make better use of the library (50% borrowed). I didn't plan on setting a goal for how many books I'd read, but Goodreads is a tough master and I eventually caved; I set a goal of 75 books.

I finished #75 last week and thought it would be a good time check-in.

details on Goodreads here

This morning I updated my tracking spreadsheet to add two charts - which show that I'm behind on both the goals I set!

Only 16 of the 75 books have been non-fiction (which includes biographies and memoirs) - but of those 16, a whopping six are on my 5-star list. ...and that's why I'm going to continue to push myself to read non-fiction.

31 books have come from the library, Overdrive or friends. Only three of my 5-star books were borrowed. What I realized is that I like to buy books I really love - not so much to re-read them, but to be able to share them with others. I also buy the books I read with my small group because we typically read slowly and I like to make notes and highlight. Further - I didn't track this, but I suspect it's true - many of the "owned" books were previous year purchases. In other words, I'm reading through stash 😉 (and that doesn't count, right?!) Overall, I feel pretty good about what I'm borrowing vs. buying. Next year, I'll track "new" vs. "shelved", too.

As points of interest, I also tracked a few more things about the authors:

Gender - 39 female (52%)
Person of Color - 13 (17%)
Nationality - 50 United States (a whopping 67%! and I could count on one hand how many were non-US and non-British)

Whoa, that's certainly not as diverse as I'd like.

But when it comes down to it - I choose most of the books I read because I think I'll love them (or one of my neighbors chose it for bookclub). A few I choose because I think they'll make me a better person or educate me about something I need to know about. But mostly, it's just for fun. And I am OK with that.

That said, I am still working on this year's Read Harder Challenge. I have a ways to go (11 more books!), but I own eight of them already and one I'm getting from Overdrive - A Wrinkle in Time (can you believe I've never read it?!) - is ready to borrow. I haven't run the numbers, but I suspect the author diversity stats will look a lot better once I finish those 11 books. We'll see!

When I wrote that December post, I asked if you were setting any reading goals for 2017. If you did, have those goals affected how you read this year?

So whew, another longer-than-I-intended post! Thank you for sticking with me!