Kate Constable's Blog

2011: A Year of Reading

I read 107 books this year. What's that, about two books a week? That sounds about right. Of course, many of them were rather short. I can whip through an Antonia Forest or a KM Peyton in less than a day. (I'm not counting books read aloud to my children, because I don't keep a record of those, though perhaps I should.)

The gender breakdown was about what I'd have expected, roughly two thirds books written by women, and one third written by men. It's skewed because I read a lot of kids and young adult novels, most of which are written by women. Also skewed because the authors I 'discovered' this last year and read everything I could get my hands on, were all women.
Total titles by women: 74. Titles by men: 35.*

I read 38 books by Australian authors, and 69 by overseas authors. Hm, I might need to read a few more Aussie books next this year. Though actually I don't think that balance is too bad, considering how many books are pumped out of the US and UK. Sadly, I don't think I read a single book that wasn't originally written in English. Now that's something to work on.

I read 44 books written for adults, and 63 children's/YA books, of which twenty were read for book group. So if I took those out, the balance is about even. Considering how much shorter kids books generally are than adult books, I'm quite impressed I did so much adult reading!

I read 71 fiction titles, and 36 non-fiction. That's a lot more non-fiction than I expected. Also, nearly all my 'adult' books turn out to have been non-fiction. Hm. Perhaps not surprising, since I find a lot of adult fiction tedious in the extreme. But since I was pleasantly surprised by some adult fiction I read late in the year (Olive Kitteridge, In This House of Brede) maybe I need to persevere.

Authors 'discovered' in 2011: Rumer Godden, KM Peyton, Cynthia Voight
Favourite book: Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (adult fiction, so there you go)
Least favourite book: The Water Babies, Charles Kingsley (I can say that cos he's dead. Also the only book read on an electronic device. Not that that proves anything, of course.)

Biggest surprise: Open by Andre Agassi. It was absolutely gripping. And I don't even like tennis.
Biggest disappointment: I'd rather not say... but I'll tell you if you ask me! And millions of other people love it to death, so it must be just me that the magic didn't work on.

* Two books were co-authored by one man and one woman, which is why the figures don't add up.