A year in reading, or, did I do anything besides read?

It’s clear I’m not going to finish another book this year — I’m only about halfway through Dune, and everything else can go hang in the meantime. (Spoiler: Dune is great!) Per my Goodreads tracking, I finished 76 books this year, which is a personal record in my GR history. This doesn’t count books I abandoned, even if I rated them, and it doesn’t count every re-read. But 76! Gosh! I have no idea how that happened.

Another day I’ll do a post about some horizons I tried to expand, and other notable things like favorites. For now, I just wanted to throw stats down before the year expired. Fun! Statistics!!

Oldest book: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M. R. James (published 1904)
2016 resolution: Even more ghost stories. I read this one in an accidental batch with some other ghostie stories, haunted mansions, possession, the like. It was a good run, even if it was in May, not October.

Longest book (by Goodreads page count): Sabriel by Garth Nix.
Really? This didn’t seem long. It seemed very short. I wish I had wordcount. I bet other things were a lot longer, since this was mass market format, and YA. It was long overdue to read, though, and I really enjoyed it.

Average rating: 3.8 stars
This is higher than I expected. I guess I’m pretty liberal with 4 stars. I’m curious, though…

Rating distribution:

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 = 16
🌟🌟🌟🌟 = 37
🌟🌟🌟 = 19
🌟🌟 = 1
🌟 = 1

Huh. Yep, liberal with those 4-star ratings. But that’s a lot of 5-star ratings for me, too! I’m super stingy with them, historically. Look, 5 stars is 100%, perfect, A++. If I give 5 stars, it probably means I’m blind to the faults of the book (even if I’m aware of them, I don’t care) or I truly think it’s a Peak Book. I guess there was a lot of the former this year? Or I’m going soft.

Largest divergence from average rating: In other words, these are some the books that I liked a whole lot more than most people. I’m not going to note the ones I liked a whole lot less, because that feels unnecessarily mean.

Book covers for the four books I rated far higher than the average Goodreads user.
Someone psychoanalyze me and figure out why I’m an outlier in loving these books.
  • Baba Yaga’s Assistant by Marika McCoola (I’m a sucker for Emily Carroll.)
  • Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future by A.S. King (The audiobook helped, I think? Also, this was the first King I read.)
  • What Did Miss Darrington See? an anthology of feminist supernatural fiction (In part, probably, because it’s not rated by that many people. You should read it and rate it.)
  • The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne (I get it. I really do. It’s not for most people and it’s spiky and weird. But I loved it.)

Anyway, here’s the Goodreads year in books for me. More later.