The Sword and Laser discussion

I'm not going to finish either of the two books I'm currently reading by the end of the years, so 74 books for 2015 is it for me.

I decided this year to do graphs just because they're easier to parse. There are a number of free graph and chart generators online, but I liked this one for ease of use: https://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createag... It's designed for kids, so it's exactly my speed. I generated these using my iPad 2, so it should be compatible with any browser or device.

Because I consider superhero graphic novels to be Fantasy, that means Fantasy was my largest genre. There are Science Fiction graphic novels (Descender #1 was one I read this year), but by and large they're Fantasy. Also quick to read, hence the volume. Next year I'm going to sort the various categories more finely. It only takes a couple minutes after I've read each book, so it's not a big deal once I have my list set up. (On paper. Old school tracking device.)

For the Genre breakdown, some books exist in two or more categories, such as How to Fight Presidents: Defending Yourself Against the Badasses Who Ran This Country, which is both factual and funny, so it goes in both the History and Humor categories. Art and photo books don't get genres beyond that, so they aren't on the chart.

Anyway, here they are:

Gender


Genre


Fic/Non


Sources


Type

I do better with code. So mine doesn't look as pretty.

I made some tweaks to my GoodReads Parser Application this year, largely I added reread support. This is something I've wanted to do for a bit because Goodreads doesn't handle rereads very well in my opinion.

I also added some extra error handling for the audiobook stuff. Goodreads doesn't really do audiobooks well either (which was another of my main reasons for the code). The best you can do is interpret page count as a duration rounded to the nearest hour. Often times this number is missing or wrong (ie someone puts in the hardcover page count instead of hours).

It's still not quite right though since I don't shelve books more than once and an audio reread may not counted as audio and therefore skew the number of pages read or if it is counted, it may be skewing my number of hours. I think it's the former, but I need to investigate. I may be forced to shelve books I've both read in text and reread in audio twice for the sake of better statistics. I just wish goodreads handled both audiobooks and rereads better.

Future plans include yearly comparisons (ie how many books/pages/etc I read in 2014 compared to 2015, etc). Maybe I'll tackle that next year unless I'm feeling inspired later this weekend. I suspect now that I have my 2015 report with rereads I won't spend more time on the code until I'm doing 2016's report.

Anyways, here's what this year's report looks like. As you can see I do 33% more books in audio as I do in text. I'm a pretty slow reader and in general I have a lot more audio time.

Year: 2015
Total Books: 110
Rereads: 5

********************
* Format Breakdown *
********************
Total EBOOK Count: 19
Total GRAPHIC_NOVEL Count: 11
Total AUDIO_BOOK Count: 61
Total BOOK Count: 19

*******************
* Genre Breakdown *
*******************
Total MYSTERY Count: 4
Total HORROR Count: 1
Total SCIFI Count: 35
Total HISTORICAL Count: 4
Total STEAMPUNK Count: 2
Total NONFICTION Count: 4
Total FANTASY Count: 60

Average Rating: 3.78
Total 2 Count: 5
Total 3 Count: 24
Total 4 Count: 71
Total 5 Count: 10

Number of Books: 49
Total Pages: 15371
Average Pages: 313.69

Number of Books (Excluding Graphic Novels): 38
Total Pages (Excluding Graphic Novels): 13740
Average Pages (Excluding Graphic Novels): 361.58

Number of Audiobooks: 61
Total Audio Hours: 1281
Average Hours: 21