SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

When you're ready, share your year in books! You can see it here:

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i...

or access it from your profile page.

Do you have any other metrics you were watching this year? What was the best thing and what do you want to do more of next year?

Yay stats! My favorite time of the year.

(I will be back with mine when I have finished the last book of 2022.)

My Year in Books

70,513
pages read

196
books read

which agrees with my spreadsheet:

Read Count = 196
Books in Compilations = 28
Total Books Read = 224

however Amazon has me at 263 books read, but I see a lot of duplicates there.

It's that time of year to make sure you like the book review that is your "last review of the year." I just reviewed a read partly so it would displace a DNF that I didn't like at all.

Meredith, that is such an awesome tip! I just read two pretty mediocre books in a row. I need to make sure that December ends with a bang, not a whimper!

Just paying it forward, as I received this helpful tip last year. And, I also just messed up and have another negative review at the end.

I'm a slacker this year.
Only 25,942 recorded pages so far
95/100 books read.

100/100 Books Read (I will probably fit in one or two more before the actual end of the year, but this seemed like a good place to stop and report.)

31,016 pages

Shortest - Catwings by Ursula K LeGuin (40 p.)
Longest - The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan (1,007 p.)

First book - Re-read of Ursula K LeGuin's Catwings series
Final book - World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks (which I ended up enjoying way more than I anticipated, since I'm not really into zombies - happy to end on a positive review)

Wowza, great spread!

Still hoping to hit my goal of 120 books, but sitting at 116 now
https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i...

Shortest: The Law- Dresden novella {Not his best book, but it inspired my mom to start the series.}
Longest: The Priory of the Orange Tree- series opener {read bc of strong recommendation from a coworker}
Least Shelved: Wildside: Old Gods and New Drugs
Average Rating: 3.7

SFF Favorites
Dark Angel-christian fantasy, continuing series
The Steerswoman (series)- science-fantasy brought to us all by Ryan
Destructive Reasoning- scifi, continues series
King's Fall- space opera, end of a series
Something is Killing the Children, Vol. 1- dark fantasy graphic novels, v1-3

Other
When the Corn is Waist High- just a really good mystery
Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World- environmental activism from an indigenous perspective
I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank the Irishman Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa- biography with a local flavor, my mom and irl bff liked it too
You're Doing Great!: And Other Reasons to Stay Alive- family-friendly comedy

Isn't the trick for having the last review of the year be a good one... that you don't publish the review of the last good book you've read until new years eve?

That would work, but you have to remember to do it.

^This

81/80 books read --- so crazy to actually reach that goal - I originally set it as a long shot after seeing a sewing buddy's goal of 180 books.

27,646 pages read
Avg rating = 3.5 as compared to my overall avg of 3.92

Shortest = All Systems Red
Longest = Master Artificer

First = A Demon in Silver
Last = The Quantum Garden

High point of the year was discovering the Murderbot Diaries.

great job!! That's a lot of books and a lot of good ^^

Yay, here is my book year:

117/100 books read

35,783 pages read
Average rating: 4.2

Shortest: 30 pages, Precious Little Things
Longest: 969 pages, The Hands of the Emperor

First review of the year - Exhalation
Last review of the year - The Haunting of Tram Car 015

There have been quite a few highlights in this book year (hurray), so here they are, in no particular order:
Discovering Victoria Goddard and The Hands of the Emperor
A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy
The last book of Terra Ignota series Perhaps the Stars
The Golden Enclaves
The Player of Games
Call of the Bone Ships
Minor Mage and Nettle & Bone by wonderful T. Kingfisher

My year in books:

10,325 pages read (30 books)

Both the shortest (The Worst Witch) & the longest (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) were books I read to my daughter.

Average book length: 344 pages

Most shelved was the aforementioned Potter book, least shelved was The Green Man's Challenge (which makes sense as book deep into a more fringe series -- albeit one I really enjoy!).

Average rating 3.8 stars

Lots of 4 star reads, but the only 5's were Daughter of the Forest, The Worst Witch, & Atomic Habits.

My year in books:

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i...

Books read: 87

Pages read: 21,254 (but actually quite a bit more, I should think because of all the books I didn't actually finish!)

Shortest: Bury Me in Iron and Ivy: A Midwestern Gothic (poetry chapbook) 7p

Longest: Empire of the Vampire 739p

Average book length: 244 - reflects the amount of poetry collections and children's books I read.

Average rating: 4.2 stars - I read a lot of great books and I was generous with 4 stars this year.

For having slowed down considerable in the 2nd half of the year I'm amazed at how many books I did read. I raised my goal to 100 from the 70 I started out with in a couple of stages. Once I get 10 books ahead of schedule I raise the goal by 10, but I also knocked it back to 90 a couple of months ago and still didn't manage. Oh well.

Finishing it out with:


73,488 pages read

204 books read

Necrochip by Liz Williams = Shortest Book = 16 pages
The Old Kingdom Collection by Garth Nix = Longest Book = 1,361 pages
Average book length in 2022 = 360 pages = some short stories and novellas in the mix

143 books, 45637 pages.
69 of the books were SFF.
Longest book The Lord of the Rings, 1193 pages.
Shortest book Herland, 92 pages.

Average rating, 3.9. I think I’ve been getting more generous with my ratings, and I also have a policy of giving extra marks to books I consider “classic”.

I read 188 books this year, which amounted to 55,267 pages. Thank goodness it doesn't figure out how many hours I read my life away 🤔

The shortest was a 14-page story, and the longest was Last Man Out at 664 pages. I had forgotten that book already! That was a good series.

Average book length was 293 pages.

I must have been a glass-half-full reader this year since my average rating was 4.2. I know there was one book that I didn't rate since it was a DNF below my general 25-30% required to rate it. That sucker was at most a .0001 of a single star. That would've brought my average way down :)

GR Year in Books: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i...
TSG Wrap-Up: https://app.thestorygraph.com/wrap-up...

(General TSG discussion here: The StoryGraph)

I finished 56 books in 2022. The shortest was 30 pages and the longest (The Best of Uncanny) 680 pages. The average length of finished books was 274 pages. I also had DivaDiane's problem of starting quite a few more books that I finished so I'm not going to hazard a guess on the total number of pages.

I transitioned to using TSG for book management at the end of the summer and started rating more regularly. Since then my average rating has been 4.04 and I read two books that I rated 5: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches and Station Eternity.

47% of the books that I read last year were fantasy (higher than I expected), 33% were science fiction, 15% were classified science, 15% as LGBTQIA+ (this seems low), and 11% were short story collections.

TSG's mood assessment of my reading this year: "You explored new worlds, got wrapped up in intrigue, and laughed a lot. And most of the stories developed at a steady pace."

I mention this last because it was interesting to contrast this with the mood assessment for SFFBC in the wrap-up linked above: "sffbc explored new worlds, felt all the feels, and went to dark places. And the stories themselves unfolded slowly." So TSG still thinks, based on reader ratings, that the club book choices tend to run dark. The accompanying graph suggests that was particularly true the first half of the year.

Haha yep, I think we talked about the darkness in the TSG thread when it was first started and the group's stats were pretty grim looking XD Nice to know that we stayed true to that in 2022.

Oh - and I read 470 pieces of shorter fiction last year - inspired in part by the Short Fiction Challenge.

I, once again, enjoyed the variety of writers and ideas that I was exposed to while completing this challenge.

That’s awesome, Raucous!!

I read 18 books and 6,889 pages since I started on Goodreads in July. At the same rate over a full year that would be 36 books. But I set my 2023 goal at 24 just to be conservative. I just joined my county library which works with Libby and my Kindle so I should have better access to the books of the month from a library next year. Anyway, I joined Goodreads to have a measure of how many books I am reading and so far it has been good for that purpose.

I'm so glad you're finding what you hoped for, Bobby!

I read 129 books, for 39,175 pages. The shortest was 18 pages and the longest was 624 (the one that GR thinks was my longest book I actually DNF'd), average 303 pages. My average rating was 3.5.

Some stats I keep track of:

Genre:
scifi 32
fantasy 55
mystery 25
other fiction 5
non-fic 6
history 3

anthology/coll 8

Author stats:
female 68
male 29
non-binary 1

authors of color 22
white authors 73

lgbtq+ 14

According to storygraph, I explored new worlds, got wrapped up in intrigue, and felt all the feels. And most of the stories developed at a steady pace.

I read 93 total for 2022 - my initial goal was 100, so I missed it by a few, but considering the fact that I was already 10 books behind by April and stayed behind for the majority of the year, I think I made a decent attempt at making a comeback!

My "Year In Books" page: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i...

Some stats:
30,637 pages read
75 books were audiobook (~80%)
15 were ebooks (~16%)
2 books were physical print books (~2%)

I DNF'd 14 books (though I still count those as "read" for exclusive shelvings/ratings)

51 books were from the library - though that doesn't mean that I didn't own them already. I prefer audio these days, and if I can't get that, then an ebook over print.
5 of my library books were ones that I owned but wanted in a different format.

My year was bookended with disappointments. The first book I rated was a DNF carry-over from 2021, and the last book I finished for the year was one of my most highly anticipated reads, which was a huge disappointment. I finished it, but ended up rating it lower than the DNF I started the year with. Go figure. Expectations, man. They'll get you every time. LOL

5 star - 31
4 star - 21
3 star - 12
2 star - 10
1 star - 19

My average rating across the year was 3.4, which seems surprising considering how many 5 stars I gave. I would have definitely thought that I would have had a higher average.

Genre:
54 books were nonfiction (mostly socio-political)
39 books were fiction (mostly sci-fi or mystery/thrillers)

Author Demographics
Male - 45
- White = 31
- Black = 11
- Asian = 3
- Indigenous = 0
Female - 35
- White = 18
- Black = 12
- Asian = 3
- Indigenous = 0
NB or Transgender - 2
- White = 2
- Black = 0
- Asian = 0
- Indigenous = 0

Still got some work to do on the diversity reading, for sure.

Same disclaimer as always, I don't really have actual goals for any of these, it's just fun to see what happens. Like last year, the things I wanted to keep an eye on were keeping US authors under 50% and translated books to a minimum of 10%.

Format: 90% audio, 10% eye-reads *

Length: 80% novels, 16% short fic, 4% graphic/illustrated

Age: 68% adult, 15% YA, 13%MG, 4% kids

Genre:
20% fantasy
17% scifi
13% other specfic
17% other
5% nonfic
20% mystery/thriller
8% romance

Authors:
12% cis men, 88% not cis men
50.6% white cishet able people, 49.4% people I want to read from **
39% US, 19% UK/Ireland, 3% Australia/New Zealand, 8% Canada, 3% Malaysia/Singapore, 2% Finland, 3% other Nordic countries, 23% other

39% #ownvoices
14% translated + 2% Finnish

* I really do need to get new glasses!
** Ugh so close! If I'd looked at this in December, I could've/would've fixed!

edit: Oops, I had pages%, not book% :)

My 2022 in Books:

86 (goal was 75) books
34,837 pages

Shortest - 20 pages
Longest - 71 hours )))

Average book length - 405 pages

Average rating - 4.3 stars (I usually play it safe and hardly ever read books that I might dislike)

I did my best to write at least some reviews, but still struggle with that part. I'd like to be able to write smart and meaningful reviews more easily (as a result of a better understanding of what I read, of course).

This year was my absolute record in the number of books read, especially if I take into account how many of them were 700+ pages. I'm amazed and excited to break the record )))

My GR 2022 in Books page - https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i...

Ooh, I'm such a sucker for statistics! Strangely I'd never thought to keep track of my reading stats before Goodreads though...

Last year (coming to GR in the middle of the year) I set a goal of 50 books and GR says I read 57 but some of those were short stories so I'm not sure how far they count. Either way, I came close.

I read 20,805 pages. Apparently I averaged at 365 - a page for every day of the year!

The longest book at 1,221 pages was The Quincunx and although I kind of enjoyed it, I'll be honest - it was a struggle.

The shortest book (or short story if you will), How the Crown Prince of Jupiter Undid the Universe, or, The Full Fruit of Love's Full Folly was 20 pages and I would 100% recommend it to everyone here.

My average rating was 3.1 which feels like a fair reflection of last year. There were some standout books but they were the exceptions rather than the rule.

My first review of the year - and first ever review on GR! - was for Servant of the Dragon. The series seems to get a lot of mixed feedback. For me it's not great, but it is fun, if you know what I mean?

And my *fanfare* Book of The Year 2022!!! was Spinning Silver. It was one of those books that you think you'll like but don't expect to love quite as much as you end up doing. I just adored the imagery and the folklore/fairytale elements and I thought Novik wove them into her world in such a realistic way. I haven't really stopped thinking about it since.

Next year I definitely want to gather a lot more reading stats, particularly around the diversity of authors I read across different genres. I already have a spreadsheet and a large amount of excitement! My biggest challenge though will be to clear some space on my TBR bookcase so that I can justify buying some of the many books I have been recommended here. Yay for another year of GR joy!

Beth wrote: "I already have a spreadsheet and a large amount of excitement!"

This is how most great things begin!

a great wrap up, excited for your spreadsheet deets, Beth!

The Basics
Books read: 33
Pages read: 11,830
Average pages: 358
Average rating 3.4
Paper: 17 (51.5%) Audio: 16 (49.5%)
DNF: 5 (a new record!)

Not counted
Manga volumes/Graphic Novels: 162
(what can I say? I love comics.)
Short books (novellas, et al): 4

Author Demographics (to my knowledge)
By men: 8 (24%) By women: 25 (76%)
White: 16 (48%) PoC: 17 (52%)

Misc.
Five-star reads:
Piranesi
Brideshead Revisited
Abandoned America: The Age of Consequences

Series completed:
The Murderbot Diaries (to date)
The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System

I love writing reviews, particularly when I'm conflicted about a book, because it helps me work out what my feelings are about it.

I love spreadsheets, too! I didn't consult my book spreadsheet for any of this, though, because I'm tracking different things with it.

Beth wrote: "Abandoned America: The Age of Consequences"

Oooh, it's like The Proper People - in book form! I will have to check that out. :D

I came across Abandoned America first, so Proper People is Abandoned America in YouTube video form. ;)

Beth wrote: "I came across Abandoned America first, so Proper People is Abandoned America in YouTube video form. ;)"

LOL, nice. I wish my library had it, I would totally read it.

Wow, people really do organise their reading! Spreadsheets and everything. I haven't gotten there, yet... I did begin spreadsheets for my Korean (and Chinese) drama series, though! 😁

So, necro-posting away...

Last year, I read 54 books, with 17,994 pages between them - at least the ones I added to Goodreads. I don't add every book I read... and there are magazines, too! That counts as words and pages. My average book lenth was 333 pages. Nice number!

The shortest book was
Longest was, of course, . This was also the most-shelved book by others on Goodreads that I read. Nice to know.

My average rating was 3.7, and the highest-rated on this site was The Way of Kings, Part 2.
I rated highest , at 5 stars.
Also A Beautiful Constraint: How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It's Everyone's Business, Winterlight, The 5-Minute Salad Lunchbox: Happy, Healthy & Speedy Salads to Make in Minutes (it had good recipes and was well set-out, and I used several of them, more than once), Words of Radiance, and The Way of Kings, Part 1, all of which I gave 4 stars. Some good books in the year!

I don't actually keep any statistics of my reading, but it would be interesting to look at percentages of subjects (especially within the fantasy/fiction) or genres (non-fiction, since the fiction is all fantasy). Who knows, maybe I'll keep a spreadsheet next year, or the rest of this year?

I encourage all your exploration, Tamara! :)