SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

35,154 pages read
128 books
Shortest- 8 pages, Compulsory, Martha Wells.
Longest- 630 pages, The Aeronaut's Windlass, Jim Butcher.
Average length 274 pages
Average rating 3.8

Some other stats I track for myself:
new books 18
used 22
e-books (not from library) 22
library books 51

DNFs 4

Audiobooks 18

scifi 30
fantasy 75.5
mystery 17.5
other fiction 1
non-fiction 4
history 1

Anthologies/collections 5
Graphic novels 7

Me in 2023:
151 books
13,613 pages read
1,189.62 hours listened

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i...
shortest: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
longest: Super Powereds: Year 4
average rating: 3.6
top moods (according to StoryGraph): Adventurous, Mysterious, Dark, Funny
70% audio books, 30% eye reading

Genre Stats:
52% fantasy
21% scifi
4% science-fantasy
9% nonfiction
14% generic fiction
21 YA books
11 MG books
4 dramas

Favorites
Best Overall: The Labors of Hercules Beal

Fantasy
YA: The Monstrumologist, interesting creature & good character development
Tress of the Emerald Sea, light heart-warming fantasy
Paladin's Grace, a romance I didn't hate with great character arcs
Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined, hilarious tellings of classic Greek myths with great narration

Scifi
YA: #Murdertrending, a really interesting concept executed well that kept me engaged through the whole book, rose above the book's expectations
The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, fun read with pictures that added to the books in a creative way
Valor's Choice, teaching me to not judge a book by it's cover, great world-building, witty dialog
The Case of the Damaged Detective
The Singularity Trap, book has stayed with me and I found myself being thoughtful about the mc's dilemma

NonFiction
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, good nonfiction
God Never Gives Up on You: What Jacob's Story Teaches Us About Grace, Mercy, and God's Relentless Love, all the feels and a little knowledge too

Series started and finished: Super Powereds: Year 1, Digital Divide
Series finished: The Color of Magic
36 new series started, not all of which I plan to continue
20 series finished or read up to date (#WaitingForNextBook2Publish)
11 rereads

I ended up reading 127 books this year.

According to The StoryGraph, my top book "moods" were adventurous, mysterious, emotional, reflective, and dark.

My reading was 96% fiction and 4% nonfiction - unusual for me, as I'm usually at 10-15% nonfiction. 25% of my books were audiobooks.

My top genres were fantasy, science fiction, LGBTQIA+, and mystery. My average rating was 4 stars, and I had no 1 star books this year! Here's to a 2024 year of reading filled with equally excellent books. :-)

My stats:

- 8,552 pages, 78 books
- Shortest book - 2 pages, "The Pale Man"
- Longest book - 5,999 pages, FEED
- Average length - 109 pages
- Average rating - 3.4

Contrary to my book stat, I found it very difficult to read this year. My head was rarely in the right space, unfortunately. This means most of my "books" were short stories and novellas.

For those interested in group stats, here are two ways of looking at what SFFBC read in 2023!


GR 2023 Year in Books: https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_i...

TSG 2023 Wrap-Up: https://app.thestorygraph.com/wrap-up...

I only started reading (or more listening to audiobooks) in my former way the last month, so 2023 was less books than usual.

My stats look like this:

- 59 books
- 27162 pages
- shortest book Lost Mine of Phandelver with 64 pages which I read to learn how to DM DnD sessions
- longest book Words of Radiance with 1087 pages - I re-read some of the Stormlight Archive books each year, cause they are my go-to comfort reads
- average book length 460 pages
- average rating 3.9 - bumped up due to some great reads I had in the last month

Stand out favourites this year were 3 Fantasy books (and here I always thought I was more of a SF person - must be the age ...)

City of Last Chances, House of Open Wounds and A Day of Fallen Night


Dissappointing were 2 hyped books (Fantasy as well): Fourth Wing and The Will of the Many - the later not so much, and probably only because I expected so much more from the hype.

Goal for this year is to read more SF again :)

Same disclaimer as always, I don't really have actual goals for any of these, it's just fun to see what happens. The only things I keep an eye on are US authors under 50% and around 10% translated (not written in English). All stats are a little weird this year, I read so many children's books.

Format: 74% audio, 26% eye-reads

Length: 67% novels, 26% graphic/illustrated, 7% short fic

Age: 45% adult, 13% YA, 16%MG, 26% kids

Genre:
25% children's
20% fantasy
18% scifi/specfic
13% mystery/thriller
10% other
8% nonfic
6% romance

Authors:
18% cis men, 82% not cis men
52% white cishet able people, 48% people I want to read from
33% US, 22% UK/Ireland, 5% Canada, 3% Australia/New Zealand, 2% Malaysia/Singapore, 17% Finland, 4% other Nordic countries, 14% other

35% #ownvoices
6% translated + 16% Finnish

I just recently discovered this website called www.myyearinbooks.com where you'll see your yearly progess in the same fashion as Spotify Wrapped. It comes with the total number of books, the minutes you've racked up all around, and what your personality suggests from your reading progress. It's neat and fun

-----------------------------------------‐--‐-----‐--‐--

Now, let's dive into what you read this year!

You read 36 books in 2023, which adds up to 12,591 pages and about 21,405 minutes. Wow!

Your top genres/categories:

• You broadened your horizons with 18 new nonfiction reads.
• You journeyed through 10 strange and wondrous fantastical worlds.
• You ventured into the future, deep space, and the limits of technology through 6 science fiction novels.

Your top author this year was Brandon Sanderson. You read 4 books by this author, making you in the top 5% of fans (maybe?). These books include:

•Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive, #3)
•Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, #2)
•Edgedancer (The Stormlight Archive #2.5)
•The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1)

As the seasons changed, so did your reading habits. Your biggest reading month was March, with 6 books. Way to go!

Looking back on the year, let's celebrate a few of your five star reads! These are just some of the books you loved this year:

•1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four (Collins Classics)
•Meditations
•The Anthropocene Reviewed
•Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, #2)
•The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1)

What a year for books! If there was just one way to describe your taste in books this year, it would be 'adventurous'.

———————————————————————————

You could try :)

Ivan, that's a pretty cool thing, but probably better for people with fewer books. It only noted about half of mine. My word is "effervescent" which I love.

Goodreads says:

142,311 pages read
1,347 books read

Average book length in 2023 105 pages
I Spy a Lion by Lucy Micklethwait Shortest Book
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky Longest Book

The Hobbit or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien Most Shelved
12 Hacks to Worry Less by Honor Head Least Shelved

My average rating for 2023 3.5

Pebbles and the Biggest Number by Joey Benun
Highest Rated on Goodreads 4.96 average

Love Is Powerful by Heather Dean Brewer My first review of the year 5*
... deserves to be on every library's display and in every reader's heart. True story. Love for *everyone,* we're all one family of humans. ...

I got eclectic for reading taste.

I got effervescent.

My final totals ended up being:
182 books read
56,267 pages

Some other random stats:
Genre breakdown:
Romance - 0.6%
Non fiction - 1.1%
Memoir - 1.7%
Classics - 2.8%
Historical Fiction - 5.5%
Contemporary - 10.5%
Science Fiction - 11.6%
Mystery/Thriller - 15.5%
Fantasy - 17.1%
Horror - 33.7%

Format:
Physical books: 67.1%
Audiobooks: 24.4%
Ebooks: 8.5%

New to me Authors - 66.3%
Not new to me: 32%
Old and new (from Anthologies/story collections) - 1.7%

Age groups:
YA - 3.3%
MG - 14.9%
Adult - 81.8%

About 71% of authors were American which means about 29% were not (British and Canadian authors make up about 16% of that pie).

Everything is slightly skewed by the fact that my daughter and I read 12 Goosebumps and 5 books by Pseudonymous Bosch. If I take those out Horror drops by several points and the percentage of American authors read drops by a few points too. New to me authors shoots up to 72%.

It was a good year! Hoping 2024 is good too :)

It also labeled me effervescent, but honestly what does that mean as a book taste adjective. I need s translation!

The group was also effervescent.


Your top genres/categories:

- You journeyed through 22 strange and wondrous fantastical worlds.

- You ventured into the future, deep space, and the limits of technology through 13 science fiction novels.

- Adolescence is a tumultuous, challenging time, and you welcomed that complexity through reading 5 young adult books.

- Djinn City (what?!)

Melanie wrote: "It also labeled me effervescent, but honestly what does that mean as a book taste adjective. I need s translation!"

I hope they added some new features in the future lol. But the PNG tho, it kinda looks promising tbh.

SFFBC wrote: "The group was also effervescent.


Your top genres/categories:

- You journeyed through 22 strange and wondrous fantastical worlds.

- You ventured into the future, deep space, and the limits of ..."

Well, that was out of nowhere haha

I took Ivan's challenge and checked out MyYearInBooks.com . Here are my results:

You read 98 books in 2023, which adds up to 12,833 pages and about 21,816 minutes. Wow!

Your top genres/categories:

You journeyed through 55 strange and wondrous fantastical worlds.

You ventured into the future, deep space, and the limits of technology through 28 science fiction novels.

You braved the monsters hiding under your bed (and elsewhere!) with 19 horror stories.

Your top author this year was Judy Blume. You read 3 books by this author, making you in the top 5% of fans (maybe?).[HAHA! I actually only read 2]

These books include:
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
It's Not The End of The World, Then Again Maybe I Won't, and Deenie [This is an omnibus and I only read Deenie from it this year, but finished the book, so I counted it]
Deenie

As the seasons changed, so did your reading habits. Your biggest reading month was December, with 13 books. Way to go!

Looking back on the year, let's celebrate a few of your five star reads! These are just some of the books you loved this year:

Starling House
The Life and Adventures of Santa Clause
Animal Tales from India
When the Angels Left the Old Country
The Potter of Bones

What a year for books! If there was just one way to describe your taste in books this year, it would be effervescent.

***
GR on the other hand says I've read 99 books and 19k+ pages read (Most of those were actually audio).
Average book length: 195 pages
Average rating: 4.4 (whoa, I need to rein in the 5 stars!)
Favorite books this year:
The Spear Cuts Through Water
The Mirrorwood
Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
The Mere Wife
Mickey7/Antimatter Blues
When the Angels Left the Old Country
Assassin's Quest (reread)

***
The Story Graph says:
moods: adventurous, emotional, dark, mysterious, lighthearted and reflective. Quite a lot of range!
repeat authors: Una MacCormack, John Scalzi, Judy Blume and Edgar Allen Poe with 2 each.
genres and categories:
Fantasy - 37
Science Fiction - 22
Children's - 12
Classics - 11
LGBTQIA+ - 9
Young Adult - 9
Middle Grade - 8
Horror - 8
Fiction 95%, non-fiction 5%
Format: Audio 52%, print/ebooks 48% (I'm not paying attention to the division between print and digital because I didn't make sure I chose the right format except for audio)

So I went through my 2023, and here's my stats and thoughts:

I read 123 books last year, which was a bit of a milestone, as I hadn't broken 100 books since 2015.

Here's how those break down:
Gender
Male Author: 41 (after repeat authors removed - I read the entire Expanse series (again) by James SA Corey this year, and 2 books each by Grady Hendrix, and S.A. Cosby)

Female Author: 60 (after repeat authors removed - I read two books each by Imani Perry and Claire Keegan)

NB/Trans Author: 2 (that I knew of as I was going through my list)

Ethnicity
White: 84
WM: 46 / WF: 36 / WNBT: 2

Black: 26
BM: 11 / BF: 15

Asian: 8
AM: 1 / AF: 7

Latinx/Hispanic: 5
LHM: 1 / LHF: 4

I read 7 books about/featuring LGBTQ themes and 1 about disability.

MISC.
I read 51 nonfiction books.
I DNF'd 14 books.
I listened to 107 audiobooks, and only read 3 books in print.

===============================
Results from MyYearInBooks.com:

You read 33 books in 2023, which adds up to 7,967 pages and about 13,544 minutes. Wow!

Your top genres/categories:

You broadened your horizons with 16 new nonfiction reads.
You braved the monsters hiding under your bed (and elsewhere!) with 12 horror stories.
You spent time unraveling clues in 9 intricate mystery novels.

As the seasons changed, so did your reading habits. Your biggest reading month was December, with 20 books. Way to go!

Looking back on the year, let's celebrate a few of your five star reads! These are just some of the books you loved this year:

What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions (What If?, #2)
Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America
Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream
In the Dream House
Tell Me I'm Worthless

What a year for books! If there was just one way to describe your taste in books this year, it would be pensive.

===============================
Oddly enough, I think that MYIB picked out a really good selection of books I loved this year, and I concur with their description of my taste, lol, but it's a little concerning that it only counted 33 read. Where's the other 90? >_>

DivaDiane wrote: "I took Ivan's challenge and checked out MyYearInBooks.com . Here are my results:

You read 98 books in 2023, which adds up to 12,833 pages and about 21,816 minutes. Wow!

Your top genres/categories..."

That challenge said I'd read 0 books in 2023 = not true as Goodreads now says I read 214 books in 2023

Just guessing but are they maybe looking at date added instead of date read? Mod account got the right number, because the books are added as we start reading, there's no historical TBR.

maybe they're looking at reviews? I don't review much

I don't think either of those are right, at least not for me. I added more than 80 books to GR just in December, and I review everything. Of the books I read (and reviewed) in 2023, 90 were added in 2023.

I have no idea what they are basing their count on!

Becky wrote: "I don't think either of those are right, at least not for me...."

Agree. :(

For MYIB I sorted my list for date read in reverse order and plugged in that URL. It did pretty well because GR says I read 99 books this year.

I tried that, and even used my specific Year-2023 shelf, but still got the same result. 90 missing books. :(

Oh well!

Read: 148

BIPOC-70

White- 78

Children Picture Books: 36

Middle Grade/YA: 15

Nonfiction: 9

Short Stories: 8

Fantasy/Magical Realism: 69

Science Fiction: 28

Some literary, mystery, horror were also sprinkled in.
_________________________________________________

From the myyearinbooks link above:

You read 148 books in 2023, which adds up to 38,919 pages and about 66,162 minutes. Wow!

Your top genres/categories:

You journeyed through 83 strange and wondrous fantastical worlds.

You explored different facets of the past in 30 historical fiction tales.

You ventured into the future, deep space, and the limits of technology through 28 science fiction novels.

Your top author this year was Fonda Lee. You read 6 books by this author, making you in the top 5% of fans (maybe?). These books include:

Jade Shards (The Green Bone Saga, #0.75)
The Jade Setter of Janloon (The Green Bone Saga, #0.5)
Jade City (The Green Bone Saga, #1)
Untethered Sky
Jade Legacy (The Green Bone Saga, #3)
Jade War (The Green Bone Saga, #2)

As the seasons changed, so did your reading habits. Your biggest reading month was October, with 18 books. Way to go!

What a year for books! If there was just one way to describe your taste in books this year, it would be daydreaming.