Every year since 2014, I’ve tried to do an audit of my reading, as well as a list of my favorite books of the year. It’s my way of keeping myself accountable to my goals of reading at least 30% books by authors of color and including good LGBTQ representation as well, though I don’t have a specific goal there.
2024 Overview
This is my fourth year splitting out the digital library loans (Libby and hoopla) from the physical books. My total library reading including those was 80%, back to 2022 levels. I did a fair amount of reading from Netgalley this summer, and also purchased a few more books for myself. Audiobooks are up slightly for the second year in a row. Ebook reading doubled, partly with reading on Libby and partly from purchased and Netgalley books.
What I Read
I read a little more fantasy and twice as much science fiction as last year! My adult reading went from 16% up to nearly 24%, with a corresponding drop in Middle Grade.
The Authors
Sigh! A big increase in reading by white authors, Just for fun, a map of where the authors are from – 16 different countries, two more than last year. I read significantly more books by men this year – 18% as opposed to last year’s 12%. I still gained a percentage point in reading by nonbinary authors. The pink slice is Female-Nonbinary partnerships, representing 4 books.
The Characters
Just ouch. This is the worst I’ve done with diverse reading in years. I’ll definitely need to work on that this year!This graph looks at counts of books with diversity besides racial. I counted religion if the MCs practiced any religion besides Christianity, Economic if they were low income, Ability for physical disabilities. Neurodiversity includes main characters with ADHD, autism, anxiety, etc. As usual, economic diversity is really common in fantasy books.
I’ve been doing these graphs over ten years now – here they are from 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014. Maybe 2025 will be the year I learn how to do graphs pulling from multiple pages of a spreadsheet to do some composite graphs. As always, if you know of any speculative fiction books that would help me round out the diversity of my reading, please let me know! And if you have thoughts on these stats or other things you’d like to see, let me know in the comments.
alibrarymama 