Wednesday 2 January 2013

Looking Back - Recapping 2012

I've started keeping a list of all the books I read, so it's easier to reflect on the past year.  Note, not all the books I've read have had their reviews posted yet (I've got 6 rough draft/complete reviews on my laptop right now).

So, in 2012 I read 59 books, 2 of which were novellas, 2 'other' (a history book and a psychology book), and 3 collections.  While I did read some graphic novels, apparently I didn't record those so I'm not sure how many I actually read.

Here's the breakdown of the novels:

Science fiction 26
Fantasy 13
Urban Fantasy 3 (though I'll admit I was a bit loose with this category, I'll have to read more of them next year)
Horror 1 (huh, I will have to do better with that next year as well)
Teen 12
    (broken down as 8 SF, 2 F, 1 Horror and 1 other - so once you add the teen books I read 34 SF, 15 fantasy, and 2 horror)
Other 1 (historical fiction)

Gender wise, I read 34 33* books by men, 19 20 books by women and 4 books by a mix (3 collections and one novel with 2 authors)
(*I discovered an author I thought was male is really female.  Pseudonyms, got to love them.)

I read a lot of great books last year, making a top 10 list difficult, but I'll try one.  Here they are in the order in which I read them (as it's easier than trying to rank them by preference).  The links go to my reviews.

Mind Storm - K. M. Ruiz
The Man From Primrose Lane - James Renner
Alchemist of Souls - Anne Lyle
Partials - Dan Wells
Erebos - Ursula Poznanski
Forever War - Joe Haldeman
The Rook - Daniel O'Malley
The Death of Grass - John Christopher
Three Parts Dead - Max Gladstone
Reposession Mambo (aka Repo Man) - Eric Garcia
Kop - Warren Hammond
Knife Sworn - Mazarkis Williams
The Bridge - Jane Higgins (link goes to Indigo website as my review hasn't been published yet)

And you got 3 bonus books (because I don't feel like trying to weed 3 out).

All in all I fulfilled my goal to read more SF, specifically classic SF.  Tomorrow I'll post my reading/blog resolutions for 2013.

3 comments:

Dan said...

Ooh, The Death of Grass. :-) I've been wanting to read A Wrinkle in the Skin for a long time.

RedEyedGhost said...

KOP is way too underrated by the general SFF community. Great book, and I think I enjoy each book more than the one before.

Jessica Strider said...

@ Dan - Thanks for reminding me he's got other books. We only stock the one so I'll have to hunt for the others a bit. But I've heard they're all good.

@ RedEyedGhost - I haven't read much noir SF but I really liked Kop and plan to read the other two books in the series this year (I have high hopes of catching up on a lot of series this year, we'll see how that pans out).