Reading Records: An Informal Analysis of My Reading

July 20, 2016 |

I’ve been tracking my reading on Goodreads since 2008. (Unlike Kelly, I haven’t been tracking my reading in print before that, but I wish I had!) My reading tastes have changed a lot since then – I’ve focused more narrowly on young adult, but I’ve also branched out genre-wise and read a lot more contemporary and nonfiction. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how my reading has evolved, and I thought it would be fun to put together an informal analysis based on my Goodreads shelves. What have you noticed about your reading tastes over the years? Has Goodreads – or some other method of tracking – helped you identify your personal trends?

The number of books I read has definitely spiked. I read about 140 in 2014, which was the first year I was on Round 1 for Cybils, but the increase in my reading really began in 2010, which is when I started blogging in earnest here at Stacked. Blogging helps me read more, which in turn helps me blog more. Lucky me and lucky you! I’ve read a total of 753 books since 2008, give or take a few re-reads and missed records.

Since I started tracking my reading, I’ve read 184 adult books, 535 young adult books, and 97 books for children (which includes middle grade and picture books). I don’t actually record a whole lot of the picture books I read, so that number is likely higher – but these numbers also include random titles I added that I read prior to 2008, which includes a lot of children’s books. The data is not perfect. Still, these numbers aren’t surprising at all.

This graph shows how my YA reading has increased over the years. 2014 is a bit of an outlier since I read just a ton of books that year, period, but the overall trend is definitely upward.

This graph shows what percentage of my total yearly reading was spent on YA vs non-YA. I think it gives a clearer idea of how my reading really has skewed more toward YA as the years have passed, starting at about half in the first two years and gradually increasing each year. The exception is 2015, when I went back and re-read a ton of adult fiction that I loved years ago.

A lot of my reading has included non-traditional formats – audiobooks and graphic novels. Almost half of my reading is one of these two formats, and they’ve both seen an overall increase in the share of my reading over the years.

I credit the Cybils with significantly increasing my audiobook reading over the past two years. Also of note is that 2016 is about half over but I’ve already almost matched my audiobooks from last year!

I really started getting into graphic novels in 2010 and my interest in them has been pretty sustained since then (I don’t know what happened in 2012). I haven’t picked up many this year yet, but I’ve a feeling that 2016 number will be higher by December.

The figures that make up this chart include anything I added that I read prior to 2008, which is about 86 additional books. They were too tricky to eliminate from my genre count, but I don’t think they skew the data that much. This was a somewhat surprising graph for me. I consider myself a pretty avid romance reader, but it only makes up 5% of the books I recorded on Goodreads. A lot of my romance reading happened when I was a teenager, and not many of those books made it to my Goodreads account. The fantasy and science fiction, though – that’s not a surprise at all.

I did the star rating graph this way because I think it kind of looks like a grading bell curve. Most of my ratings are in the 3-star territory, with the fewest receiving 1 star and 5 stars. I’ve only given 15 books one star, and most of those are books I read several years ago. If a book is looking like it’s going to be a one-star read nowadays, I usually set it down and it goes on my “unfinished” shelf instead.

Tracking My Reading & Tracking Myself

May 9, 2016 |

I got a really interesting pitch email the other day. It wasn’t what was being pitched, but rather, one of the means in which I could highlight the book: I could share it on Instagram.

I’ve become a big fan of taking pictures of what I’m currently reading. I use it both on Instagram, as well as on Litsy (where I’m simply @kelly). Instagram because it’s available on the web; Litsy, since it’s a community limited for the time being to iOS mobile users. The photos are not just about the book. They’re also about where I am right now, in my life, in my space, and the entire atmosphere of reading. Photos capture something more to the reading experience than an update on Twitter or Pinterest or Goodreads or right here on STACKED could.

These images, these ways of sharing, are also very public. There’s intentionality in how I choose to share; I highlight things I like in images, talk about books on social media after I’ve finished them and mulled them over, and I am deliberate in the ways and hows. I like doing it, plan to continue doing it, and cannot imagine a reading life without it.

But despite the new technology and the fun there is to be had on each, I still track my reading in a very personal, private, long standing way: I keep a list of books I’ve read in a spiral-bound notebook.

The notebook on the bottom I began in 2001. That was my sophomore/junior year of high school. I picked up the habit of doing it after my mom began doing it herself as a way to remember what books she’d read. Rather than keeping a “to read” list, I began keeping a “read” list.

It’s weird to look at this list now, 15 years later. I don’t remember reading Harry Potter back then. It mustn’t have left a huge impact, since I didn’t pick up (most of) the rest of the series until well into college. But I do remember why I picked up Ishmael — it was sitting on a bookshelf of a friend’s when we snuck to her house between the end of school and badminton practice and I remember thinking a book about an ape sounded interesting. I remember picking up Innocence and then needing to pick up Mendelsohn’s other book immediately after. Fifteen years later, I still recall the visceral reactions I had to Innocence and how much I loved it.

And there’s no shaking the vivid memory of picking up Push and not just reading it, but being moved by it and immediately seeking the chance to talk about it with fellow book lovers (who, yes, at the time were on the internet — we had a whole teen community of book lovers and writers).

I lost this notebook for a period of time, somewhere between the end of high school in 2003 and the beginning of college in the fall of that same year. I picked up another notebook, same brand, same size, but with a pink cover. From the beginning of college until this very day, this is where I’ve written down every single book I’ve finished.

Between those lines are the memories of the books in some pieces, and in others, it’s the memory of the where, the when, and the why. I read so many debut YA novels in 2011, which is reflected; in 2015, my reading went a little broader, though was still mostly YA. I didn’t snap a shot of this year’s pages, but of the 40ish books I’ve finished so far, it’s almost an even mix of adult novels and non-fiction with YA.

I remember spending a long time on that first day of 2015 debating what my first read should be and choosing my all-time favorite book. I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed then.

I’ve cut back on reviewing here at STACKED, and I’ve also cut back quite a bit on Goodreads. But I still take notes on things, and I still keep my read list up. I’ve added new things to the mix, ways to talk about books with people in a way that will compel them to read it or pair it up with the reader who it’ll be the right book for. Nothing, though, no matter how fun and exciting, will ever take the private part of my handwritten reading notebook away from me. In no way are the stories of the books I read all the kind I need or want to share because they’re for me and me alone.

It’s a reflection of me, my growth, my thinking, a snapshot of time in my life, that I could never capture in any sort of digital world. What began as a simple way of making sure I don’t read something I’ve already read has bloomed into this incredibly personal way of seeing my life and my development as a thinker.

Tell me: do you keep a read list? Do you keep anything of your reading life private, just for you? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Elements of A Novel That Work For Me

February 15, 2016 |

One of the things that I did as a librarian was reader’s advisory, and I’ve said it here and elsewhere repeatedly that it was one of my favorite aspects of the job. Being able to help someone find their next great read is awesome, but the real joy for me was digging into the actual ideas they were trying to express to me in words that didn’t always come out clearly. By that I mean, it’s hard to sometimes explain exactly why a particular book is one you love; you can mention that it’s the language, but what does that really mean? Are you there for literary, pretty prose? Are you there for unique use of language? Are you there for something cut-and-dry and straightforward?

Ferreting those things out for others is a skill that’s learned more as it’s practiced. It’s a marrying of knowledge of books, as well as knowledge of what it is that’s appealing to readers about those books.

Something I never put a whole lot of thought into until the last couple of years, though, was what the triggers were for me when it comes to the sort of books I know I’ll love or find enjoyable to read (because, of course, you can enjoy reading a book and walk away not really having liked it since sometimes the experiential nature of reading is really what you’re after). I know there are certain plot points that work for me — words like “juvenile detention” and “ballet” and “road trip” and “haunted house” are just a few descriptive phrases that ring my bells — but there are other things that really appeal to me in reading. Those are far less easy to have conveyed on jacket copy, and they’re even harder to tease out when looking at those books you’ve loved and are looking for similarities between sometimes very different types of books.

What I found as I did this wasn’t surprising to me, but the method in which I came about discovering the elements of a book I love was. Rather than looking for things I liked, I thought through what books didn’t work for me, what my criticisms were of those books, and looked for similarities among them; in some cases, thinking about the opposite element as the one I criticized opened up a path toward thinking about what I liked.

What’s neat about this, aside from really discovering what it is you like, is that it’s a great door to open toward helping you push past your normal reading comfort zone. Teasing out elements that appeal to you in this way allows you to see past genre or categories of book and instead focus on the very things you love in a reading experience, period.

Here are four elements of reading I love and am able to now put words to, thanks to trying out this exercise. I would love to hear what you find if you do something similar — and I’d love to know, too, what sort of methodology you used to arrive at a favorite element or two of books.

Humor, Especially Dark

I’m going to have to write at length about why we discredit and belittle funny at some point, since I think so often, we’re eager to look at books, discuss their critical merits through the lens of morality/lessons/elements to take away, and forget that what some readers want in a book is something that they enjoy the experience of reading. Being able to enjoy a book as a thing in and of itself is hugely important, and we undervalue that so much, especially with younger readers.

Perhaps this is why I love funny books. I want to laugh. I want to smile. I want to read something that is cute, even if it’s a bit over the top. The thing for me is that the humor has to be natural and voice-y; in other words, I don’t necessarily reach out for “funny” books; I find books that weave the humor into them to be what’s appealing. Amy Spalding is an excellent example of this, as her books sometimes leave me in tears with how funny her characters are, even though they aren’t trying to be.

My favorite horror movies are those which are darkly humorous, and this same appeal factor is one I love in my books. Give me something twistedly funny. I don’t want to read about hard topics that are made funny; rather, I want to be thrown into a bit of an absurd situation and be able to laugh my way through, always wondering if I am supposed to be laughing or not. Kate Alender’s books are a great example of this in YA.

Tight, Short Prose

I’m not wary of long books, but I know my sweet spot is in a book that makes tremendous impact with few words. The tighter the prose, the more interested I am. How can an author tell a power-packed story in 230 pages?

A great example of this is Stephanie Kuehn’s book. She’s able to do so much with her plot and her characters in very few words — Charm and Strange is 216 pages, believe it or not.

Complex Moralities and Characters

This is pretty fitting with the first two elements, in that I’ve found complex characters and moralities play out well with humor, especially the dark variety, and it’s through the tight, short prose that these particularly appeal-y elements stand out for me.

I don’t need happy endings. I don’t need likable characters. Rather, I want a book that makes me think, and I love books that make me question how I feel. I don’t care what it is I’m supposed to want from a book, but rather, I want to bring my own sensibilities, my own beliefs, and my own ideas to the page as much as I want ideas and characters presented to me in rich ways.

I’ve heard it said before that books are a conversation between the reader and the story, and that’s an image I quite like. You can’t divorce yourself from what you’re reading, however you’re reading it and for whatever reason you’re reading it, so in a lot of ways, complex moralities and characters speak to me because they fascinate me personally.

I note Kuehn here again as an excellent example. A few others include Emily Hainsworth (especially Take The Fall, which is so Twin Peaks-esque, it’s impossible not to think about the complexities the whole way through), Melina Marchetta, Louise O’Neill, Malinda Lo, and Nova Ren Suma.

Everyday Magic

Could this be filed under “magical realism?” Maybe. But I think magical realism is a genre in its own right, and what I call everyday magic extends beyond that a little bit. I love the sense of wonder there is in reading a book and questioning what is real as in real-in-our-world and what is real as in real-in-that-world-but-set-in-our-world. In other words, there are books that are set in a world we live in, that are essentially of the realistic fiction variety, but they have a little bit of magic to them.

Nova Ren Suma is an obvious example here, but I also include Laura Ruby’s Bone Gap, Samantha Mabry’s upcoming A Fierce and Subtle Poison, Sarah McCarry’s writing, Infandous by Elana K Arnold. There’s also a fabulous adult novel with great YA appeal by Silvia Moreno-Garcia called Signal to Noise which weaves this everyday magic into the story in a way that checked all of my boxes.

What’s neat is teasing these pieces out shows how much they’re interrelated, really. Everyday magic happens through short and tight prose because that world is our world, but through subtle differences, the magic emerges. It also provides the catalyst for complex characters and moralities.

It’s also worth noting when you look at the books that fall beneath the elements of a story you love, they aren’t always fluid nor are they great read alikes to one another. I’d never connect Kuehn’s work with Hainsworth’s or Lo’s, and yet, they all “fit” under the umbrella of complex characters and moralities. This is such a great way to see past my own edges of reading and understand that going beyond my preferred genres or categories of books really helps me discover voices that are doing the very things I love so much.

Tell me yours! I want to know what elements you love, what books fall beneath them, and if there was any special way you figured this out.

Intentional Reading

January 4, 2016 |

A few years ago, I wrote about how I dislike annual reading goals. The act of setting up a number or goal in reading as a yearly resolution feels to me like making reading work, rather than an activity worth enjoying. That’s not to say there’s not value in it — for many readers, there definitely is — but for me, being intentional in my reading brings meaning to my reading life.

Intentional reading is being selective with my reading. I’ve been doing the reading thing long enough now to know what phrases or descriptions ring my bells. I also have a good sense of where I can improve in my reading and I create strategies for getting better. Over the last few years, for example, I recognized how important reading more women and more people of color was; I set the intention of only spending my money on books written by women or people of color. By setting that intention, I work hard to seek out those books, many of which I may otherwise never have discovered, and I’m surrounded by them. If I need to read a book, I have so many fantastic options in my home.

Last fall, I made a decision about my reading life. It was something I needed to do. I’d sort of hinted at needing to change things up in the summer, but I hadn’t yet figured out how to go about it or what it was that I needed to do. When your reading life and your work life are so intimately and intricately tied, it’s hard to tease one of them apart from the other and separate the things you know you should be reading for work-related reasons from those you want to read for you and only you. I love talking about books intelligently and I love being able to be part of a conversation about books that are sparking discussion within the YA and broader book community. But I’m also not, nor have I ever been, a reader who needs to be up on the latest, greatest, or big-budget titles. I rely on reviews by others of those titles to help guide my decisions on them.

I was intrigued by Annika’s post about having only read books by women since 2013. I love when people suss out patterns in their reading and then they go at those things with full force. That’s an intention. But more, when the comments on Annika’s post turned really bothersome — and I moderated those comments for a few days, so I saw some of the worst of it — I decided that taking on a similar intention in my reading would be worthwhile. Why did a woman choosing to read only women make people so angry? What is so scary about choosing to read only women?

Leila answers that question about the challenge in a way that I didn’t know how to articulate while also offering more compelling reasons for taking part in the intentional reading of women’ stories:

And, as I watched that all play out, rather than scaring me off, all of the garbage levelled at that essay—and, of course, at the woman who wrote it—resulted in the realization that this year, every single book that I’ve read that I have connected on a kindred-spirit level has been a book written by a woman. It made me realize that lately, while I haven’t felt particularly welcome in a community that I used to consider welcoming, that I have felt embraced and affirmed and heard and challenged—in a positive way—by those same authors, in those same books.

It made me realize that at the moment, I want to surround myself with women’s voices. That I want to put my energy into listening to them, engaging with them, learning from them, and amplifying them.

I began reading only women in November. Knowing my bookshelves are packed with books by women and people of color, I’ve had so many outstanding options to choose from. Sure, I’ve already missed out on reading a few books I’d been looking forward to, and I know there are more books I’m going to miss out on reading in this coming year. I’ve felt my heart sink opening up packages and finding ARCs by favorite male authors, knowing that I wouldn’t be reading them this year. But the beauty of books and reading is when you set an intention like reading only women, books written by men do not disappear. I can pick up the books I’ve been eager to read in 2017. Or 2018. Or 2019. Or 2020. It doesn’t matter. They aren’t going to vanish into the abyss; they’ll be there when I am ready to pick them up. With the way technology works, even books that might not otherwise have a long shelf life can stick around infinitely thanks to eformats. Likewise, talking about good books never gets tiring and it’s never out of style. Backlist discussions matter as much as, if not even more than, talking about titles the weeks leading up to or immediately after their release dates.

By intentionally limiting the books I’m reading, I’m discovering how my reading is expanding. It seems counterintuitive, but now, rather than sticking to a certain type or genre of book, I’m reaching a little further. I’m excited to read more memoirs by women. I’ve always wanted to do that, but with the intention of reading only women, now I am permitting myself to reach for those books when I may have otherwise kept pushing them off in exchange for something else more timely or more related to what I feel like I should be talking about. I’m thinking about the connections between those books and my own life. Those books and the lives of other women I care about. Those books and teenagers, both those who may be intrigued by the book at hand or those who might find themselves connecting on a personal level to those stories in the future.

My reading has slowed down a bit, too. I’m marking more passages, thinking more critically, and asking more questions of the books I’m enjoying. I’m finding the act of asking questions to be fulfilling more than the desire to seek answers to them. My thinking and engagement in books opens up in a different way when I choose to settle for uncertainty, rather than demand closure. I’ve never needed closure in my reading, but I’m letting myself enjoy the discomfort of not knowing.

I didn’t participate in the Read Harder challenge at Book Riot last year. It felt too restrictive to me in the same way other reading challenges are. But this year, I’m embracing the challenge. I’m really excited to try reading books that I otherwise wouldn’t, especially with my intention of reading only women sitting on top of it. I know I’ll enjoy a wider range of reading while digging even more deeply into the works of women. Rather than expanding only outward, beyond my comfort zone, I’ll also be moving inward, further down the hole of the types of voices and stories I’m hungry to read.

If you aren’t a person who feels driven by goals or numbers, you’re not alone. And if you are a person who is motivated by that, that’s great, too. We’re all different in our approaches to reading. There’s no one-size-fits-all, and there never should be. Spending time thinking about your own needs and interests as a reader and digging into them, questioning them, and redefining them, only makes you better able to talk with or connect to other readers. This is especially true when you work with teen readers who have so little time in their lives for pleasure reading as it is.

I’m excited to see what this year in reading brings. Since embracing intentionality in my reading life and redefining what that means as I go along, rather than once a year, I’m able to walk away at the close of each year feeling like I’ve grown as a reader and as a thinker.

Do you have any reading intentions this year? I’d love to hear them or about any challenges you’re taking on.

Reading Report Card: 6 Months into 2014

July 11, 2014 |

Last year in December, I took a look at what I’d read that year and broke it down into quantifiable categories. Was I reading more debuts than the year before? Was I reading more male writers than female writers? What about the sort of diversity I was reading, either in terms of authors of color or stories featuring a main character of color?

I’ve noted this has been a slower reading year for me, and because of that, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at my reading at the half-way point of 2014 and see where I have been and figure out what, if anything, I should be doing better in the second half of the year. As of writing this post, I’ve read 45 books, or about two books per week. I did not include any of the manuscripts I’ve read this year (probably between 8 and 10) but rather, books that are available now or will be available before the end of the year.

The entire list of my titles read with how I categorized them is accessible here, if you’re curious. I had planned on looking at genre as a key part of my breakdown, but I read mostly realistic fiction for many reasons, and it wasn’t surprising that was the bulk of this year’s titles already.

Book Audience and Format

Let’s look first at the types of books I’m reading in terms of who the general audience is:

One thing I’ve wanted to do is read more adult books, and I don’t think this is too bad so far.

So far, I’ve read 7 adult books this year and 38 YA books. Of the adult books, one title was non-fiction and of the YA books, one title was non-fiction (or rather, it’s a collection of poetry and images, which I’d categorize under non-fiction, rather than fiction in terms of it being like a novel).

Since I’m on format with this, might as well get a look at where my format reading is so far.

The majority of my reading has been fiction this year. I’ve read 2 graphic novels, one novel in verse, a poetry collection, and one non-fiction title. I separated the last two out in this chart, as opposed to the chart above.

I think I’d like to try to sneak in a little more non-fiction reading this year. Last year, I got to read so much non-fiction, and this year, I have not been reading it much at all. The title I did read was danah boyd’s It’s Complicated, about teens and their use of technology and the internet. I think picking more titles up in that realm is a goal I’ve got before the end of the year.

Books by Gender of Author and Main Character

So what about gender? This is of particular interest to me this year with the “Year of Reading Women” campaign. Do I tend toward more female authors or male authors? I haven’t been keeping tabs on this this year or spent a lot of time being conscious of this on purpose.

Out of the 45 books I read, there were 47 authors writing them.

I read more females than males this year, roughly 80% to 20%.

And how that translates in terms of the gender of the main characters of the books I’ve read this year:

This breakdown was very tricky. Part of it was because I had to identify “main character” when the novel was told from more than one point of view. I decided if it was only 2 points of view, I could count both. If it was more than two, I threw it into a catch-all “cast of characters” category; in this instance, all four of those titles featured both male and female voices. The not applicable category went to my poetry collection and the non-fiction title, which didn’t have a dominant main character voice (though the poetry collection is geared toward female readers).

The numbers here show I read more female main characters than male (32 compared to 6). Of those female characters, four of the books I read featured 2 female characters each. Interestingly, I haven’t read a title this year yet that features two male main characters, but I have read 5 titles that feature a male and a female main character.

Publication Year and Publication Debut

It has been a very slow year for debut novel reading for me. I haven’t been seeing as many pop up, and I’ve definitely not been seeing as many review copies pop up on Edelweiss nor in my mailbox that are debut or speak to me. It may be the case there are many more debut genre novels this year than in the past, which I am less inclined to read than realistic debuts.

Hre’s how the debut vs. not a debut titles look. I define debut in the purest sense: first book, period. I don’t care if they wrote an adult novel before or self-published a book before. I only looked at debut novels from 2014 — if a novel was a debut from another year, I did not include it.

Maybe it’s not as bad as I thought. Almost 20% of the titles I read were debut novels. I’d like to amp that up in the second half of the year, but it’s better than I expected.

I looked, too, at the publication year of the books I’m reading, in order to get a sense of how much backlist I’m reading. Of the 45 books I’ve read, 6 were not published in 2014. As of this writing, the book I’m reading and the one following it are backlist, which should help those numbers a bit at the end of the year.

Likewise, I looked at the series vs. not a series titles I’ve read. Of the 45 books, only 4 were from a series. And actually, calling those four books series titles is true, but three of them are stand alone series titles: Biggest Flirts by Jennifer Echols, Dirty Wings by Sarah McCarry, and To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han can all be read alone, without context from previous/forthcoming titles. Sex Criminals I threw into the series category, though. I know I can pick up the single volumes, but I prefer my graphic novels in a larger edition, so I’ll be waiting eagerly for the second volume here.

Diversity

One thing I have paid far more attention to with my reading this year has been diversity. I don’t like making specific reading goals, since I think it can kill my reading interests, but I have been very conscious of reading more books written by or featuring main characters of color. Talking about these books is important to me, and I’ve been trying to be better at highlighting them.

Out of the 45 titles I’ve read, I looked at a general breakdown of the books either written by or featuring a character of color. Some of these books have overlap to them — Pointe by Brandy Colbert, for example, is written by and features a person of color — but I kept the tally for it at one. In this count, I included Nina LaCour’s Everything Leads to You because the main character’s racial makeup, while not at the forefront of the story, is important.

More than 1/4 of the books I read were written by or featured main characters of color. I think this is better than in past years, and what’s maybe more interesting to me is that increasing that number has not been hard. I don’t make to-read lists or get fussy about what order I read books in. I make a tall stack and go as the interest reaches me. Reaching for more diverse titles has not been a challenge in the least. Maybe the hardest part is what comes before that though — learning what those books are and seeking them out.

I think that’s the real battle we’ll keep having. Once they’re accessible, they’re a lot easier to pick up and talk about.

It seemed worthwhile to look at sexuality in terms of diversity in my reading, too. How many books featured non-straight characters, either as a main part of the story or as a part of the character’s identity, regardless of how it wove into the greater narrative. Out of 45 books, four featured non-straight characters for me so far. Those four include Everything Leads to You, One Man Guy, Grasshopper Jungle, and Far From You. Two of those books feature bisexual characters, on features a lesbian main character, and one features a gay character.

The Second Half of 2014

I don’t like goals, like I said before, but I think in looking at my breakdowns, I know where I can be a better reader. I know, too, where I’d like to be a better reader. Seeing the quantitative breakdowns helps shape my thinking about reading and where/what I could be a better advocate for, as well. It’d probably be beneficial to look at what the breakdown of titles reviewed here is, too: am I talking up enough diverse titles? Could I do better at it?

I’m hoping to blow past 100 books before 2014 rolls to an end, and I don’t think that’s an impossible goal.

I’m curious to hear from you: what have you seen with your reading this year? Any interesting or noteworthy trends? Have you had any favorite reads that surprised you or you think other people should know about and read? Lay it on me!