After breaking down the “Best of” lists last week, I thought about how interesting it would be to look at my own year of reading YA in different categories and see what I did and did not get to. Then I read this post over at YA Highway about making a commitment to be a better reading in the upcoming year, and I knew it would be worth it to look and see what a year in my reading life really looked like. While I don’t believe in making reading resolutions — that’s something I talked about at the beginning of this year — I do think there is a value in looking at what I am reading and reflecting upon why and how those were the titles I chose to spend time with. I think there’s merit, too, in considering what books I didn’t read and how and where I can better expand my reading in the future.

My reading this year has been significantly impacted by being on a committee. This committee has made me read a lot of books outside my comfort zone. I’ll be so bold as to suggest that I have read far more authors of diverse backgrounds when it comes to race, ethnicity, religious viewpoint, sexuality, and more than I ever have in my entire life. It’s been an amazing experience, and I can’t wait to talk a little bit more about it when my committee develops out final list at ALA Midwinter in January. Though I have read fewer titles this year than I have in recent years — about 170 so far, as opposed to breaking over 200 the last couple of years — I’ve read much wider and deeper than I think I ever have.

Because I can’t really talk about the books I’ve read for that committee nor what those books look like quite yet, what I decided to do for this post was look exclusively at the YA fiction titles that I’ve read in 2013. As of this writing, I’ve read 72 YA titles in the past year.

What have I read? Here’s a list, in moderately chronological order from the beginning of the year:

Gender Breakdown


When it came to my own year in reading, I definitely read more female authors than I did male authors. This doesn’t surprise me at all — though it’s also not intentional nor is it out of some principle I hold to read more female authors than male. I think the books I most wanted to read this year happened to also be written by female authors, and I do think because there are more females writing and publishing YA, the opportunity to read more females presents itself.

I read a total of 72 authors this year. I doubled up on two authors: Gayle Forman and Daniel Kraus. I counted them each only one time. Of those 72 authors, 80% were female and 20% were male.

Because I broke down the gender of main characters in the “best of” analysis, I thought I’d break down the gender of main characters in my own reading, too. This was tough because of multiple characters, but I found I’d had 84 main characters to pull from. Because it was too hard to tease out who were or weren’t main characters in Robin Wasserman’s The Waking Dark, I chose to keep that book out of this tally.

Like with the “best of” breakdown, the percentages are a little closer together than they were with gender of authors. There was one book featuring a trans main character, and I read 32 male characters and 51 female main characters.

Front List and Back List


What sort of distribution was there when it came to date of publication in my YA reading habits? Did I tackle more front list than back list?

It doesn’t surprise me in the least that I read far more books published in 2013 than I did books published prior. There were a total of 60 books I read published in 2013, with 7 books published prior to this year. I also read 5 books that will be published in 2014.

Again, I don’t put pressure on myself to reach certain reading goals, but I do think I want to spend a little more time in the coming year reading more books from the back list. I will say that this year I bought more books that were back list titles than I have in the past. I just haven’t yet read them. Perhaps it’s time to get working on that.

Books by Genre


I know I read primarily realistic fiction, and that was especially true at the beginning of this year when I was trying to wrap up reading some titles for my own book on contemporary YA. I also know I read quite a bit of horror, and that played out in an article I was able to write for School Library Journal in September.

But what did the actual distribution of YA genres look like this year for me?

Almost 70% of my reads this year were realistic, with historical fiction and horror in far second and third place. I read an equal number of science fiction and fantasy titles, as well as two titles I chose to classify as magical realism, rather than putting them in another category.

LGBTQ and POC Representation


I know one place I can definitely do better, and it is reading more titles written by or featuring LGBTQ or POC. I’m trying to be more observant of this because I want to make sure these are titles I’m spending more time reading and recommending not only here at the blog, but also in my own work in the library.

Out of the 72 books I read this year, I read a total of 9 books that were written by or featured LGBTQ characters or situations within them (by “situations,” I mean it’s a plot point or discussion when the main character may not identify). Some books do double duty, and the author and a character identify.

The books I put in this category include:

• Me, Him, Them, and It by Caela Carter (the main character’s aunts are lesbians)
• Over You by Amy Reed
• If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan
• Starting From Here by Lisa Jenn Bigelow
• Freakboy by Kristin Elizabeth Clark
• Winger by Andrew Smith
• Teeth by Hannah Moskowitz
• The Waking Dark by Robin Wasserman
• Inheritance by Malinda Lo

When it comes to the end of the year and reflecting upon your own reading, do you notice any trends? Are there things you wish you did better? Or are there things you’re impressed you did do, even if it didn’t feel like it in the moment? I’d love to hear what you see in a year’s worth of your own reading.