It’s all the rage, so I’m jumping on the bandwagon:
I read 74 books in 2011 – not counting children’s picture books, but counting everything else (that I can remember).
30 were written by women, 44 by men, which is around 40% women, 60% men. Had I not reread Patrick O’Brian it might have been closer to 50-50, but those twenty books were a hefty chunk.
The British, unsurprisingly, dominate. 49 books were written by Brits, and I guess they could take some credit for Bryson, Hamid and Aboulela, too, though I’m going to assign them to their origins. So: USA: 8, Norway: 7, Sweden: 3, and 1 each to Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Peru, Japan, Pakistan and Sudan. Which doesn’t add up to 74. What did I miss? Oh, Ireland.
Language-wise it’s even more skewed towards English, with an additional 11, giving a total of 61 books in English and 13 «other».
So I guess it’s a good thing I’m doing this Nordic challenge. In fact, since I started that, 5 out of 15 books have been in other languages than English.
I should still read more from other parts of the world, though. Since I have a few on the waiting list, perhaps I should make that the focus of the «off the shelves» resolution.
And genre: 45 «standard» novels, 14 child/YA novels, 2 graphic novels, 4 memoirs and 9 other non-fiction (mostly travel).