What I Read in 2020: An Analysis

As if I hadn't already droned on at great length on this subject...

Somebody asked me how much of my 2020 reading was science fiction or fantasy, and at the time of asking I didn't know. I'd been keeping track of the titles, but I hadn't done anything beyond that. The question made me curious, though. So I went back through my list (314 titles, you may recall) with a sticky-note file and calculator open, and this is what I emerged with.

Books read 2020 breakdown

Of the 314 books I read, 248 were new to me, or 79 percent of the total. The re-reads totaled 65, or 21 percent. (The number of re-reads surprised me a bit; evidently I spent considerable chunks of 2020 in need of some sort of reassurance, as would be provided by re-reading comfort books. For what it's worth, the ratio of re-reads to new reads in January 2021 was much lower.)

In terms of categorization, the breakdown is:

Biography or autobiography = 22 (7%)
Essays = 12 (4%)
Fiction = 58 (18%)
Graphics = 29 (9%)*
Humour = 13 (4%)
History = 107 (34%)
SF/F = 61 (19%)
Other? =12 (4%)

I would like to think this list argues for a fairly broad taste when it comes to reading material. Note that I separated the SF/F from the rest of the fiction; add them together and fiction comes to over a third of the books read last year. For me that's very high. I'm reading more fiction these days mostly because I haven't been capable of writing any.

*The Graphics category includes both fiction and non-fiction, and fiction includes novellas as well as "graphic novels," whatever those are defined to be.