Since August is three-fourths of the way through the year, it makes sense to do some bookish stats updates. But instead of doing and entire breakdown of genre, book source, author gender, year, and everything else, I just want to look at something I’ve been curious about: my ratio of fiction to nonfiction and how that’s changed through the year.
At the end of August, I’d read 74 books total. That puts me on pace to read 100 books this year. It’s above where I was last year at this time (72 books), but in 2010 I ended up reading 109 books total. So if past trends continue, my reading could speed up in the fall and put me over the 100 books for the year mark.
Over the first nine months of 2011, my fiction/nonfiction ratio breaks down like this:
| Genre | Books Read | Percentage |
| Fiction | 27 | 36% |
| Nonfiction | 47 | 64% |
| a | a | a |
That number is pretty much on par with what I might expect. Last year, I read about 60 percent nonfiction, 40 percent fiction. I think it’s more interesting if you break it down and look at the ratios for January through May compared to June through August:
| Genre | Books Read | Percentage |
| Fiction (January – May) |
11 | 23% |
| Nonfiction (January – May) |
36 | 77% |
| Fiction (June – August) |
16 | 59% |
| Nonfiction (June – August) |
11 | 41% |
| a | a | a |
The beginning of the year, my reading was skewing really, really far towards nonfiction — more than 75% of my book choices were memoir, literary journalism, or straight nonfiction. But this summer, I’ve skewed pretty far back in the other direction, reading a lot more fiction than nonfiction.
I’d have to be more awake and have a better grasp of statistical analysis to break down the info I have on my books any further and try to find a mathematical correlation between genre and some other factor. For now, I can only venture a few guesses as to why this might be the case.
