A year is a long time, and a lot of stuff has happened since 2023 started. Today I’m following in the steps of the end of 2022, and recounting my entire year of reading. This is a statistics-heavy blog post that will likely bore some of you to tears, but for those who do stick around, I hope it will prove enlightening. Away we go.

READING STATISTICS

• 103 novels (down 6 from last year)
• 3 fix-ups (up 1 from last year)
• 3 novellas (down 4 from last year)
• 14 anthologies (down 8 from last year)
• 8 omnibuses (down 2 from last year)

• 49763 pages in 2023 (down 8283 from last year)
• 136.34 pages per day (down 22.72 from last year)

• 1* Ratings: 0 (down 6 from last year)
• 2* Ratings: 24 (up 7 from last year)
• 3* Ratings: 48 (down 16 from last year)
• 4* Ratings: 44 (no change from last year)
• 5* Ratings: 15 (down 4 from last year)
• Average * Rating: 3.38 (up 0.03 from last year)

The main headline here is that I read less than last year. Fewer books, fewer pages. This is largely down to a pair of hectic real-life months in March and October, but as a whole the months have been quieter on the reading front. Not by much, but a little here and there adds up overall. The flipside of this is that I spent less time reading books I hated. there were a number of books that didn’t fully work for m this year, but nothing I absolutely hated.

I do appear to have grown stingier in the past few years when it comes to five star reviews. I put this largely down to having read so much it’s harder for me to be blown away by something new. My overall rating of books has increased by the slenderest of margins, though, which is reflective of a year in which I’ve generally been enjoying books a lot more than the year before.

Top Authors
(counting only those by whom I have read more than one book this year)

• Mike Brooks (4.50 star average)
• Justin D Hill (4.50 star average)
• H. Beam Piper (4.25 star average)
• Ben Bova (4.00 star average)
• Kelly Gay (4.00 star average)

The interesting point here is that three of the top five, and the top two at that, are exclusively from tie-in novels/franchise fiction. There is a strong argument to be made here that having a familiar setting behind the book allows the writer to focus more on the story than on wholesale worldbuilding, but there is also the question of prior investment from myself as I head into a new book. A final point to make is that Kelly Gay is the only author in this top five who was new to me this year.

Top 3 Genres
(counting only those from which I have read more than one book this year)

• Military SF (3.73 star average)
• Grimdark SF (3.59 star average)
• Hard SF (3.59 star average)
• Space Opera (3.22 star average )

Again, the appearance of Military SF and Grimdark will come as no surprise when you factor in all the Warhammer 40,000 and Halo novels I have been reading this year. Hard SF was buoyed by Ben Bova and Stephen Baxter, while Space Opera has made it onto the list by sheer weight of numbers. It’s worth noting that Space Opera also had my highest prevalence of 2* reviews, as it is a genre I am more open to trying unknown authors in.

Top Publishers
(counting only those from whom I have read more than one book this year)

• Ace (4.00 star average)
• Head of Zeus (4.00 star average)
• Black Library (3.78 star average)
• Gollancz (3.60 star average)
• Titan (3.57 star average)

Interestingly, Ace is essentially here as a result of H. Beam Piper alone. As you may suspect from the roundness of those average ratings, the top two publishers only had a small selection of books on my schedule. Black Library continues to punch above its weight, while Gollancz leads the charge of the so-called Big Five (if that even exists anymore after recent corporate mergers. Titan rounds off the top five with some help from the Halo franchise.

BLOGGING BREAKDOWN

(excluding index pages)

Top Ten Reviews

• Warhammer 40,000: Avenging Son, by Guy Haley
• Honorverse: Uncompromising Honor, by David Weber
• The Redemption of Time, by Baoshu
• Warhammer 40,000: The Vincula Affair, by Dan Abnett
• Dune: Dune Messiah, by Frank Herbert
• Warhammer 40,000: The Infinite and the Divine, by Robert Rath
• Dune: God Emperor of Dune, by Frank Herbert
• Dune: Sandworms of Dune, by Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson
• The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov, by Isaac Asimov
• Dune: Heretics of Dune, by Frank Herbert

Top Ten Articles

• THE WISHLIST: Black Library 2023 Releases
• THE WISHLIST: Black Library 2022
• Where To Start With Black Library?
• A Troublesome Trope: My Issue With Found Families
• Grimdark: What Is It, And Who Is It For?
• A Farewell to the SPSFC
• There And Back Again: Looking Back At The Star Trek Voyager Relaunch
• The Lost Art of Audio Dramas: Warhammer 40,000 Retrospective
• The Edgelord Problem: What Is It, And How Can We Fix It?
• Ethics of Trek: Should Janeway Have Saved Tuvix?

As we can see, Warhammer and Black Library once again dominate what brings people to this blog. In the case of the articles, this is likely down to their easily searched titles, though I am proud of my little audio drama post making it into the top ten. It’s also good to see Star Trek articles getting up there, because the individual book reviews I do for that universe tend to sink without trace.

Dune continues to be a heavy hitter in terms of reviews, most likely because of its sheer popularity as a franchise, and likely also helped by certain big-screen adaptations. I have less of an explanation for how Honor Harrington got up there, save to remark that my Honorverse reviews as a whole have seen an unexplained increase in hits this past year.

Most of the popular reviews and articles above are a few years old now, with the only newcomers to this list being my Black Library updates (hardly surprising, given the lack of details coming from the publisher) and my final article regarding the SPSFC. This latter post was a long time coming, and struck a chord with a lot of reviewers.

In terms of engagement, the lists would, I suspect, look fairly similar. My essays on Tuvix and Found Families continue to have debates in the comments, while few things bring out the commenters like a negative review of Frank Herbert.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

As I end this final post for 2023, one thought comes to me. I am keenly aware that the majority of my reading is franchise fiction. Something along the lines of one in six books this year were Star Trek novels, and a similar number from Black Library. These are books that a lot of other reviewers don’t seem to have any interest in, for whatever reasons they might have. One of my goals for next year is to read more original fiction, but I can’t help but wonder if the blog will see less interest as a result. I have no intention of walking away from what I’m doing right now, but it’s enough to make a man wonder. I might not be doing this for the stats, but they don’t half get in your head.