Jane Rawson

Now into its sixth year, welcome to the 2019 edition of ‘books I read, unnecessarily graphed’.

This year I started 93 books and 7 manuscripts. I abandoned 7 books (no manuscripts), mostly because they weren’t grabbing me (I noted them as ‘try again later’), occasionally because I didn’t like them at all and probably never will, and once because I was getting way too stressed to keep reading (Alice Bishop’s ‘A constant hum’, which seemed like it was going to be really good but which I was reading while doing bushfire planning. It was all too much).

I read 13 books by writers of colour, down from the 27 I read last year. I’m going to blame this on the vast amount of required reading I had to do this year, as a judge for two prizes (the MUBA and the Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prizes). Around 120 books were entered across the two prizes, and while I didn’t read them all cover-to-cover, I read a fair chunk of each of those (I’ve only included those I read in their entirety in my stats). The books were almost entirely by Australian authors, most of whom were white, which has skewed my stats a bit.

To the graphs:

Bit down on last year, where I read 18 five-star books (but four-stars came in at exactly the same: 38). Coming soon: my list of my favourite books for the year.

Sixty-eight sheilas to 33 blokes – I seem to be reading more women every single year, but I’m starting to think this graph is way too binary.

Moving to the country has really shifted my book acquiring habits. Last year I got most of my books from indie bookshops, but those are in short supply in the Huon Valley. The Tasmanian library system, though, is awesome and has been able to loan me just about any book that’s taken my fancy. I’m also feeling the absence of Savers Footscray.

Nothing new here: I’m comparing things that shouldn’t be compared and still seeing most of my books coming from just a few places. Irish books are, again, my favourite – every fourth book I read by an Irish writer rated five stars (I had to get through 16 Australian books before getting a five-star, but again this would’ve been skewed by my reading for prizes).

Last year I read some really good books published in 2011 and vowed to read more books from that year. I forgot I said that and only read one – Justin Torres’ ‘We the animals’ – and it was great. Nearly everything I read was new, thanks again to prize reading but also to my absurd need to keep in touch with the latest thing. Here’s my vow for next year – apart from new books by a few favourite authors, I will only buy books written by friends. Everything else is coming from the library or off my shelves, where there are hundreds of books I once thought I absolutely had to have right now, then immediately forgot about.

Who even knows what this graph is meant to show? All I can say is this was the year I gave audiobooks a try, thanks to having to commute by car and it apparently being illegal to read while you drive. So far I’m not entirely on board and seem to be listening to a lot more memoir than I’d hoped for, but hey, it’s better than not reading at all. I should probably include ‘novels’ in this graph so everyone can see how wildly biased I am towards that form.

Since writing ‘From the Wreck’ and now another book set in the past, my reading of historical fiction has gone up and up. I keep changing these categories every year, making it impossible to compare, but I think it’s fair to suggest I mostly like reading books with a bit of weirdness. To be sure, though, I should really also graph ‘literary realism’ as a theme.

I am finally learning how to tell which hyped books I might actually like – books with great reviews or prize wins gave me a lot of five-star reads this year (eight from 21). Only books by people whose twitter feeds I like came close (one from three). I will never trust my friends again – only one of the 28 books they suggested I read was a very good book. Shame on you, friends.

That seems like a bad place to end this post, but here we are. Next year expect a lot of books from 2014-17, books about fungus, books about rewilding and books by friends.