According to my Goodreads page, between 28 December 2018 and 22 December 2019, I read 99 books.
My most read author was Talia Hibbert with six books read.
In total, I read 43 books by 16 authors, and the other 56 books by 56 authors, making my reading across 72 unique authors.
Other authors who I read more than one book include:
Four: Lucy Parker, Rose Lerner
Three: Adriana Herrera, Rachael Stewart, Eva Leigh
Two: Cat Sebastian, KJ Charles, Kevin Kwan, Tess Woods, Six de los Reyes, Pamela Hart, Alyssa Cole, Tracey Livesay, Nicola Marsh, and Jackie Lau.
In terms of pairing type, the statistics show I need to read more ff and mm romance, as I read 78 fm romances, and only 8 ff and 9 mm during 2019. I read no poly-romance (and as I’ve included trans romance under the pronoun of the character this also means I read no non-binary romance in 2019). These numbers have given me something to focus on for my 2020 reading.
Among my 99 books, I read 4 non-romances (two of them by Aboriginal authors).
I haven’t included my DNF books in this list, because I don’t add them to my Goodreads list. Being an author as well as a reader is a tricky place to co-exist in, and most of my DNFs were because the books were boring. There is no joy in including them on my Goodreads list. My star ratings reflect my attempts to balance this. I have one one-star book that I DNF’d for homophobia and it irritated me enough to write a review, while most of my reviews are 4 and 5 stars. I tend to spend quite a bit of time reading blurbs and reviews before I start to read a book, so the higher number of 4 and 5 star reviews is also because I curate my reading choices before I begin, and therefore can avoid most content that is “throw the book away and burn it” before I make a purchasing decision.
Edit to add: I also haven’t included the books I beta read for other people.
In terms of #ownvoices writers, my reading was evenly split with 48 of the 99 books by #ownvoices authors, 6 unknown, and 45 by white cis-het authors. Incidentally, my 5 star reads are 55% #ownvoices (31/56), while #ownvoices represents 48% of my reading, so books by those authors outperformed the proportion of them that I read.
All up, 2019 was a strong reading year, but I still have areas where I can improve especially with regards to LGBTIQ+ content. One of the issues I do have is that I don’t read on Amazon*, which restricts the availability of LGBTIQ+ books, and is something I will have to consider changing. *Yes, I’m aware of the irony in using Amazon affiliated links, while also reading outside of Amazon because I want to improve competition in the reading marketplace.
In 2020, I’m going to be writing lesbian historical romance reviews for a new website about Historical Romance. My first two will be two books I absolutely adored in 2019 (and have re-read several times). If anyone has recommendations, I’d love to hear them – and yes, please recommend your own books too.