2015 Reading Stats
It was a dire year bookwise at Two Dudes. Posting and reading numbers are way down, but a new job next week promises to restore some numbers for 2016. For now at least – I don’t plan to keep my new commute for any longer than necessary.
Total books read in 2015: 28
This is my lowest number since grad school. Oh well.
Genre breakdown:
SF: 19
Fantasy: 8
Other: 1
Once again, I thought that Fantasy had crept up on the SF numbers, and once again it hasn’t. I wonder why I think that I read so much fantasy now, when clearly I don’t. That single Other was a delightful football hooligan memoir.
White Patriarchy breakdown (SFF Only):
Men: 15
Women: 10
Both: 1
Not too bad this year, though I was on track for a dismal ratio until I went on a late summer tear.
Languages:
English: 27
Japanese: 1
Translations: 2
Look for Japanese to pick up a bit this year, as bus time increases. I had one each of Chinese and Japanese in translation; that number should also tick upwards, especially as I’ve already read another Lui Cixin book.
ARCs: 3
Fewer ARCs came in last year, no doubt a partial result of fading blog numbers. I barely read the ones that did come, and purposefully didn’t request very many.
Total posts on Two Dudes in 2014: 35
Like reading, writing took a hit. Evenings filled up with family-related stuff, and much of what free time I had went into reading. Movies and gaming are even sadder right now. I will probably be writing more this year; I already had a relatively bountiful January.
Category breakdown:
Reviews: 23
Commentary: 6
Interviews/Guest Posts: 1
Misc.: 5
Commentary took off this year, mostly in a series of Hugo/Sad Puppy response essays. Some of them have to rank with my best work on here. I would love to get more research paper-esque posting going, but it’s hard to cook up topics and then find the time to write decently about them.
Review Genre breakdown:
SF: 16
Fantasy: 7
White Patriarchy breakdown:
Men: 13
Women: 6
Both: 1
Japan: 2
China: 1
This is calculated by the main topic of the post, i.e. author gender/ethnicity, essay subject, etc. Posts lacking an identifying characteristic (announcements, genre-wide topics, etc.) are excluded from the count. I feel like I could add the Sad Puppy posts in there somewhere since all of them are about diversity, but I’m not sure exactly how I want to count that.
Popular Stuff:
Unsurprisingly, the 2015 Hugo Imbroglio post and KIC 8462852 were my most read of the year. The first was picked up by noted genre curator Paul Weimer, leading to a crushing amount of views and comments. That is probably the blog’s finest hour so far. The second was lucky timing – scientists announced that they may have found artificial structures out there, and I happened to crank out a summary before almost anyone else. Oodles of random people found the post on search engines and dropped in, probably never to return.
Two Dudes in an Attic 
2016 will be better, I am sure
we had matching dire years!