In 2016 I honored my pledge to read 52 books, one for each week of the year. It’s not a pledge I will repeat for 2017. While I certainly enjoyed most of the reads, I found myself finishing books I would ordinarily have tossed aside because of boring plots or poor writing. I continued to read such books because I didn’t want to lose the time invested toward attaining my goal. Not a good reason to spend hours with a story that isn’t satisfying! In 2017 I’ll choose my reads carefully and set aside any that I don’t want to finish, for whatever reason, because I won’t set a numerical goal.

At the end of the year, Goodreads provided a summary of the books I read: The shortest was Chicana Falsa by Michele Serros, the longest was Night Film by Marisha Pessl, and the highest rated title (on Goodreads) was Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, which was also one of my favorites of 2016.

Here are some of my own stats based on my 2016 reads:

–I read 15 books by Latino authors

–11 are written by males

–1 is by an African-American author, 4 by Asian authors

–10 are mysteries

–4 would be considered chick lit

–2 are considered classic fiction

–seven are nonfiction

–two are sci-fi and two are westerns

Nothing about this summary surprises me, but I am disappointed to realize I only read one book by an African-American. That will be the only reading goal I will set for 2017: read more books by African-American authors.