Another hundred titles reviewed at the complete review, as we're up to (and now already beyond) 3500 -- so it's time again to break down the numbers.
- Reviews 3401-3500 were covered over the course of 172 days (previous hundred: 181).
- The reviews total 86,979 words (previous: 92,723); the longest review was 3055 words.
- Books originally written in 28 different languages were reviewed. Stunningly, English was only the fourth-most popular language -- it's almost always been first or second, and the previous low was eleven titles out of a hundred. Two new languages were added: Maltese and Irish.
The most common languages reviewed books were written in:
- As always, fiction dominated: 79 novels and 5 volumes of stories. Three volumes of poetry were reviewed, but not a single play.
- Only a single 2015 title was reviewed, and six from 2014. (Remember: it's year of original publication: for translations (i.e. basically everything, this time around ...) that means whenever the books was first published in the language it was written in.) The most popular decades pre-1990 were the 1960s and 1920s, with six titles each. There were five nineteenth-century titles, and two from the eighteenth century.
- The stubborn (well, you probably have a different word for it by now ...) male-female divide looks to be as deeply ingrained as ever: at 85 male-authored titles and a mere 15 by women the historic average was pretty much maintained (indeed, it didn't budge from 15.29 per cent; see the complete breakdown).
The usual (pseudo-)excuses apply -- led by the fact that the sex-divide in translated works is also pretty bad (anecdotally averages seem to come in pretty consistently at 3:1 male) -- but I am a bit surprised. It doesn't feel like I'm reviewing that few, but the numbers tell a very different story.
That said, this time around I'm even more shocked by how few written-in-English titles I got to: 15 books written by women is a dismal total; a mere 6 books written in English borders on the absurd. I know I concentrate on foreign fiction, but that's always been the case, and this is way fewer than I've ever managed; I have no idea what happened here
Here's hoping that the next 100 aren't quite as Francophone-sexist (but still as fiction-focused -- that bias I'm completely fine with).
- Reviews 3401-3500 were covered over the course of 172 days (previous hundred: 181).
- The reviews total 86,979 words (previous: 92,723); the longest review was 3055 words.
- Books originally written in 28 different languages were reviewed. Stunningly, English was only the fourth-most popular language -- it's almost always been first or second, and the previous low was eleven titles out of a hundred. Two new languages were added: Maltese and Irish.
The most common languages reviewed books were written in:
- 1. French 30
- 2. Japanese 8
- 3. Spanish 7
- 4. English 6
- -. German 6
- As always, fiction dominated: 79 novels and 5 volumes of stories. Three volumes of poetry were reviewed, but not a single play.
- Only a single 2015 title was reviewed, and six from 2014. (Remember: it's year of original publication: for translations (i.e. basically everything, this time around ...) that means whenever the books was first published in the language it was written in.) The most popular decades pre-1990 were the 1960s and 1920s, with six titles each. There were five nineteenth-century titles, and two from the eighteenth century.
- The stubborn (well, you probably have a different word for it by now ...) male-female divide looks to be as deeply ingrained as ever: at 85 male-authored titles and a mere 15 by women the historic average was pretty much maintained (indeed, it didn't budge from 15.29 per cent; see the complete breakdown).
The usual (pseudo-)excuses apply -- led by the fact that the sex-divide in translated works is also pretty bad (anecdotally averages seem to come in pretty consistently at 3:1 male) -- but I am a bit surprised. It doesn't feel like I'm reviewing that few, but the numbers tell a very different story.
That said, this time around I'm even more shocked by how few written-in-English titles I got to: 15 books written by women is a dismal total; a mere 6 books written in English borders on the absurd. I know I concentrate on foreign fiction, but that's always been the case, and this is way fewer than I've ever managed; I have no idea what happened here
Here's hoping that the next 100 aren't quite as Francophone-sexist (but still as fiction-focused -- that bias I'm completely fine with).