I read 68 books in 2015, which seems low but doesn’t include anything I didn’t finish completely. Nine of the total were read for a professional obligation of some kind, whether for a review or our best books deliberations or they were written by authors who were appearing on a panel I was moderating.

They included:

• Mystery/suspense/thrillers: 28
• YA: 17
• Memoir: 8
• General fiction/literary fiction: 8
• Nonfiction: 4
• Sf/fantasy: 3

The format breakdown is as follows:

• Library ebook: 26
• Galley/advance reading copy (print): 14
• Galley/advance reading copy (ebook): 13
• Print: 14
• Library print book: 1

The gender breakdown of authors:

• Female: 60
• Male: 7
• Unsure: 1

As far as standout titles, these are ones that give me a particularly warm feeling when I see them on my list:

• All of Louise Penny’s wonderful Inspector Gamache series.
• Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies.
• Dodie Smith’s classic I Capture the Castle.
• Felicia Day and Shonda Rhimes’s terrific memoirs.
• Rachel Hartman’s richly imagined YA titles Seraphina and Shadow Scale.
• Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.
• Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
• P.D. James’s The Children of Men.

When I compare the 2015 breakdown to the 2014, the main thing that jumps out at me is that I finished far fewer books this past year than the one before. Otherwise, though, the genre, format, and author gender divisions are about the same. I made some headway in diversifying my reading, but not as much as I’d like—I’d say nine of those 68 titles could qualify as such; more than ten percent, but not yet 20. So my goal for 2016 is for at least 25% of the books I read to have an author or protagonist who is not a straight, white, neurotypical, able-bodied person.