January 2017 in review
31 Jan, 2017
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23 books read. 12 by women (52%). 10 by men (43%). 1 by non-binary authors (4%). Ah, my old foe, rounding error. This month has an atypically high fraction of men because last month I convinced myself that December 31 fell on the Sunday and did a double review of books by men, counting them against December's stats. There were days I knew December 31 was on the Saturday. Truly, the ability of the brain to believe two mutually exclusive facts is impressive.
POC 6 (26%). It's just dumb luck it was that high.
I wonder, should I be comparing these to 2016?
I don't think my overall numbers will improve, although at least this year I didn't let my January in Review slide until March 2. And I have not just spent a full month being screwed over by people I thought were friends, which should help. And apparently having measurable amounts of B12 in one's system is a thing now, so I am interested to see how that works out. Pity about the ongoing dumpster-fire south of the border but eh. The worst case scenario, we all die horribly and that's pretty much what I thought could happen when I was a kid.
23 books read versus 22: Up 5%. 12 books by women versus 12 books by women. No change. 10 books by men versus 10 last year. No change. 6 books by POC versus 3 last year. Up by 100% but again, just dumb luck. 1 by a non-binary author versus 1 last year. No change but I do plan to do much better on this point than last year. Not that it will be hard since to match 2016's numbers in this matter all I need to do is read one more book by a non-binary author.
And now for my favourite part: the meaningless table!
Key: WNB stands for “women and non-binary genders”, while POC stands for “person of colour”. R/R stands for “reviews/reviewers”. Figures in brackets are percentages; for R/R the percentage represents the site’s R/R over my 2015 R/R. SFX is actually called SFX; it is not short for anything. Same with io9. F&SF is the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. SFS isScience Fiction Studies. LARB is the Los Angeles Review of Books. CSZ is the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
| Review source | Total | WNB (%) | POC (%) | Reviewers | R/R (%) |
| Locus | 324 | 163 (50) | 22 (7) | 17 | 19 (5.7) |
| JNR 2016 | 255 | 163.5 (64) | 62.5 (25) | 1 | 255 (78) |
| SFX | 165 | 48 (29) | 10 (6) | 30 | 5.5 (1.5) |
| Romantic Times | 146 | 84 (57) | 14 (10) | (incorrect) | n/a (n/a) |
| Tor | 141 | 66 (47) | 18 (13) | 27 | 5.2 (1.6) |
| Strange Horizons | 139 | 66 (48) | 30 (22) | 80 | 1.7 (0.5) |
| Rising Shadows | 83 | 25 (30) | 1 (1) | 2 | 41.5 (12.6) |
| Interzone | 67 | 21 (31) | 7 (10) | 19 | 3.5 (1) |
| F&SF | 59 | 32 (54) | 5 (9) | 5 | 11.8 (3.6) |
| Analog | 58 | 10 (17) | 3 (4) | 1 | 58 (17.6) |
| Io9 | 56 | 17 (30) | 12 (21) | 10 | 5.6 (1.7) |
| Asimov's | 53 | 21 (23) | 3 (6) | 3 | 17.7 (5.4) |
| Vector | 52 | 18 (35) | 4 (8) | 26 | 2 (0.6) |
| SFS | 45 | 48 (21) | 2 (4) | 38 | 1.2 (0.3) |
| NYRSF | 42 | 11 (26) | 6 (13) | 24 | 1.8 (0.5) |
| Foundation | 38 | 9 (24) | 1 (3) | 27 | 1.4 (0.4) |
| LARB | 35 | 11 (31) | 7 (20) | 28 | 1.3 (0.4) |
| Lightspeed | 28 | 16? (57) | 14 (50) | 3 | 9.3 (2.8) |
| CSZ | 23 | 19 (80) | 8 (35) | 17 | 1.4 (0.4) |
| James Nicoll Review 2017 | 23 | 13 (57) | 6 (26) | 1 (4) | 23 (9) |
There's no place for me to go but up! Unless the Americans kill us all by the end of February, in which case nobody else's numbers will be getting better either. There are no losing scenarios here.
It's kind of ... something ... how little effort on my part it takes to read more POC in a month than respectable publications like Analog, Asimov's, F&SF, RIsing Shadows, Vector, SFS, and Foundation do in a year.
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