October Reading Summary: 10/31/16

October marks completion of two reading goals. October has me focused on reading for the CYBILS — I'm a middle grade fiction panelist again. There are one hundred and seven books nominated. I've read twenty seven so far, meaning November is going to be super focused on CYBILs reading, above all other books.

The first goal was to read three hundred books as tracked on Goodreads. I crossed that one on October 19th and have since read thirteen more. Keeping in mind the CYBILS book, I could easily clear four hundred by the end of the year.

Frankly though, the reading a certain number of books goal is easy. I know how much I can read in a given span of time. In the last few years I've taken it easy (for me) with reading. I suspect that my 2017 reading goal will also be three hundred books.

My second goal, the one I've been more worried about is the reading and reviewing of one book a week — or fifty-two books — published in 2016. Even before getting started on the CYBILS reading (which includes books published from October 2015 - September 2016), I've already surpassed my goal. I've read eighty-five and I've reviewed sixty. I have another fourteen scheduled through the November and I suspect I'll have more for December.

Along with being more current with my reading and reviewing, I've been trying to keep less time between reading a book (published in any year) and the time I post a review (should I decide to review it). The last couple of months my farthest point on the long tail of review posting was a book read in 2012. I posted that review on the sixth.

From 2013, I have four reviews remaining to post:
• It's a Tiger! by David LaRochelle
• Catty Jane Who Hated the Rain by Valeri Gorbachev
• Imprisoned by Martin W. Sandler
• Pippi Moves In by Astrid Lindgren

My biggest backlog of reviews is from June of this year with twenty-two books. Looking by year, 2016 accounts for two thirds of the reviews I want to post but haven't yet.

That brings me to the most important reading goal — an on going work in progress — to read more inclusively. I made small improvements in both reading and reviewing. The reading jumped from twenty-two percent to twenty-nine percent. Inclusive reviews are up one percent to twenty-eight percent. Ideally I would like to get the percentages up to fifty in both reading and reviewing. I also hope to keep current in 2017 — so ideally my inclusive reading will be current.

Bar graph by month comparing the total number of books read vs the number of inclusive books.

Pie chart showing the percentage of books with diverse characters for books read in October	Pie chart showing the percentage of books with diverse characters for books reviewed in October

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