Edited to remove references to authors who were later revealed to be harassers. If you need to chat with someone about your experience with sexaual harassment and/or assault RAINN has resources by phone and by chat.
Total Number: 153*. There's an additional 32 if we count all of the novella shorts and anthologies, I counted by covers, so 11 are a novella or anthology. In other years tallies have been higher and lower.
I read 114 different authors**. 57 of those were new to me. Megan Erickson was the author I read the most with 5. Next highest was Sherry Thomas with 4.
I continue to track book diversity by characters, since there is not reliable data on authors but I can try to pay attention when I read. I had 82 this year, and some of them were even intersectional, as in characters of color who were also bisexual, and/or neuro-diverse, and/or having a mental illness.
82 were part of a series***.
The oldest book was from 1999. Next oldest was from 2006. 55 were from 2016. One had been lingering in the TBR since 2008. December was the banner reading month with 17. Romance was the highest read category with 76. YA was next highest with 42.
I read 12 paper books and 14 audio, everything else was ebook.
And some faves from the 2017 haul are:
The Rogue Desire anthology did that near impossible thing, where I liked everything in the anthology. (I am still working my way through the next, but they are continuing on.)
Lorelie Brown's Take Me Home was a fun romance that started with a silly challenge, I can be your shocking Thanksgiving date if you promise there is pie.
Kate Elliott's Court of Fives started slow for me (I am really impatient you guys) so I switched to listening to it in audio and then bang, got to places I couldn't wait, and finished it back up in print.
Tiffany Jackson's Allegedly looked at a girl who'd spent years in the juvenile justice system. It features what some might call an unreliable narrator, to me it read as someone who'd been living with so many told to them versions of what happened, including the ones they told themself, that it took some untangling.
Tracey Livesay wrote me amnesia and you can read it too. Love on My Mind is a brother's fiancee which is typically a hard no for me, but it worked for me. Fiancee gets injured leaving future bro-in-law's restaurant, he escorts her to the hospital and fudges the relationship because his brother is out of the country. Brother basically says awesome, can't get back, keep looking after her. And she has lost just enough time when she comes to to not remember the original fiance and some other life changes she made.
Julie Ann Long's Hot in Hellcat Canyon was a fun story of two people both with relationship experience, approaching how that worked for them.
Courtney Milan et al's Hamilton's Battalion was a delightful trifecta of stories from or just after the revolution.
Renee Watson's This Side of Home was a fun novel, that also looked at gentrification from the point of view of two twins.
*I counted re-reads if I re-read the whole thing a didn't just skip to my favorite parts.
**I counted authors, not pen names, where possible. I counted anthologies as one author, because it was just too unwieldy otherwise.
***Series is based on the book being part of a series, whether or not I read any others.
***Series is based on the book being part of a series, whether or not I read any others.
