{"id":1275,"date":"2017-01-17T21:00:55","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T21:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/?p=1275"},"modified":"2017-01-17T21:02:16","modified_gmt":"2017-01-17T21:02:16","slug":"goodreads-annual-stats-and-other-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/2017\/01\/17\/goodreads-annual-stats-and-other-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodreads annual stats and other things"},"content":{"rendered":"

A quick blog today, focusing on a couple of things. First, like most of us, my annual Goodreads statistics appeared, telling me what I had read in 2016 (or at least, what GR knew about, which is a fair proportion of what really happened).<\/p>\n

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Cover – The Recognition of Shakuntala (Goodreads)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, I read 52 books in the year, up 10 from 2015 (and conveniently one a week). but the page count was down very slightly. I guess I’m reading shorter books on average! Slightly disappointingly, there were very few books more than about 50 years old, with Kalidasa’s Recognition of Shakuntala<\/em> the outstanding early text. This year, I have a target of reading more old stuff alongside the new. In 2016 there was also more of a spread of genres, with roughly equal proportions of historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and non-fiction (aka “geeky”), contrasting with previous years where historical fiction has dominated.<\/p>\n

I also recently read that Amazon passed the landmark of 5 million ebooks on their site in the summer, slightly ahead of the 10th birthday of the Kindle itself. The exact number varies per country – apparently Germany has more – but currently the number is growing at about 17% per annum. That’s a lot of books… about 70,000 new ones per month, in fact. Let nobody think that reading is dead! As regards\u00a0fiction, Romance and Children’s books top the counts, which I suspect will come as a surprise to nobody.<\/p>\n

Finally, we have just had a\u00a0space-related anniversary, namely that of the successful landing of the ESA Huygens<\/em> probe on Saturn’s moon Titan on January 14th 2005. An extraordinary video taken as it descended has been circulating recently and I am happy to reshare it. Meanwhile the Cassini<\/em> “mothership” is in the last stages of its own research mission and, with fuel almost exhausted, will be directed to burn up in Saturn’s atmosphere later this year. I vividly remember the early mission reports as Cassini<\/em> went into orbit around Saturn – it’s a bit sad to think of the finale, but this small spacecraft has returned a wealth of information since being launched in 1997, and in particular since arriving at Saturn in 2004.<\/p>\n