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Thursday, October 27, 2011

I'm a Fantasy Kind of Gal...I Think

So, I've not done any kind of discussion post in...let me check...two months.  I'm not good at them and I'm not ashamed to admit it.  I like lists and reviews - I'm comfortable with them.  Discussions?  Not so much.  Plus, my brain is so fried sometimes at the end of a work day I honestly don't know if I could come up with relatively new and interesting ideas that often.  Even so, here's what I've been thinking.

I decided to do a little stats analyzing (oh, my inner nerd) to see if those genres I tend to like get more 5 star reviews than genres I don't normally like.  And, of course, if the reverse is true of 2 star reviews.  Specifically, I wanted to see if fantasy had more positive reviews and realistic fiction had more negative.  Here's the breakdown from my blog in pie chart form (see above parenthetical exclamation): 


As I expected, fantasy topped the charts as the highest number of 5 star reviews with 31%.  Since I consider fantasy to be my favorite, I thought that was pretty awesome.  I was a bit surprised by how high realistic fiction was too, with 14%!  Then I did the same calculations for my 2 star reviews:


And discovered that fantasy also tops that list.  Mind you, I found that I nearly equally give 2 star reviews to each genre.  In fact, the only genre that seemed to move up a bit in comparison to 5 star reviews was paranormal (which, I kind of expected).  As this kind of disproved my initial theory, I thought I'd better look at my overall reading by genre.  I only did reading for this year since the data was the most complete.


As you can see, fantasy does top my list at 31%, though I was a bit surprised by how low dystopian was on the scale (only 13%).  It feels like I've been reading lots of that, but I guess not in comparison to fantasy and paranormal.  Based on this, it makes sense that fantasy tops both my 5 and 2 star reviews.  I read quite a bit more of that genre than any other, so I should have more reviews in general of that genre, both good and bad. 

If you've stuck with me thus far, bravo for you!  Do you find yourself reading more of a certain genre or thinking you give more negative reviews of a specific genre? 

If you buy through my Amazon linkage, I will get a very small percentage

8 comments :

  1. What an interesting little study here! I bet fantasy is quite high on my lists too, though I'm not sure I've given many 2 stars to anything. :) One thing I learned here, I didn't really know that you didn't like reality fiction. Interesting.

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  2. I love this! What did you program did you use to collect your data?

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  3. Did you actually do all that work yourself?! Wow, I wonder what a pie chart for me would look like. I also wonder if you've read less of one genre but liked them all does that make it's percentage higher? Wow, I don't even think I'm making sense, I'm still really tired. I'm thinking fantasy would top my charts too.

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  4. Suey, well I thought that anyway, since I've not liked much realistic stuff I've read, but apparently I like quite a few!

    Miss Remmers, I sure hope there isn't an easy program out there to add this stuff up, cause I did it myself and used excel to make the pie charts.

    Jenny, I counted the 2 and 5 star reviews by hand (which is why I didn't got near 3 and 4 stars), but I always keep track of how many of what genre I read as I go along. Reading less of one but liking them all would change to total %, but if I did relative % (in ratios of #read/#liked) it would improve. Did that make any sense?

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  5. Oy, apparently I'm brain dead today. I meant it *wouldn't* change the overall %, just the relative %. (And while I'm correcting I meant *go* not got. Is it Friday yet?

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  6. Oooh, I love analyzing my stats at the end of each year. I find it totally interesting. I'm nerdy like that.

    The only genre that I think I give consistently low "grades" to is cozies/culinary mysteries. I don't read a lot of them because I never like them much, but I wish I did, so I keep reading them. It's weird.

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  7. I've been reading so much for challenges that my reading this year doesn't reflect what I want to read at any given moment. I'd be curious to see how the numbers broke down. Thanks for the idea :)

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  8. Susan, I thought that about some of the realistic fiction I've been reading recently, which is why I did the stats. I don't think I've read more than 1 cozy mystery, because I think I wouldn't like them much either!

    stacy, oh I'm sure that's a good thing to read outside what you want. It will definitely make your stats more interesting!

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