Reading Audit: First Quarter 2017
Every quarter I take stock of what I've been reading — not just the numbers, but the patterns. Who wrote the books I picked up? What formats did I gravitate toward? Which voices dominated, and whose were missing? This is the first audit of 2017, covering January through March.
The early months of the year tend to set a tone. This quarter I tracked my reading with an eye toward author demographics — gender, race, and the balance between traditionally published work and the unpublished manuscripts I read as contract work. The numbers are a snapshot, not a scorecard, but they help me stay honest about what I'm consuming.
"I updated my reading stats from the first part of the year — a practice I started to hold myself accountable to reading widely and intentionally."
Compared with previous quarters, Q1 showed some shifts. The ratio of male to female authors continued to lean heavily toward women, which reflects both my personal taste and the reality of the YA and middle-grade landscape. I also read a significant number of unpublished manuscripts — part of my contract reading work — which don't always make it into the final tallies but shape my reading life nonetheless.
This audit feeds directly into the next one. By the time Q2 2017 rolled around, I'd read 89 books — a pace that built on the foundation laid here in the first quarter.
If you're curious about the full methodology or want to see how the year played out, the quarterly audits are all linked together. I share them not as a prescription but as an invitation: tracking what you read can reveal things about your reading life that you might otherwise miss.