You’ve got to give the people what they want, at least once in a while, and today that means giving you charts!

The first chart today is one of the most shocking, I think. Compare to last year—the scale is different, but in 2011 I read much more from the second half of the nineteenth century, more from the twentieth century overall, and what seems almost like a record amount from this century (though I suppose it’s not).

On to country of origin. The US and UK have flip-flopped since last year, and my tail is two countries shorter. Where last year I had just one or two books from most of that long tail, though, this year gets a little bit deeper for a few of them at least. Do I wish some of the non-Anglo totals were higher? I do, but I wouldn’t give up many of those US or UK titles to make it so. I just want more.

Author gender was another real shocker for me this year. Last year I speculated on whether the Laura Ingalls Wilder books would finally tip the scales further toward women (if not actually in their favor). The opposite seems to have happened—the men got a greater share than ever, with 62 out of 85 books (one title was an anthology with authors of both genders).

Again, it’s not something I worry about (although I do look forward to following Michelle’s new life as a flashlight and have gotten some [hopefully] good female-author suggestions from my readers this year), but I am surprised that I’ve actually become more skewed than I already was.

I’ve got one chart this year that I haven’t done before, with my reading broken down into literary “forms.” This might not be as subjective as my next, signature chart, but it still is—both in terms of creating the categories and then determining what falls where. But I’m sure you can live with that. The novel is the clear winner, but I was pleased to see it accounted for just barely half of titles. Novellas really held their own thanks to Frances’s Melville House challenge, and there was a fair amount of short story reading even with those shorter works already in the mix (the short stories category includes short story collections, not individual stories, which I need a better way to keep track of).

There’s no question that, once again, I need more nonfiction in this mix, but I was very pleased to see poetry and drama make reasonable appearances. More of this, please!

And now, for the themes. If you don’t understand the categories, well, I would direct you to their first mention, but of course I never really explain them much. Each title has at most one category (nonfiction titles often do not have an appropriate category). And there are certainly some changes here!

Gardening has taken a major hit, with Men & Women enjoying a nice resurgence. Grail Quests also came up from behind, but Sex & Death made a nice showing in a tie for second place. Dreaming may always be last, but it will never be missing.

I think next year I’d like to see Men & Women, Dreaming and Gardening take the top three, but some of my favorite books of the year have been about Sex & Death—all of Ubu, for one thing (of course).

Also, a minigame: how do y’all think the four Nabokov novels played out in theme-terms? I’ll give one hint: two categories account for all of them.

I expect blogging to be somewhat light for the next several weeks. Now that I’ve finished wrestling with Melville—for now, for now—and am reading at whim I won’t have quite as much to say. Plus, I’ll be busy with a few other things. For one, I’ll be getting ready, both at home and at work, for another vacation, this one with wider appeal than the last: I’m going to Yellowstone! (I’m super excited about this; the East Coaster in me gets super excited about seeing the West.) Also unlike last time, I think I’ll be taking a “blogcation” (ugh, what a horrid word) during the trip itself, so it will be especially quiet around here for a week or so. Oh, and I’m already having book-packing stress. Will I even want/have time to read? At night, right? Anyway.

So far in my reading at whim I’ve gone through two not just contemporary but actually brand-new novels, and I have one more on the way to me shortly (Jean-Christophe Valtat’s Aurorarama). But now I have turned back to the classics and to my first work by Sir Walter Scott, The Bride of Lammermoor. Pretty sure Amateur Reader recommended that to me as a good starting point a while back and that’s how it ended up in my house. How much do you love the Scotch maiden complete with tartan shawl on the cover of the latest Oxford World’s Classics edition?

I haven’t actually told Frances yet, and I’m still afraid to commit, but I think I’m going to join her Madame Bovary readalong in October. Largely because I have never read Flaubert. (I said that loudly instead of whispering, even though I wanted to, because the first step in reading dehumiliation is admitting you have a problem.) So hopefully we’ll be remedying that soon. Her schedule does seem awfully doable.

Last, I’m really going back and forth on whether to do another seminar at the Newberry Library this fall. A year ago I was thrilled with my class on German Romantic fairy tales, then the one spring offering I liked got cancelled and in summer I spaced and missed registration. I’m feeling much busier this fall than I was a year ago, but there are several awesome-looking classes available. Literature and Humor in Buenos Aires, Dombey and Son (which, ahem, I still haven’t finished…), the Victorian business, Paradise Lost, Emily Dickinson… I don’t know, what should I do? Maybe the Emily Dickinson, because it’s short, and because poetry seems like something it would be good to have help with. Maybe.