So I thought I'd look back over our selections, my personal reactions, and the discussions.
My Goodreads ratings on our selections ran the gamut, hitting each star level. They averaged out to 3.25, which was virtually identical to my average rating on the year for all my books which seems impressive to me, given the element of compulsion in the book club whereas I was picking the rest of my books to suit only myself. My favorite book on the year was
The Old Man and the Sea, which was stunning. I'm glad I finally read (and enjoyed)
The Three Musketeers!
Overall, I think our choices ranged widely, from classic to current, from "issue" to plain old story, from serious to fun, and we were successful at targeting the intersection of quality and appeal. I'm extremely fond of
Dazrin's stats, which I find endlessly interesting.
On the plus side, fully half our authors were female and one-fourth were people of color. Two choices were non-fiction, one author is LGBT, two authors were Nobelists. While we read mostly novels, we had several works of both speculative fiction and historical fiction. I could wish we'd had more than one non-anglophone work, but translation presents its own issues. We averaged nearly 120 comments per discussion. That's a benchmark that will be hard to sustain, but it's gratifying.
What were other members' highs and lows on the year? Any thoughts on where we should change direction? Where should we stay the course?