Sunday Salon: Historical Fiction Reading Challenge December stats (and full 2023 stats too!)

 

 

Each month I share the statistics for the previous month for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. Given that we have now finished with 2023 this month's post will be all the statistics for December and then the statistics for the full year! I always find it interesting to see what are the books that people are reading and reviewing! I think I have visited everyone who shared a link for December. although I think I moved away from some Wordpress blogs before the comments loaded due to the pop-up they have. Even if it looks like I didn't leave a comment, I still visited I promise!!

In terms of the books, it was a good month in December for reviews with 55 reviews linked up for the challenge, shared by 1 participants. This is 7 more than for the same month last year.   There were 4 reviewers who reviewed 5 or more books each. Thank you to everyone who shared their links whether it be 10 or just 1. 

There was just one book that was reviewed more than once this month and that was The Romantic by William Boyd, a book that was longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction this year. This month it was reviewed by both Kay at What Me Read and Davida at The Chocolate Lady's Book Review blog.

There were 2 other authors who had more than book reviewed. 

Agatha Christie who had 3 different books reviewed this month. Sleeping Murder was reviewed at Shellie Loves Books, Murder on the Orient Express was reviewed at Laura's Reviews (in graphic novel form) as was Endless Night. Interestingly, there was another book that features Hercule Poirot but by another author, which is part of a series authorised by the Agatha Christie estate.

Verity Bright's books Murder on the Cornish Cliffs and Death on a Winter's Day were reviewed at A Darn Good Read and Shellie Loves Books respectively. I do love the covers on these books.

And that's it, so let's look at the stats for the whole challenge year. Are you ready?

During 2023 there were a total 846 reviews added to the challenge. This compares to 841 reviews in 2022 and 775 reviews during 2021. The 846 reviews were for 748 individual titles written by 609 authors and submitted by 43 different reviewers.

Let's start with the month by month numbers: 

February was the month with the highest number of reviews at 91 and October was the lowest with 34.

In terms of the books, there was one book that was reviewed more than any other during 2023, with 5 reviews submitted. That book was .....

There were 3 books that were reviewed 4 times. They were

And then there were 5 books reviewed 3 times, 75 books reviewed twice and 664 titles that were each reviewed once.

In terms of authors, one author was reviewed significantly more than any and that was Agatha Christie who was reviewed 26 times, partly because quite a few of the participants were participating in the Reading Christie year long challenge. And yes, I am putting aside the discussion of whether she counts as historical fiction or not as I leave that to the participants discretion.

The next most reviewed authors, who were all reviewed 7 times were Kate Morton, D E Stevenson, Georgette Heyer, Roseanna M White and Verity Bright.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone who participated in the challenge during 2023. Our highest number of reviews submitted was a whopping 70, but whether you contributed that many or just 1 I am grateful to you all for your participation.

It's not too late to join the 2024 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. The sign up post is here, and you can find the January link post to add your reviews here.

I am looking forward to seeing what people share during 2024.

I am also sharing this post with Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.