Are We Reading Bizarro? (Part 2)

This week, in my ongoing series, "Are We Reading Bizarro?" I've decided to dig a little deeper to see if I could pull the number of people reading Bizarro fiction up. In the first week I used purely anecdotal evidence from my Goodreads feed over the course of a few weeks to surmise that only three of the people I am connected to on Goodreads were reading Bizarro or Bizarro adjacent titles.

Are We Reading Bizarro?

This week I decided to up the ante a little bit. I am still using Goodreads as my measurement but instead of relying solely on what passed through on my news feeds, I dug through my friends list (812 members as of this posting), page by page to see of those reporting the titles they're reading, how many I could count off that were Bizarro or Bizarro adjacent.

The number I wound up at: 5.

Digging In Deeper For The Numbers

An interesting thing happened while I was combing through all twenty eight pages of friends statuses, There were far more than five people who's status reported they were reading a Bizarro or adjacent title. The problem was there were more of those status updates that were year old (roughly in the range of 2013 through 2017.) Obviously, I couldn't count those as people currently reading Bizarro. What I can say is that there are way more of those old statuses reporting reading Bizarro than there are currently.

I can't say that means anything or not. But, it could be an indication that we were reading much more Bizarro years ago looking at those snapshots back over years past than we are now. Again that is purely circumstantial evidence and obviously not concrete. 

I can also say that, after my first blog post in this series, several people stepped up to report that they were currently, recently or intend to soon, read a Bizarro or adjacent title. That is encouraging.

I myself, am about to finish up my first experience with Kurt Vonnegut and I have two Bizarro or adjacent titles up next in my reading queue.  As always, if you're reading Bizarro or adjacent let me know! I know someone reported trouble replying directly to the blog so let me know on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads or wherever we interact!

Up next for Mr. Frank

It's a weird time to be alive but a great time to get in more reading! Be well and read weird.