Number of Answers to September Submissions

I generally review what I will send out for the coming year in August and then I start afresh with submissions come the first week of September. I was wondering how many of those early September submissions actually got answers of some sort and how many were simply ignored. I was surprised by several things when I went back to look at the data. One, despite what I feel, most journals have gotten back to me with an answer. Two, September was not always a month to start afresh (many years, I didn't even submit in September). So here are the raw numbers:

And here it is by percent:

Average Length of Books Read

Most books I read, it appears, run to about three hundred pages, and perhaps I'm dumbing down, since the books seem to be getting shorter. (That said, I started this year with a book that was over one thousand pages, and Good Reads, from which I got my statistics ranked it as zero pages, so my page-count numbers may be less than accurate.)

Authors Read by Gender

A recent chart caused me to ponder how many books I read by men versus women (anthologies are not included). Here are the results year by year, by number and then by percent. It was pretty much as I figured--men dominate.

Number of Previous Partners of Women I've Gone Out With

Sex is not something that comes up immediately in discussion on a date, but if I spend enough time with a gal, previous experience usually does arise at some point. Because I date almost exclusively within my faith, the portion is probably skewed conservative compared to the general population--or maybe, just my perceptions are. In the following, I assume, given things such women told me, that they had had no experience, had had experience only within a former marriage, or had a few experiences outside of marriage. But I've been surprised a few times (previous marriages not mentioned, etc.). And then there are a few I never got a vibe from and never discussed such a topic with.

Favorite Book of the Year

Each year since graduating from college, I've chosen a favorite book of the year in three categories (novel, story collection, nonfiction) and then a single favorite overall. How it breaks down follows. I was surprised by how many story collections there are compared with the other types of books--I do love story collections; it should also be noted, however, that most of those collections were chosen in the years very soon after graduate school. In more recent years, nonfiction seems to more often come out on top. I was also surprised by how many women authors wrote my favorite book of each year; there are still significantly more men, but I'd have thought the numbers would have been even more skewed, since the number of books I read by men seems to be fairly skewed--and probably to an even greater proportion (I see another chart in the making). Anyway, here are the charts:

By Type of Book

By Author's Gender

Estimated Time from First Contact to Phone Number

I'm not one to pick up phone numbers from women quickly or easily. Most of my contact with women is online, since I try to date largely within my church--and that is scattered, with women few and far between. So I thought I'd think about women I was interested in whose phone contact information I've gotten and how long it took (the y-axis represents the number of weeks, the x-axis represents the particular woman):

A lot of this delay is my own (note how, in the above, sometimes women ended up giving me the phone number without me asking), but often the women themselves delayed--I asked, but phone numbers weren't in the offing, at least not at the first request. In general, I think I've taken too much time to ask (if I'm interested, I should just move to phone and meeting as soon as possible), but interestingly, even exorbitantly long times of knowing someone have not always yielded a phone number right away.

Phonecalls for November 2012

I kept track of phone calls made to me and returned in November, which renders possibilities for all kinds of charts.

Phonecalls by Gender

Phonecalls by Person

Phonecalls by Relationship

Unfortunately, among the potential dates, the incoming calls came from one person, with whom a "just friends" clarity was eventually established. Apparently, in that regard, I'm not great at getting phone numbers to begin with, and I'm even less successful at getting callbacks or through calls.